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.

As Luck Would Have It: Fin

Luck, what could have been? The series closed the curtain with an excellent episode that blends well drama at the track with gangster business betwixt Ace and Michael. All TV series walk a fine line between compelling drama and cheesy soap opera cliché. Irish red-headed jockey with a heart of gold and an accent that would make a Lucky Charm’s executive blush? Check. Several montage scenes that make the “montage” scene from Team America seem understated? Check. An unexpected pregnancy? The grizzled veteran old trainer sitting on the bench at dusk, with is dog at his side and his horse in his heart? Yes. Yes. Yes.

It all worked.

Some of the racing scenes read more like visual poems to the beauty of the horse than they did to plot considerations. Despite the unfortunate equine deaths that ultimately sank the show, Milch’s love for the horses bleeds through the screen. Milch cares far more for horses than the Coen Brothers do for the vast majority of their characters. Tis scrawled across the screen in blinking neon. Who knows, in another world, in which Luck had a successful three or four season run, it’s not unthinkable it could have raised the profile of the sport considerably. The demise of horse racing, and current state of crises is largely speculative. This as a counterpoint to that.

Paired nicely with the soft gauzy beauty in motion of horse racing, was the intense cat and mouse bullying and mind-fuck Michael puts on Ace. Kills, dismembers, and disposes in the ocean his guy Israel. Ominously flies in his naive grand-son from out of state. And sets a bad-ass British assassin on his path. Seeing Gus and Ace duck and dodge the assassin over the course of the day ratcheted up the tension nicely.

Towards the end, the series slowly but surely brought the threat of violence and menace from the back to the front, to much benefit. A particularly satisfying scene demonstrated the history between Gus and Ace, when during lunch, Gus sets an ambush in motion by simply asking Ace “do you remember that time in Chicago?” The resolution of that scene, shows a weary Gus washing his hands and coming to the cold realization that he’s too old for this shit. Another stand out scene reveals Ace cracking under the pressure of dodging death all day, his big horse race coming up, his grandson in peril. He gazes out of Escalante’s stables through a veil of horse leg wraps, which have been hung to dry, but for all intents and purposes look like Buddhist prayer flags waving in the breeze. Michael shows up to taunt Ace in the paddock. Leering and jeering like a ghoul on the edge of your bed. Discordantly pale and powerful. Well done.

As with Deadwood, the unintended final episode kind of sorta works as a coda.  

The Kentucky Derby is just a few weeks away. The real life drama will be unfolding at tracks across the country every weekend between now and May 5^th. Do yourself a favor and follow the lead of the Foray Stable guys. Grab a racing form, do a little studying, and head down to the nearest simulcast joint. Nothing beats the real thing.

As Luck Would Have It, or Luck Running Out

Luck will culminate after just one season. The apparent result of three equine deaths that occurred during production of season one, and two episodes into season two. Because of the arcane subject matter and relatively unsexy ratings*, there is a lot of speculation that canceling Luck was more of a business decision than a response to horsey-cide. Although HBO's business model seems much more insular to the whims of the market than most television series, I'm inclined to believe poor numbers and bad pub were too steep a price.


*Luck was averaging approximately 4.8 million views per episode - including DVR viewings, repeats, and on demand numbers. For comparison's sake, Game of Thrones averaged around 9.3 million, and the vapid True Blood 12.6 million.

Luck had already been guaranteed a second season, but probably needed a Hail Mary of sorts by scoring some prestige awards to keep going beyond that. By all accounts, Luck was one of the most expensive series that HBO had ever undertaken. The sprawl and logistics of filming at Santa Anita Park, and the care of all that horse-flesh, is obviously an expensive proposition. Are three horse deaths evidence of cavalier animal stewardship? Probably not. It would have been more significant if an 18 episode show about horse racing was produced without fatality.

Horses are an incredibly fragile breed.  Allegedly, Luck had more equine fatalities than Secretariat, War Horse, Sea Biscuit and hundred's of previous TV, film, and commercial projects combined. Prior to Luck, the last fatality was during filming of 3:10 to Yuma remake--"No one forgets velvet." However, Luck had far greater ambitions at re-creating honest to God horse racing than the aforementioned flicks. This year at Aqueduct race track in New York there have been 18 fatalities since the season opener in November. More than a dozen died last summer at Del Mar Park's meet in California. The sport is notoriously tight-lipped about fatality numbers, but the general rule of thumb is one fatality per 500 races. For context, a horse meet is generally 3-6 months long, with approximately 40-50 races a week. Where there is horse racing, there will be horse death. Racing fatalities are a dark and repugnant side to an otherwise grand sport. I'm hopeful that the pressure animal rights groups applied to HBO--and are currently leveraging against Aqueduct Park in New York--will result in much needed dialogue and reform for a sport that will obviously need to change to survive. As Luck has often displayed, there is a mythic love affair between the people and horses. As Lorca famously said, "All that has dark sound has duende."

As for episode eight. Things are coming to a nice crescendo towards the finale on Sunday. The hint of violence that was evident from the beginning has crept into full view. Most satisfying is seeing some cool brooding menace from Denny Farina's Gus Dimitriou. Equally at home playing Ace's nurse-maid and late night pillow talker, he also stood down one of Mike's business partners in a horse stall with a heavy threat of bodily harm hanging in the balance.

Episode # 8 Recap

As Luck Would Have It: Horses, Humanity's Last Hope

"I have seen people profoundly changed simply by being in the proximity of horses. Their size, their virtue, their complicated nature bring out patience and respect. Don't be afraid of that Chester." 

                    "Afraid of what?" asks Ace.

                    "Of everything that can be."

On its shiny surface, Luck reads like a wise-guy revenge series. The Sopranos meets Guys and Dolls. The viewer is (in most cases) given just enough information to vaguely grasp Ace Bernstein's general plans for revenge with his former business partner Mike. The cornucopia of dysfunction at the track is merely background noise to the chess match between Ace and Michael. However, the exchange above between Ace (Dustin Hoffman) and Claire (Joan Allen) gets at the blood and marrow of the series. Redemption via animal. Horse's humanity to man. Why not? You've seen what happened on Super Tuesday. Horses may be humanity's last hope.

Milch veers from his pattern of building each episode around a signature race, and in chapter six blesses us with two. Although lacking the drama of previous races, the cinematography is outstanding. As someone who has literally watched a shit-ton of horse races, I'm stunned by how close Luck comes to getting the feel of a live horse race. Typically, sports re-creations in movies or television series are embarrassingly faux. Not so with Luck.

The degenerate bastards who comprise Foray Stables are forced to sweat through an "inquiry" in their horse Mon Gateau's race. One measure against blatant in-your-face crookedness in horse racing is the fact that each race is filmed, reviewed, and watched live by three stewards. Referees. A retirement gig of sorts for the more honest backside track officials. If they see something unfair, like a horse crossing over into another horse's path, cutting in line so to speak, they have the power to disqualify the offender. It's a heavy penalty for all involved, but it happens regularly. If you've spent anytime betting horses, you've either been victimized, or somehow less frequently it seems, benefited from a horse who gets taken down. It can turn a winning ticket into a loser, or vice-versa. Like officiating in any sport, the rulings seem inconsistent and spiteful. Not so much officials, these stewards, as they are Gods on Mt. Olympus with us as playthings. Leaving the results as-is for Mon Gateau seemed liked rare justice to me. For what it's worth, jockeys have the ability to throw a flag on the play by lodging a formal "objection" after the race. Objections are seen as less honest than inquiries. 

The second race of the episode featured Walter Smith's (Nick Nolte) Kentucky Derby contender Gettin' Up Morning. Getting Up Morning sets the track record for 1 mile at Santa Anita*. The real drama is the conniption fit that Nolte has when he sees the jockey use the whip on Getting Up Morning down the stretch. Why the bluster you ask? In the US, jockeys use the whip with about as much discretion and subtlety as Odd Future or LMFAO apply to the art of music. Horses get whipped because the jockey is bored, because the owner is in attendance, because the horse is drifting one way, because the horse is drifting the other way, and maybe because a 115 lb jockey whipping a 1500 lb horse can cause it to run faster. In Europe, whipping is much less prevalent, and tightly controlled by the stewards. Europe is pretty cool by most accounts. Nolte is likely chapped because he's painfully old school, cares about his horse (to be truthful, owners of big time stakes caliber horses aren't thrilled about seeing their million dollar investments whipped), and possibly because he wants to save that first time whipping a horse until it really needs the shock and awe it may provide. Legend has it that Affirmed bested his rival Alysheba in the 1978 Belmont stakes because jock Steve Cauthen threw a precious few left handed whips on Affirmed at a crucial point in the stretch drive. It was supposedly the first time Cauthen had whipped Affirmed on his left side.

*In reality, the 1 mile record at Santa Anita is held by Ruhlman, in a time of 1.33.25, which is a full second slower than Mon Gateau's time, or about 5 lengths.

I fucking love this series. I love the Miles Davis riffs that bubbled underneath some of the dark early scenes in this episode. I love seeing real life horse trainer Bob Baffert in background shots. I love Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens acting his ass off as the insufferable prick jock Ronnie. Thankfully, HBO has renewed for Season 2. I'm eager to see what happens when Luck gets some racing room and really hits its stride.

As Luck Would Have It: Staying with Pint of Plain

The fifth episode of Luck is heavy on character development and comparatively light on advancing the plot. That's not a complaint. The pleasure of hooking into a series like Luck comes from watching character background get revealed, and seeing quality actors chew their way through great lines. My favorite bit of dialogue occurred when Ace's bodyguard Gus became genuinely excited at the prospect of seeing "his" horse, Pint of Plain, run in a stakes race the following day. This is the same Gus who in episode one didn't know the difference between a horse head and a horse ass. An oblivious beard. Now, he's come full circle. He engaged in a bit of pre-race existential joy in typical Milch-speak:

"Tomorrow's gonna be a good day Ace. Big day. We step to the plate with a shot. You know who don't?"  

"Who?" Ace asks.

"Babe Ruth. The Babe don't step to the plate, or George Patton either. You know, because they're both dead. Tremendous ballplayer, tremendous general. But out of the picture completely. Whereas you and I, we get a good night sleep. We step to the plate."

The unsightly and decidedly worse dressed doppelganger to the Ace/Gus relationship is the one between the degenerate gamblers, in particular the bond between the gifted handicapper but shitty poker player Jerry, and the caustic wheelchair bound Marcus. A man so misanthropic, he ultimately confuses his concern for Jerry as a homosexual urge. Jerry's classic rejoinder: "Just because you're short on people skills doesn't make you a bone smoker." Crassly inelegant and elegant at the same time.

An emerging theme is the succor and redemption these characters from all walks of life discover in relationships with the horse. This is true to form in real life. Any handicapper worth his salt suffers from the cliched mythology between man and horse. The same goes for owners and trainers. You can't spend as much time with horses as track people do, without developing an abiding love for the characteristics horses so often project: courage, guts, beauty, endurance, loyalty.

In less skilled hands, it may play as maudlin, corny, or unintentionally funny that Ace's date, the criminally underused to this point Joan Allen (in a demure 180 degree turn from the preacher humper she played in The Ice Storm) is carted home by Gus at the end of their date. Ace prefers to spend the night with Pint of Plain in Escalante's stables. No doubt this deft touch is aided greatly by Luck head writer Bill Barich. Barich, author of the best horse racing book I've read, Laughing in the Hills, has a knack for plumbing the peculiar blend of redemption, romance, pain, and beauty that horse racing can provide. If you are a fan of the show, I'd heartily recommend finding Barich's book. Scratch that. If you are a fan of reading, check out Barich's book.

As usual, the racing scenes are superb. Pint of Plain is injured when a horse in front of him loses a shoe, and it ricochets back and catches Pint of Plain on his hind leg or "hock," gashing it to the bone. It happens. One of the miracles of the sport is that for their tremendous size and grace, horses are an extremely fragile breed. Cuts, nicks, and abrasions are fairly common and on the benign end of the continuum of calamity that horses face every time they take the track.

Matthew 21:22. "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." The big race from last week's episode.

As Luck Would Have It: Nuts Get Rocked Off

Editor's Note: This is the second Luck entry from a writer new to the fold, Wordy G. He is a modern day Bukowski, both with the pen and his penchant for pony-related degeneracy. He knows of what he speaks when it comes to horse-racing, a particularly useful trait when it comes to sussing out what's going down on the newest David Milch skein. If you missed it, the first entry can be found here.  

Hollywood doesn't make them like they used to. An occasional nugget slips through the cracks now and again, like a penguin egg making the journey to fully fledged baby penguin, it's a God damn miracle. Thankfully, television has been a welcome refuge for producers, directors, and actors who seek the latitude to create something with more depth, nuance, and character than the usual slag playing for the rubes down at the multiplex.

One side effect of keeping the story Holy is the subtle change from "episode" television to "novel" television. Quality "episode" TV features crackling scripts that deliver the goods over the course of one episode. Drama. Tension. Climax. Drama resolved. Teaser for next week. Shows like Boardwalk Empire, Treme, and Luck trend more towards the "novel" formula. Weekly episodes tend to set up future pay-offs down the road (or, maybe foreplay with no release in the case of Treme). Each show is merely a 60 minute chapter of a larger narrative. The novel approach is a much more difficult proposition to get your arms around. It requires a bit more effort from the viewer. A little discipline to ride out the set up and patiently wait for the pay off.

In Luck episode # 4, the pay-off begins. Written by long-time Daily Racing Form reporter Jay Hovdey (who happens to be married to the most successful female jockey of all-time, Julie Krone), two scenes in particular rocked my nuts off.

The first, involved the maiden race for Walter Smith's horse Getting Up Morning.  The race comes at the middle of the episode, and is right up there with Roy Hobbs blasting home runs, Jimmy Chitwood draining jumpers, or Rocky training for Apollo Creed as far as goose-bump producing sports moments in entertainment go. At the start of the race, Getting Up Morning gets left at the gate. In racing parlance, this means he missed the break, and spots the field a massive head start. When a horse "gets left at the gate" in real life, 99 out of 100 times you assume there is no way the horse can win. Most races are run at a distance of just under a mile, with the distance between the first place horse and the second place measured in "lengths," which is about 8 feet. It takes approximately 1/5th of a second for a horse to cover a length. Even the slightest bit of unfortunate luck, being carried a few paths wide on the turn, having to slow down for a moment because another horse impedes progress, or a million other hard to predict circumstances can mean the difference between winning the race by a length or two, or completely running out of the money. To spot the field six or seven lengths at the start of the race is certain doom.  However, Getting Up Morning rallies from the horrendous start and wins the race going away. This impressive feat is made more so by the fact that it is Getting Up Morning's first career race.

It's all filmed with a nod towards epic. Slow motion sequences. A soaring score. The works. The awe and wonder shown on the faces of the degenerate gamblers, the tears in Walter Smith's eyes, Escalante referring to the horse as "a freak," are emblematic of the shock wave the horse's performance sends through the track at Santa Anita, and thru our TV screens. Secretariat lost his first race, but overcame a very troubled trip that signaled to many that he was going to be a great horse. In Gettting Up Morning's unlikely victory, Luck creator David Milch has sent the same signal.

I'll be a little disappointed if Milch walks us down the obvious path towards Ace Bernstein's horse vs. Walter Smith's horse. It seems inevitable, but with Milch's penchant for frustrating the viewer, we shall see.

I wish to Christ himself HBO had made the clip available, because its electric enough that you should see it.  Seek it out if you can.

A couple of inside horse racing points. After the race, it is apparent that Getting Up Morning has bled through his nose. This is fairly common in horse racing. Horses have such huge lungs, they are susceptible to bleeding from the exertion of a race. A typical treatment for bleeding is use of a legal drug called Lasix.  Nothing untoward is going on here. The vet examines Getting Up Morning and declares that the bleeding wasn't too severe. Some 'bleeders' have problems racing at longer distances, but typically Lasix works for the vast majority.

Also, the final time of the race is one minute, seven seconds, and change. This is an extremely fast winning time for a six furlong maiden race. Were this to occur in real life, it would be duly noted by the horse racing  press, and Getting Up Morning would begin to appear on all the Kentucky Derby watch lists.

Lastly, I've seen comments on some boards squawking about a horse coming from behind not being all that unusual. Don't believe such misguided slander. Coming from off the pace isn't unusual, but winning after missing the break and spotting the rest of the field a huge lead is exceedingly rare.

The second magic moment is the initial meeting between Ace Bernstein and Michael (Michael Gambon, better knows as Steve Zissou's erstwhile financier in The Life Aquatic). The back story indicates they were former partners of some sort, until Michael gigged Ace by putting him in a Sophie's Choice situation where Ace was forced to take a cocaine possession rap and time in prison to protect a family member. The first 3 episodes have been a prelude to this relationship, with dark hints and clues to Ace's ultimate plan for revenge. The first scene with the two men in the same frame doesn't disappoint. I particularly enjoyed the absurd ballet of the meeting, Ace initially refuses to be seated, and I held high hopes that he would take the meeting standing. He relents, and Michael one-ups him by waltzing across the room, and swinging a leg over the edge of a sofa, not quite sitting, not quite standing, but an odd straddle that still leaves him elevated above Ace. The dialogue is pure Milch, with equal parts profanity and poetry. The ultimate impact is that Michael comes off as one scary motherfucker. Ace will have his hands full trying to get over. It should be glorious to watch unfold.

Don't sleep on Luck. Below is HBO's recap of the first 4 episodes.

As Luck Would Have It: An Entry Point

For the uninitiated, horse racing presents a byzantine code that often takes hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to learn. School is in session on virtually every night, with poor, sad, magnificent bastards bent over Daily Racing Forms looking for clues. Sessions continue virtually every day, with boozy afternoons spent betting the races. Several unserious media types have decried the relatively impenetrable inside horse racing plot twists and angles as an impediment to enjoying Luck, the new HBO series produced by David Milch, directed by Mike Mann, and featuring Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, and a bunch of horses. As someone who happens to have paid that horse racing tuition (and remains involved in a continuing education capacity to this very day), I’m here to help flesh out some of the broad strokes that Luck assumes viewers will recognize.

Come on though. It’s Milch. What else do you need to know? A Yale Grad, with an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and according to legend, his father was a doctor who possibly performed some operations on big time mob wise guys. Milch is my kind of intellectual. Whipsaw smart. Ultimately accessible. A man of letters who also grasps the seedier corners of culture. Deadwood, my all-time favorite television show in the non-Wire category, is infamous for its ornate and vulgar language. Characters routinely spouted tapestries of brilliant dialogue that sounded like a mash up of Shakespeare and Charles Bukowski. Milch writes with one foot in the gutter, and one foot in baby’s breath. 

Appropriately, Luck takes place at Santa Anita Park, which remains the epicenter of horse racing west of Louisville. For those of you unfamiliar with horse culture, the track is a perfect marker for exploring and contrasting the lives of the 1% and the 99. From million dollar horse owners in Savile Row suits, to degenerate hobo’s shuffling the grandstands searching for cigarette butts and mistakenly discarded winning tickets, and all points in-between, the track has the Americana caste system covered.   

Luck, which expects much from its audience, beams the viewer right into the grandstands at Santa Anita. Over the course of the first three episodes, significant plot developments have hinged on track life that require some working knowledge of horse racing to fully appreciate. HBO conveniently provides decoding for some of the horse culture lingo, like apprentice jockeys who are called bug boys, and a summary of a lottery ticket type bet, The Pick Six. Four degenerate gamblers, who comprise a perverted Greek chorus of sorts in the series, happen to score $2 million dollars by winning the Pick Six in episode one.

Another key element is the concept of claiming races. There are several types of races in horse racing. Big time stakes races like the Kentucky Derby for example. You may see races like this on network TV. Races that take place after a poignant vignette featuring colts galloping in a field, misty eyes, an American flag flapping gently in the breeze, shots of extremely rich and extremely old white people, and Nick Lachey, all played underneath a solemn essay/ode to Americana read by Jack Whitaker, are the really important races. If the race is on a cable channel, and proceeded by an ESPN’s porcine jowled Hank Goldberg, contributing specious gambling advice, it’s merely a significant race. Big stakes races take place relatively infrequently. The three Triple Crown races take place over the course of one month from the first Saturday in May thru the first Saturday in June. The Breeder’s Cup races take place over two days in late October. Horse racing isn’t for everybody, but you have to be pretty jaded not to be somewhat moved by this type of drama. Pay attention at the 1:40 mark, and hang on thru the slow-mo replays a minute later to get an appreciation for what happens. At the very least, it will give you some perspective for what kind of reality Milch is trying to re-create in the series.

Racing doesn’t subsist on the Triple Crown races alone. The bread and butter of the everyday grind in horse racing, typically 10 races a day, 5 days a week at major tracks, is the claiming race.

In a claiming race, every horse is for sale. If you have a horse license (which, barring a felony or bestiality priors on your record, is easier to get than a HEB point’s rewards card) and cold hard cash, you have all you need to buy your very own race horse. The “claiming” or “sale” price is an efficient way for tracks to ensure that horses of similar caliber are running against each other. If you valued your horse at 20k, you wouldn’t enter it in a “claiming” race for 10k. You might be tempted, because it would be an easy way to win the purse for the race. But you would almost certainly have your horse “claimed” by another owner, for half its value. You might enter it in a race with a claiming price for 30k. Your horse may need a lot of luck to win, but even if someone did claim it, you’d get 10k more than you valued him for a sale price.

If the horsey business is making it difficult for you to find an entry point to the series, comment and I’ll be happy to expound.