Wordy Old Men on Boardwalk Empire: Season Four, Episode Ten "White Horse Pike"

This week's episode saw Chalky make a run at Dr. Narcisse, Nucky find out that Masseria was using his trucks to smuggle heroin, and Chalky barely escaping the episode with his life after Bader turned on Nucky.

Wordy Ginters: Does anything portend turmoil more definitively than clouds in your coffee? With the opening shot of a half-bearded Eli, his creamy cup of coffee, and a not so subtle nod to Carly Simon, you knew shit was going to get stirred up in White Horse Pike.

You had me several years ago when I was still naïve / Well you said that we made such a pretty pair and that you would never leave / But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me / I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee / Clouds in my coffee… -Carly Simon

Fuck Warren Beatty. And his brother Ned. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” will forever more serve as the coda for the Daughter Maitland and Dr. Narcisse in my mind.

Old Man Duggan: Indeed. That's at least two episodes this season that started on a close-up of a cup of coffee. I suppose this shot was intended to strike a chord about two disparate things mixing together. Different races working together. Men and women working together. Heroin and booze coming together more fully in the vice-peddling in organized crime. A lot of new political wrinkles getting worked in this week.

WG: The episode was primarily concerned with asymmetrical deal-making. Capone jamming a succession plan down Torrio’s throat. Knox with his hand up Eli’s ass (at the breakfast table! Is nothing sacred? Breakfast for fuck’s sake. The meal that projects the coziest Norman Rockwell vibe of all family feeding times). Rothstein using Margaret to get over on his Anaconda Realty investment. Nucky using the open grave gambit to claim a piece of the heroin pie via Lansky. But by far the most compelling storyline (other than the Harrow/Chalky hand-shake, which was nearly as iconic as seeing Armstrong walk on the moon) was the love triangle between Chalky, Nucky, and Narcisse. Did you think Chalky was going to get out of the episode alive?

OMD: For a second, I was worried, but then I realized there were two more episodes left, which leaves far too much time before the season's end to kill off a character as central to the show as Chalky. I'm not entirely sure how Nucky manages to extract Narcisse from the heroin dealings without infuriating Joe Masseria, however. I loved the alleyway handshake. I can't say I was expecting for Harrow's job to be dishwasher/wound-dresser. The scene I liked even more, though, was tea-time with Margaret and Rothstein. There was something sort of sweet about the whole thing. I, for one, was happy to see Margaret get a little bit of something for herself, and I loved that she saw her boss for the crook he is. Different shades of crooks, but it definitely seemed like there was a message about Wall Street hidden deftly between the lines there.

WG: How bad-ass was Chalky with a US flag for a sling?

OMD: Almost as bad-ass as him strangling that fucko deputy with it. Those shitbirds got what was coming to 'em. I loved that Chalky was concerned with whether or not using the red, white, and blue was gauche. Always concerned with social convention that Chalky.

WG: TV rarely gets more satisfying than the question Nucky levels at Narcisse: “There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Who the fuck do you think you are?” It was nice that Winter gave the audience a trail of bread crumbs--Willie with the nicely-timed info, telling Nucky that he saw Narcisse consorting with Bader--to reassure us that Nucky didn’t actually sell out Chalky like he appeared to in his deal with Masseria, Lansky, and Narcisse. Winter has allowed Nucky to be a stone-cold bastard before, namely by offing Jimmy Darmody at the end of Season Two. It would have been ballsy to allow Nucky to offload his relationship with Chalky for 1/3 of the heroin trade. Viewer anarchy. Other than Harrow, I’m not sure there is a more popular character.

OMD: Definitely. Unlike Darmody though, Chalky has always been loyal to Nucky, even if their relationship has been strained a few times. Darmody got too big for his britches and tried to make a move on Nucky. You come at the king, you best not miss. Given Jimmy's transgressions, he had to go. Chalky has had Nucky's back whenever he's needed it. I just hope Chalky doesn't think Nucky turned on him, something he could certainly ascertain from the deputies trying to off him. I'm just glad Chalky was paying attention to where they were going. Were he one of those passengers who simply sit in the car without paying how they're getting where they're going any mind, Chalky'd be taking a dirt nap right now.

WG: I admire Al Capone’s unconventional taste in prostitutes, Torrio set him up, right? I loved how Capone was trying to convince himself that Torrio’s timely exit was good luck rather than skeezy double-cross planning. Right? Right?

OMD: Yeah, I honestly don't know if that was Johnny Torrio's doing or if it was the Irish striking back. I guess given the presence of the Al's line about Torrio being lucky to have not been there, we must assume that the line has more significance than for Torrio to have not had anything to do with the HawthoRNe, sorry force of habit, Hawthorne getting lit up. I'm going to refrain from looking at Torrio's Wikipedia page so as to not spoil anything for myself. As for the prostitutes, different strokes, especially when it comes to Al Capone.

WG: The hotel that got shot to shit was the Hawthorne Inn. Capone’s home base is in Cicero. Cicero remains to this day the home of Hawthorne Park, the asshole of the Chicago horse racing circuit. As a degenerate horse racing fan, the only thing that would tickle me more than some horse racing angle on Boardwalk Empire is if Nucky asks Narcisse who the fuck he thinks he is one more time.

OMD: I know you still light your nightly prayer candle for Luck. I hope Nucky asks Narcisse who the fuck he is while he's capping him. Nucky doesn't get his hands dirty often, but he may make an exception for Narcisse. Speaking of Thompson's capping their aggravators, I wouldn't be surprised to see Eli putting a bullet in the back of Tolliver's head.

WG: Speaking of non-sequiturs, if the scenes from next week are to be believed, Lou Gossett Jr. makes an appearance as Chalkie’s old man. I hope it serves as a launching pad for you to wax poetic about Enemy Mine.

OMD: Now I'm not sure if you're yanking my chain or whether you knew that I had, in fact, written about Enemy Mine before. Sadly, I'm not sure how I can gracefully segue from this episode into a lengthy comparison between Enemy Mine and Brokeback Mountain.

Rediscovering the Past: A Shocking Revelation about Enemy Mine

[This is another oldie but goodie from February 10th of 2010. I am working on an entry or two and should be keeping up with Prick Tunes entries along the way. Hopefully this is a new one for some of you.]

One of the primary goals of this series is to plumb the depths of our pop culture past, examining relics of our not-so-distant past with a fresh set of eyes.

Today's errand involves looking deeper at the sci-fi non-classic Enemy Mine.


Now, when I undertook the chore of watching this film I had no idea what to expect. I was certainly taken aback to find that I would be watching the precursor to Brokeback Mountain starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., in the roles that would be unofficially reprised by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

You see, Enemy Mine is about two men who are marooned on a distant, virtually uninhabited planet who take shelter from the planets harsh elements together, and eventually take comfort in each other's company. When I say "two men" what I really mean is a human and a Draconian, but as first two acts blatantly elucidate (and the third act absolutely bludgeons the point home), these two species are really just different races.

Where Wolfgang Petersen makes his bold decision, however, is when he decides to make Enemy Mine an interracial Brokeback Mountain. Even though he is in a scaly reptilian get-up for the whole movie, Petersen chose to cast a black man to play Jeriba. This is no coincidence. The racial tension between Dennis Quaid's character, Willis Davidge, who essentially starts the film as the clean-cut poster boy for the Aryan ideal, and Jeriba is so thick it could not be flushed down a toilet. As the two get to know each other while trying their best to simply survive in this crazy, messed up world, they begin to form a bond. They co-habitate. They teach each other new things. Lou Gossett, Jr., has a baby. Despite their initial racially-motivated hatred of one another, they overcame their differences and found comfort in one another's company, and what they have to show for it is an alien butt baby.

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Now, where Wolfgang Petersen loses me is when he decides to actively try to piss off all Christian groups. You see, as the film progresses, Willis Davidge evolves. He starts off the film as a hateful Nazi. As he begins to learn about the other race, he grows as a man, and eventually he becomes Jesus and somehow impregnates his male lover. Seriously, Wolfgang? Homosexual immaculate conception? Hey, I don't have a problem with it, but if this movie came out today, there would be protesters outside of your movie all over the Bible belt.

Whatever. It's your movie, Wolfgang. Make it your own.

Moving on...

So Jeriba, Davidge's lover, has their child but dies in childbirth. Davidge raises their son as his "uncle" and teaches him about both of their cultures. Then their son, Zammis, runs off, attacks a WASP, and ends up getting enslaved by the human settlers (read: Europeans) while Davidge is shot and presumed dead by Zammis's captor. Of course, Davidge is resurrected (he emerges from a body bag, not a cave) and goes to save Zammis after removing the rock from the metaphorical cave door with a fighter's weapons. When he lands, he saves the enslaved Draconians and rescues his "nephew" from his oppressors.

So what we have here is a snapshot of Wolfgang Petersen's world, one in which Jesus had an interracial love child with his male lover on Brokeback Mountain--and Jesus freed the slaves.

And just so you know I'm not crazy: