Wordy Old Men on Boardwalk Empire: Season Five, Episode Eight "Eldorado"

"Eldorado," the series finale of the wonderful Boardwalk Empire was penned by creator Terence Winter and executive producer and Winter's right hand Howard Korder. The fantastic Tim Van Patten fittingly directed the last episode.

Old Man Duggan: With no benefit of the opening credits to which we have all become accustomed, we open on Nucky--stripped down, both figuratively and literally--wading into the ocean and swimming against the tide. The tide, of course, brought him his fortune. The oceanfront brought people and their money to Atlantic City, and to its shores came the booze to keep America drunk through the Prohibition. Obviously, the tide also represents the force of Nucky's past--his actions, their consequences--and as he later relates to Eli, he is unable to tell how far is far enough to never come back. The weight of a lifetime's worth of actions in pursuit of wealth and power cannot be counterbalanced. A quiet shot starting with the symbol of his material empire--clothing, shoes, cigarette case, lighter, and iconic hat from the credits, all clearly a nod to what we didn't get to start the episode--in the sand, stripped from his body just as his empire had just been wrested from his grip, and the man adrift attempts to head against the grand force of the ocean. Loaded, powerful opening shot, complete with underlying music that strangely made me think of the introductory measures of the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme, until it took its minor turn.

Wordy Ginters: Buscemi swimming naked against the tide. A nimble remix of the traditional opening credits, and a pretty apt coda for the series in general. Plus, Buscemi shirtless. Love it when Winter throws a bone to the ladies.

OMD: After Nucky's insistence that he could be of use to Commodore Kaestner, his palpable disgust at the Commodore's delight in having young girls recite Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Secrets of the Sea" to him. "Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me / As I gaze upon the sea! / All the old romantic legends, / All my dream, come back to me." After some cursory re-education on the subject of Longfellow, his first wife died after a miscarriage when he was just 28 years old, and it came while they were travelling abroad in a year-long voyage through Europe all for the purpose of furthering his career, so there are cursory similarities between the two men. While I cannot speak with certainty, I do not know that Longfellow procured underage tail for Josiah Quincy III, the man who brought Longfellow to Harvard.

WG: Don't fret, historians and English scholars alike have wrestled with the dark rumors of Longfellow's role in 19th century sex trafficking for decades. The theory that dactylic hexameter is the metre of the sexually deviant becomes more accepted each day. Even here in stodgy old Nebraska.

OMD: Definitely perv meter.

Margaret turning stock-manipulating mastermind, outwitting and playing Kennedy in the process, was beautiful. She even managed to rebuff his advances while securing him as a client. Cagey.

WG: Winter didn't spend much time constructing the female characters on the show, but he rebounded nicely with the way he wrapped up Margaret's thread. I especially loved the line she stuck on Kennedy, "Imagine all that you want in life and then picture yourself in a dress." Rumor has it that Winter and Scorcese are developing a prequel to The Wolf of Wall Street based on Margaret's ability to get filthy rich on morally questionable German stock positions during WWII. Jonah Hill co-stars as a Young Sergeant Schultz.

OMD: While I'd absolutely pay hard-earned cash to see that, my real desire is still to see Nelson and Eli hold down the fort in Cicero during the seven years we missed. I'd also like to state that I really wish I had the time to make that Wolf o' Wall Street artwork happen, but that would take me forever.

The last time we see Mabel, she is unable to tell Nucky that he doesn't disappoint her immediately after having a miscarriage.

WG: Kind of a bad day for Nucky, wasn't it? Punched Father? Check. Father points shotgun at his head? Check. Wife has miscarriage? Check. Fired from job? Check. Asked to aid and abet pedophile in return for career advancement? Check. Flat tire? Check. Forgot to pay cable bill and service disconnected? Check. With the broad strokes on Nucky's backstory finally all filled in, is it enough to make Nucky a sympathetic character? I don't know.

OMD: Good question. I think he clearly wants to repent but doesn't have the mechanism by which to make that happen. As he eventually finds out in a very hard and final way, money is not the answer to every question, though it's the best answer he knows.

Capone's scene with his son does a nice job of re-humanizing him. It's been a long time, and Stephen Graham has been relegated to playing the brazen, larger-than-life caricature of Capone for the past couple seasons, but there has always been a striking dichotomous nature to Capone on the series, and with his contemplative last shot in the back of the car before he puts on his game face, it's nice to see Winter, Korder, and Van Patten bringing this part of Capone back to the fore.

WG: Loved it. These types of pro moves are why I loved the show so much. How tricky would it be to write a show based on these larger than life historical figures? The mobster genre has been done to death. Boardwalk Empire was able to bring a fresh angle to the genre by having the balls to meander a little, and show these criminal icons as human from time to time. Sure, they were badasses, and brash, and cartoonish many times too, but taken all together it made for a sweet little nut roll. Jesus, Capone on the courthouse steps aping John Barrymore? Beautiful.

OMD: Weird note that only I would care about: as Margaret is walking into the open apartment in the Eldorado (its name having obvious significance, of course), the radio broadcast is talking about the market roller coaster ride and then breaks into talking about Jim Weaver and the Yankees having beaten the Philadelphia A's 3 - 2. Weaver faced the A's once in a Yankees uniform and the Yankees lost 16 - 4.

WG: Christ, what a couple of degenerates. I immediately paused the show and spent 15 minutes on baseball-reference searching for said game. I was kind of bummed I didn't find one that matched that score from 1931. I wonder what the significance was? You think someone on the production team was related to Jim Weaver or something? You notice that Yankee line-up in 1931? Ruth (+218 OPS with a .495 OBP). Gehrig. Chapman. And they finished 13.5 games back in 2nd place. To think our beloved Kansas City Royals will soon be taking their rightful place alongside past World Series champions, a notch above has been teams like the '31 Yankees, seems just.

OMD: I sure fucking hope that happens. I'm concerned now. Zero wiggle room for the Royals (who were responsible for the delay in this post, of course).

The framing in the opening of that scene was nice. Nucky started on the opposite side of the divided floor, a gray area if you will. He steps across the line on the floor and to the checkered floor, presumably a world that's more black-and-white. Coming over to Margaret's world, meaning to leave his old life behind, they dance, but they're ripped from the momentary fantasy by a happy couple looking at the suite. Their past is obviously too complex to leave behind. He's left to look at the ground, the other world into which he is trying to make the transition, and cannot help but feel out of place. Their silence speaks volumes.

WG: Nice catch. I'm convinced repeated viewings will be rewarded, especially for things like this. Fundamentals guaranteed to make film buffs weak in the groin.

OMD: I liked that there was just enough vagueness surrounding who they were killing to lead one to believe that maybe Nucky was going to get offed. A sly misdirect from Van Patten with the shot over the shoulder of two men wearing hats, seemingly walking together. Then he meets The Future. Into the darkness he heads, and inside he finds the television, the device that would change the world forever, highlighting an amusing reflexivity in that his story is being told on a device that shows him that he's a misplaced relic an antique ready to be left in the past.

WG: Probably my favorite scene of the season.

OMD: Nucky's father puts the shotgun to Nucky's head in their kerfuffle. The past that he's trying to leave behind, of course, will not let that happen.

It's interesting that Nucky, in his quest to break good, goes farther than he ever had as a kid in swimming against the tide. The power of the life he yearned for was always greater than his will to do good. The goodbye between Nucky and Eli is bittersweet. Of course, Nucky doesn't know why this is actually their farewell. Both men are torn down, but at least Eli, whose actions, at least of late, were borne out of necessity, may have a shot at a future and a fresh shave. Brother speeders / Let's Rehearse / All together / "Good morning Nurse!" / Burma Shave.

WG: Ahem. I think I called my shot by predicting Eli would shave in our last recap.

OMD: Indeed you did.

Narcisse? Done.

WG: And a pretty spectacular death scene by Jeffrey Wright. That was gratifying. The extended ongoing sermon/rhetoric he was spinning prior to his demise fit just as nicely as the kids reciting Longfellow for the Commodore.

OMD: Nucky's visit to Gillian in the nut house is loaded with double-meanings and subtext. His insistence that "the past is past" shows that he still doesn't know that he can't outrun his. When she gets up after he tries in his own way to get her to absolve him for misdeeds for which absolution are not possible, the true horror of what she's undergone is obvious. Thankfully we don't get to see the butchery up close. Jesus, Dr. Cotton was a fucking lunatic. He should've been in the loony bin himself.

WG: That was a powerful scene for me. Jesus. So rare for Nucky to show emotion. And he should have. If he wouldn't have steered Gillian to the Commodore, maybe she wouldn't have been so looney tunes. Gillian was just as dangerous as the gangsters, maybe even more so. Does she ever get out? Doubtful.

OMD: She's surely missing the bulk of her innards if she does make it out. I think it would take a fire to spring her. It wouldn't be a release on account of her being a good girl.

Nucky gets into his old quarters at the club, sees the postcard young Mabel sent him, and gets another call requesting his presence at the Ritz. The past is going nowhere.

"Mrs. Thompson said you want to be good. But you don't know how." That's the key to this whole show, isn't it? As he leaves Gillian on the boardwalk to answer the Commodore's call, a call to relieve him of his duties, only really to tear him down and have him do his bidding and cater to his every depraved whim. To get the Sheriff gig, he has to deliver Gillian, and in delivering her, he promises to take care of her. A loathsome act. Vile. Wretched in his own eyes, yet in the pursuit of power and wealth, he swallows that bitter pill.

WG: Absolutely the foundation the show was built on. He was willing to debase himself and others for wealth and power. And he never stopped. Of course he had to die in the end.

OMD: Back in the present, Nucky sees Neptune on the billboard atop the boardwalk, and then Princeton college boys--serving both as symbols of the privilege he never had and the surrogate son that he murdered in cold blood--confront him and one begins reciting Robert Service's poem "The Spell of the Yukon." "I wanted the gold, and I sought it; / I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. / Was it famine or scurvy--I fought it. / I wanted the gold, and I got it-- / Came out with a fortune last fall,-- / Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, / And somehow the gold isn't all." Setting aside the extreme improbability of this happening in the real world, the poem is clearly on the nose.

WG: And I lapped it up nonetheless.

OMD: Same here.

Back to the past, he weighs his options. Present, Tommy reveals himself. Past, he assures Gillian he'll look after her. Present, he pays for his misdeeds. IRS agents nab Tommy after the damage is done. Young Nucky grabs the coin in the water. His symbolic fate was sealed from jump street.

WG: Loved that final shot. Young Nucky floating innocently in the sea, snatching the coin. Some Cormac McCarthy type shit going on there. The simple act of playing footsie with greed sets in motion all kinds of horrible dominoes we can barely comprehend. Also nice homage to Nirvana's Nevermind album cover.

OMD: Thankfully no baby dick.

It feels like there's a lot still to talk about. I think it makes sense (to me at least) to flip the controls over to you here. What are your overall feelings about this all coming to an end?

WG: For me, Boardwalk Empire is in a trinity of all-time great serial dramas along with The Wire and Deadwood. It didn't have the breathless mayhem and corkscrew plot action of Breaking Bad. It's not as sexy as Mad Men. Not as balls out fun as The Sopranos.

OMD: I don't know where I'd put it. I'd say the artistry is on a level that I don't know another show has ever reached. I'd still defer to someone championing The Wire or Deadwood. I say without hesitation that I prefer it to any of the others mentioned, though I'd certainly have to add a handful of hour-longs to the mix, namely Justified, Terriers, Carnivale, Friday Night Lights and Veronica Mars, not to mention shows currently in production that have to be considered as potential contenders for such categorization like Broadchurch, Hannibal, Masters of Sex, and True Detective. Yes, I know I didn't list Game of Thrones, anyone lobbying for its inclusion in this list can start their own fucking blog.

WG: I don't think there has been a more cinematic show on television. Beautiful to look at. Lots of critics bag on Boardwalk for the multitude of threads and plots that moved too slow. To them I say: Bah. I hope there is always room for series that take their time. That allow productions to have a vision and follow it through, if nothing else for the entertainment derived from watching badass craftsmen do what they do.

OMD: I've seen every episode of the last three seasons at least twice, many of them more than that. The painstaking attention to detail, the incredible production design, the symbolism that runs rampant through each episode, hell, the fucking shot framing, all of it sets the show apart. I think nearly all of the criticism comes from people who either didn't find Nucky compelling enough or worse from people who were viewing each episode as its own thing, which a show like Boardwalk Empire was never going to be able to withstand as it is so serialized as to render such criticism pointless.

WG: I'll definitely be watching the series again. I think it's hard to grasp the towering scale and scope of what Winter created, especially fresh off a satisfying final episode that managed to finish some telegraphed final touches without being too hokey. Boardwalk Empire, it was good to know ye. I'll be seeing you again.

OMD: Indeed. We'll miss you, Nucky, Nelson, Margaret, Eli, Chalky, et al, but we'll probably rewatch you over and over.

Wordy Old Men on Boardwalk Empire: Season Five, Episode One "Golden Days for Boys and Girls"

Terence Winter jumps past the boring last half of the 1920s straight to 1931. Nucky is trying to set himself up to be a legitimate business man when Prohibition is inevitably repealed. He is in Havana meeting trying to secure a distribution deal with Bacardi. Chalky breaks out from a prison work detail. Margaret bears witness to her boss's suicide. Luciano makes his move on Masseria.

Old Man Duggan: The first of eight episodes is brought to us by scribe Howard Korder and the always wonderful Tim Van Patten of White Shadow fame. This is the 19th episode that Korder has had a hand in writing. Van Patten has been at the helm for 17 episodes now, and as usual it's a visually compelling episode from the opening sequence. We open underwater with boys swimming for change being ceremoniously thrown from the pier by the Commodore while Elenore Thompson reads a poem extolling the virtues of honesty. Of course Nucky the Younger comes up coinless, as continues through the episode, showing the paradoxical nature of trying to live one's life striving to always be honest.

It starts in Atlantic City of 1884, and then we join Nucky in the "present day" Havana 1931. The Depression has hit. Hoover's presidency is about to wheeze its last dying breath and with it will go the asinine foray into Prohibition that the Temperance Movement foisted upon America. Nucky brings fictional Senator (unless my Google searching skills fail me) Wendell Lloyd to Cuba to help him broker an exclusive distribution deal with Bacardi.

Wordy Ginters: Fate threw everything at the Bacardi family.

OMD: Nucky and Lloyd talk about a report from Wilkerson laying out the failure of the Volstead Act. The federal judge presiding over Capone's tax evasion case was James Wilkerson. I can't imagine it's the Wilkerson mentioned in conversation, but Wilkerson took the seat vacated by Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

WG: The image of hard-ass Landis swatting flies in Eight Men Out is forever seared in my brain.

OMD: "Wendell, if America's not about starting over, where's the hope for any of us?" Nucky's plea, though tongue-in-cheek contextually, gets to the heart of what this episode and presumably this season will likely be about, especially given the flashbacks showing the end of the innocence.

WG: Bromides about the land of opportunity are built on second chances, hard work, and honesty. The grimy flip side, if you want to be a well-heeled swell, is that it also requires some ruthlessness, luck, and that your character can shift from straight-and-narrow to bent, angled, and winding.

OMD: Chalky White's wearing stripes. I have to admit, this isn't where I figured he would be to start the season. His scowl is right where I thought it'd be, though. It would appear as though Nucky is somewhere in eastern Maryland, and Nucky and his new friend--the man who doesn't understand "how they fit a body's voice inside that little box"--are off to Thurmont, which lies smack dab between Hagerstown and Taneytown, to split money in a house.

WG: I'm curious to see how Chalky's tracks from the end of Season Four to the first episode of Season Five get filled in. If memory serves, Harrow's botched attempt at making Narcisse un-alive ended up in Chalky's daughter's accidental un-aliveness. Nuck ultimately was on Chalky's side, despite the Masseria/Luciano/Narcisse heroin three-way power play. Any chance Chalky is taking on a different identity to protect himself? Considering Narcisse's connections, the safest place for Chalky may have been a Maryland chain gang.

OMD: You are correct on Chalky's daughter falling before Chalky's eyes. That shot of him sitting on the porch by himself in Havre de Grace and his reaction to the shooting itself certainly implied that he believed he was on his own, in large part because he thought Nucky didn't have his back anymore. I would guess he's in the clink on account of his own misdeeds, after all it seems that making tracks to Havre de Grace is as good as removing yourself from the game. Anything's possible though.

The Front Page, the movie that Mr. Bennett saw before offing himself in front of Margaret and the rest of the office was the first film adaptation of the play that was later turned into His Girl Friday. The More You Know. I loved the bizarre meeting with Mr. Conors. The Crash is not treating him well.

WG: You can't have a period piece about the Depression without some hotshot broker leaping out a window or otherwise making himself un-alive. The turtle swam away. I was mildly surprised the writers didn't have him commit the deed via machete to head. How many poor bastards in this series have been felled by way of edged weapon to the skull?

His Girl Friday. One of my all-time faves. The Coen bros' attempts at aping that rapid-fire dialogue in The Hudsucker Proxy were noble but ultimately flaccid. Top movies of 1931? Frankenstein. Dracula. The Public Enemy. One thing Boardwalk Empire doesn't get across is how some of these guys were already celebrities by 1931. The Public Enemy was written by a couple of former Capone gunsels who witnessed some of that hot mob action first hand.

OMD: Good point on the celebrity, though there's time in this season for that to be incorporated.

Your old pal, Ian Hart of Luck, has been getting some work. First The Bridge and now as Nucky's bastard of a dad.

WG: Goddammit that show was going to be so good. RIP Dennis Farina.

*both pour one out*

OMD: Speaking of old friends, Jim Neary is the kid Nucky fights with. For those not looking shit up on the internet, Jim Neary was the alderman who double-crossed Nucky and succeeded him as County Treasurer only to get offed by Jimmy and Harrow. Clearly he was a pissant through and through.

WG: Beautiful symmetry there. I dug the flashback scenes. If previews of upcoming episodes are to be trusted, and they most surely can't, the flashbacks may continue. Two things I liked about those scenes: the subtle difference in the way they were shot. They had a marginally different lighting or camera effect to let you know we were back in the 19th Century, but it was a very delicate touch. I also liked how young Nuck scenes typically showed him physically below the swells. Whether he was looking up from the ocean shallows to the dock begging for coins, or literally on the beach below the Commodore's porch, it was a nice visual way to hammer home his early station in life and his ambitions. "You are a fisherman's son, and you are trying to catch what?"

OMD: As always, Van Patten bringing power dynamics into shot framing. I listened to Winter on the Nerdist Writers Panel podcast, and it sure sounds like the flashbacks will persist at least for a while. They seem interested in showing from whence Nucky came. Given the apparent thrust of the season, it makes sense.

Running into Meyer Lansky in Havana with the "wife" is obviously significant. There are no coincidences in the carefully crafted world of Boardwalk Empire, and one could logically conclude that the attack on Nucky was Lansky's doing. Given Don Maxime Ronis's interest in Nucky's bodyguard, might they be in cahoots?

WG: No doubt they are cahooting. Conspiring. Gallivanting unwholesomely. Nucky stumbling over the beard who played Lansky's "wife" at the end of the episode nails it down.

OMD: While Lansky's trying to take out Nucky, Luciano and Siegel take out Joe Masseria. For those needing a briefing on history, this is the height of the fifteen month Castellammarese War between Joe Masseria's faction and Salvatore Maranzano's. Maranzano is really doing the bidding of Sicilian capo Don Vito Ferro, who wanted to take control of the American Mafia. Beneath it all, though, Luciano and the Young Turks are wanting to forcibly change the guard and ouster the Mustache Petes who were too beholden to tradition. With that going on in New York, it isn't hard to see why Luciano and Lansky might want to topple Nucky as well, though I'd hardly say that Nucky is anything other than forward-thinking, one of their primary issues with the old guard.

WG: You had me at Moustache Petes. The fact that Nucky isn't from Sicily or Italy is probably enough to put him on the wrong side of the fence.

OMD: Some of the friction between the Mustache Petes and the Young Turks apparently came from the Mustache Petes not being willing to work with non-Italians/-Sicilians. Mustache Petes.

The blood brothers scene wouldn't happen in the Age of AIDS, would it?

WG: How many of those guys ended up with tetanus or gangrene? 90% ? I instinctively reached for a bottle of hand sanitizer.

OMD: Capone ultimately died from complications from syphilis, didn't he? The distant bongos in the hit scene really struck a Touch of Evil chord. I was hoping that we'd get a single tracking shot from when Arquimedes dropped them off to the ear getting lopped off. I will gladly point out that this is twice that a machete has been implemented by Terence Winter & Co.

WG: Gotta be more than twice. The ear souvenir was badass. Dude took care of that threat without so much as wrinkling his suit.

OMD: "Where's the sense in looking back? It never does any good." "'Be honest and true, boys.'" Feels like this exchange between Sally and Nucky is significant, doesn't it?

WG: It most certainly does. Somehow, they are sideways. Or perhaps Sally is wired, straight through her ample bosom, to be comfortable with means and ends.

Wordy Old Men on Boardwalk Empire: Season Four, Episode Twelve "Farewell Daddy Blues"

This season comes to a conclusion with, well, not a bang, per se. Narcisse and Chalky meet. One should fall. Neither do, yet both do. Nucky leaves Eli to deal with Knoxiver on his own, and boy, does he. Having ensured that Tommy grows up a Sagorsky, Harrow gets off the train at the Elysian Fields.

Franz Nadorp's Goethe's Ankunft im Elysium

Old Man Duggan: I really don't know where to start on this one. It's odd having so few bodies dropping and so little ultimate resolution from a season finale of Boardwalk Empire. We open on a storm in the distance, and then a field at night. The storm has its obvious symbolic resonance, but the importance of the spot in the field over which the camera hovers is not clear until about fifteen minutes later when Jimmy Darmody's actual body is finally unearthed. With one exhumation, Gillian's life is effectively over. I think I speak for all of us when I say, thank fucking Christ.

Wordy Ginters: A Boardwalk Empire season with the Boardwalkiest kind of finale imaginable. I too was at full stature during the opening scenes. Thunder rumbles. Restless wheat (nice foreshadowing). Bell Buoys tolling. Unfortunately, the can of whoop ass that was clearly hinted at was only punctured, not completely opened.

OMD: Yeah, after last season's EXPLOSIVE finale, this one wasn't even remotely as big, though they did manage to keep Narcisse in the fold.

Now, of course, this does mean that there could well be an investigation into Jimmy's death now, but I doubt Nucky cuts the deal with Harrow unless he was sure that Jimmy's murder couldn't be pinned on him. Let's hope this officially puts Jimmy's death and its fallout in the rearview.

WG: Good riddance, Michael Pitt. For fuck's sake, let's make it permanent this time. I'll be surprised if the ghost of Darmody is able to get a mention in edgewise next season.

OMD: No shit. Michael Pitt was actually one of the hurdles I needed to jump over to fully embrace the show. He definitely lacked the gravitas of his fellow actors, Paz de la Huerta excluded, in the cast. I'm ready to move on.

Most of the conflict this season came from the corners of Chalky White and Dr. Valentin Narcisse, so it makes sense to go there next, I guess. Chalky sneaks back into town under the blanket of night, sets Nucky on the task of taking care of Narcisse, and meets with Narcisse at the Onyx Club--Havre de Grace posse in tow--where Maybelle ends up catching a bullet meant for Narcisse. On the Narcisse side of the things, at the meet he produces Maybelle in exchange for information on Daughter Maitland's whereabouts only to have Maybelle display the worst timing ever and step in the path of the bullet from Harrow's rifle, ensuring that each one loses a daughter on account of their feud. Hoover flips Narcisse, turning him into an informant on all matters Marcus Garvey; Chalky is left sitting on Oscar Boneau's porch, Maybelle dead, family--for all intents and purposes--lost, much worse off than when the season started. It would appear as though each man is worse off than when the season started. I guess there's a lesson somewhere in there about hubris and fidelity, especially since both men were often in the wrong this season--even within the skewed morality of this show. Both men got too wrapped up in their pride and vanity, and both came out at the end of this season stripped of much of their metaphorical virility. I suppose we'll find out Chalky is actually content to just have his bankroll in one pocket and his pistol in the other next season. We'll likely find out just how Narcisse likes answering to a master, too.

WG: Unconventional to have both Chalky and Narcisse survive, both wounded, both reduced, both nearly broken. It's almost as if the writers set out to present the perfect hell for each character: Narcisse in service to the man, dropping dimes on a personal hero; and Chalky bereft of his daughter, his business, and stuck on the porch back in Havre de Grace with Scrapper and the country cousins.

OMD: Definitely. I really have no idea what trajectory these two characters will be on next season. They've definitely both been effectively stripped of their independence.

I'd posit that the two strongest scenes of the episode revolved around Eli, understandably so given the character's internal conflict these past few episodes. In the first, Eli comes out to the Albatross to pick up Nucky for the meeting that will never happen, and the tension between the brothers hits a fever pitch with Nucky holding all the cards, or at least holding the gun to Eli's head. When Nucky seethed, "It's what you deserve," I thought for sure Eli was a goner. Bravo, Winter, Korder, and Van Patten. The resolution of that scene was fucking spectacular. "Nothing will fill that hole you got inside. Don't you know that yet?" For a second straight week, Eli shows that he understands Nucky better than Nucky does himself. In the second, Eli gets to--as Nucky put it--drown in his mess. I love that the saw-playing--much like the machete for the coconuts earlier in the season--something so innocent, was sullied so effectively with an act of violence. That, mon frere, was a knock-down, drag-out fight if ever there were one, the second epic one this season. Eli's rage worked in his favor this time, that's for sure. Once again, Shea Whigham is outstanding, as he has been all season. In a banner year of award-worthy performances on Boardwalk Empire, it really seems like Whigham's performance stands above them all.

WG: He was/is outstanding. As was Jeffy Wright. And Mike K. And Huston. Van Alden, of course. The dude who played Knoxiver [Brian Geraghty] imbued him with a glee club ruthlessness that was perfect. The show is fucking quality. I'd love to see what Milch would do with those guys and this story. The scene at the Albatross was great. Eli staring Nucky in the eyes, willing/daring/begging him to pull the trigger was intense. I wish the episode could have wrung more of that taut fucking drama out of other scenes. Definitely a good battle between an unhinged Knoxiver and a emotionally-amped Eli. The saw bit was great. As were the other accoutrements of family life that got summoned into deadly action. Vases. Decorations. Windows. A neck tie. Shades of Season Two, Gimcrack & Bunkum. You'll recall in that episode, Nucky made Eli kiss his shoes and beg for forgiveness. Shortly thereafter, Eli ended up beating a dude to death in his garage with a wrench. No one can push your buttons like family.

OMD: Holy hell, that vase. The shudder of Knoxiver's feet as Eli slammed the vase into his head one last time was huge. While we are on the subject of Eli, how about that shot of him waiting under the El for Capone's car only to have Van Alden driving? The bewilderment. The borderline incredulity. The hesitancy that gives way to resignation. I bet they'll have some catching up to do. That definitely adds a nice wrinkle to goings-on in Chicago, now that Torrio has handed the reins over to Al.

WG: Maybe a silver-lining to the tepid hand-job this finale proved to be is the promise of sexy action next season. Van Alden and Eli catching up on things is definitely one of them. Hoover interacting with Narcisse is another.

OMD: More so than in season's past, this finale definitely leaves a lot of strings left untied, ready to be taken into next season. The lack of resolution this season certainly could bode well for next season, as the stakes should be higher next year what with all this pent-up anger carrying over for so many characters.

Are those for us? We're going to need them.

The saddest part of the episode, obviously, was Harrow's demise. Clearly part of him felt like he was saying goodbye to Julia and Tommy at the train station, though that wasn't necessarily what he wanted. If only Harrow was still the ice-cold killing machine that he was before he finally recovered his humanity this season. Sure, within the constructs of this show there wasn't anywhere for his character to go at this point--with Tommy securely in a stable home and too many corpses in his past from which to possibly escape--but clearly we were all rooting for the image that he saw as he walked up the path to the house--his family, his life all put back into place. At least at the time of his death, he had pieced a life back together for himself. It's too bad soldiers such as himself don't get to simply walk away from the war.

WG: A cruel twist to make the new family man and morally re-born former assassin Harrow accidentally plug an innocent woman and fail his last job. Absolutely beautiful death scene though, from the moment he was riding the train, to the imagined homecoming, to the dirt nap by the sea. Harrow was easily one of my favorite characters. Let's tip a glass to the half-mask.

OMD: That was the bitch of it all, wasn't it? The chasm opened up in my heart is the size of the Grand Canyon. I'll miss you, old friend. You got the death scene chock-full of poesy that your tortured soul deserved. Oddly enough, it was hard for me to separate the scene with all its poignancy from the Steven Wright short film One Soldier, in which Wright's character heads to the afterlife in a train after being put to death.

It certainly appears as though Nucky isn't getting to head to Tampa after all, what with Sally Wheet drinking by herself while (I believe) we're to understand that Eli's family is heading out to the Albatross for the time being. Funnily enough, it certainly appears as though Nucky is, in fact, taking Eli's family from him, though at least mostly out of obligation.

I feel like I only scratched the surface. Any thoughts?

WG: Three thoughts. One, Truth is what those in power wish it to be. Two, why is Mickey still upright? Three, how great would Margaret and Rothstein be on House Hunters?

OMD: Three corresponding thoughts. Word. So Nucky can rap him with Eddie's cane again. Outstanding.


One Soldier by mrCham

Wordy Old Men on Boardwalk Empire: Season Four, Episode One "New York Sour"

Just as we did for Season Three of Boardwalk Empire and for every episode of Downton Abbey, Wordy Ginters and I bounce words back and forth whilst trying to wade through what happened. This week finds the colorful cast of characters (with a couple significant exceptions) getting established in largely new environs. 

New York Sour
Two ounces bourbon, 1 ounce fresh lemon juice, 1 ounce simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice, cover, and shake until outside of shaker is frosty. Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh ice. Pour 1/2 ounce red wine (Shiraz or Malbec) over the back of a spoon held just above the drink's surface so wine floats on top.

Salami

Wordy Ginters: I thought it was a good omen that Timmie Van Patten--A.K.A. Salami from The White Shadow--directed the Season Four opener. If I recall, he’s been at the helm for many of the series high points. Unlike previous seasons, this run opens at a gallop. Not much hand-holding for those new to the show, or like me, a bit foggy about how it all ended last year. Terence Winter is fucking fearless about whacking primary characters. Darmody. The Commodore. Manny Horvitz. That hapless Prohibition Agent who loosed his mortal coil via Sigrid and Van Alden’s meat tenderizer/suffocation combo. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to overcome the loss of Gyp. Dude burned like fire on the screen. He may have been sadistic, sexually deviant, a shameless ham, and obvious as all get out, but sparks were present nonetheless. The challenge for Boardwalk Empire is to keep cranking out compelling characters. I’m not sure I saw any new faves tonight.

Old Man Duggan: Yeah, I spent most of the episode alternating between being distracted trying to figure out who the fuck Harrow was offing and trying to figure out which of these new characters was going to factor in heavily to the goings-on this season. I mean maybe we'll get a big story line about the restaurant owner in Warsaw, IN, telling passersby about that spectacular contiguous brick wall, but Dickie The Cuckold sure as hell isn't factoring into much going forward. I'll be curious to see what Ron Livingston's character is really doing in Atlantic City, as I'd be surprised if he was really a Piggly Wiggly advance man, and he can't just be a love interest for junkie Gillian Darmody. As for TVP, he's directed a slew of eps, including "To the Lost" in 2012, for which he won an Emmy. He's been at the helm for each season finale and the last three season premieres. He also went to high school with Jerry Seinfeld and graduated in the same class as Brian Setzer and Brian Baldinger.

WG: I come back to this again and again, like Ned Yost and the bunting, but Jesus H. Christ, this show is beautiful to watch. The opening scene at the Tippecanoe? With the snow wafting down. It was like getting beamed inside a beautiful snow globe circa 1924. The radio station buzzing in the background. And did you notice the barkeep? If I’m not mistaken, that was the same dude from No Country For Old Men who Javier Bardem fucked with at the little gas station? Javier flipped the coin to determine whether or not he’d live or die? He’s playing the same kind of country rube here. I’m looking forward to other NCFOM alumni appearances. Speaking of which, where the hell is Margaret/Kelly MacDonald?

OMD: Good catch on the counter man. That is none other than Gene Jones reprising his role as rube. Perhaps it was Winter & Co.'s wink at the audience, seeing as though I expect any random person to get killed horrifically after Gyp's reign of terror. The scene was great, and you knew someone was going to get got. I'm still not sure why, largely because I can't remember if these guys were some unfinished business that Harrow was taking care of or if we'll find out who they were later. As for the possibly former Mrs. Thompson, your guess is as good as mine as to where she's gone off to, but I'm guessing she took a bunch of Owen's keepsakes with her.

WG: You make heads or tails of Harrow’s trail of death? Obvious that Rothstein, Masseria, and Nucky have reached a tentative détente. Lansky and Luciano are split. Nucky can go to Broadway, Harlem, Macy’s, and eat at the Russian Tea Room. Rothstein can enjoy the beach at Atlantic City (as if). I couldn’t quite piece together what Harrow was up to. Settling scores? Working for somebody?

OMD: None whatsoever. He must be settling scores, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why or for whom. I get the sense he's a lone gunman at this point, but I suppose he could surprise. Perhaps it was a familial score he was evening if a few years after the fact. The Harrow family homestead could have been seized in a shady way. As for the armistice, I might be wrong, but I think the tension with Masseria will cool to a simmer for a bit. If I'm not mistaken, Masseria is relatively quiet from now (the beginning of 1924) until 1928, but I could be oversimplifying things in that assumption.

WG: Capone with a little comic relief. And this is where things went a bit sour for me. You knew the outrage at having his name spelled wrong (fot-whosis? I ain’t nobodies fototis) would inevitably lead to bulldogging a pale and trembling reporter in some cramped office. The wrestling and the horseplay with his brothers. Beating one of them with his size 4.5 wingtip. Those damn Italians are a gregarious and hot blooded bunch, ain’t they? I get it. Capone is straining under Torrio’s leash, and hungers for more power and recognition. If only this aspect of the story telling matched the heights of the cinematography.

OMD: "New York Sour," right? I worry a bit about the Brothers Capone. I like Capone, but I want the balance between his animalistic side and the family man. I worry that the brothers stuff won't play as well.

Kinkmaster General

WG: Boardwalk Empire does kink better than True Blood. They’ve apparently replaced the erotic asphyxiation fetish with the bi-racial/cuckold/voyeur trifecta. I was hoping Purnsley was going to play out that scene with the assured sexual sophistication of David Bowie or Charles Kuralt. But you can’t fuck with Purnsley. He ain’t all that far removed from jail. I don’t know what I liked better, that she riffed on John Travolta with the “Don’t touch my hair” line, or that she was able to snare Purnsley by scrawling a crude simulacra of coitus on a napkin. She might was well have written “I'm batshit crazy” on that thing.

OMD: All I'm hoping for is that Dunn gets to finish what he started and gets to "swirl that cock" per her command. Her sketching skills were not quite where Jackie Treehorn's were, but you've got to admit there's a charm to it all. I, for one, am glad Dunn poked holes in that racist cuckold. Hell, he wasn't even very good at sitting back an laying waste to his junk. Where's the feverish jerking there, Dickie? I will say that I loved Chalky giving Dunn the business while he was disposing of Dickie's corpse. "Sweetback, Sweetback, the hell you leave the door open for? Letting all the cold in." Eli getting in on it telling him not to slam the door.

WG: Speaking of cameos, good to see Herc from The Wire joining Capone’s team.

OMD: Let's just hope his lack of attentiveness doesn't fuck over Randy a second time.

WG: Did you catch the names of Eli’s son’s college buddies: Flitch. Dobby. Tip. Henry, A.K.A. Bucket. Non-smokers all. What the hell is going on over there at Temple?

OMD: Yeah, a veritable shitshow of college boys with douchey nicknames. Temple is clearly a collegiate hellscape if we're to judge it by its dearth of shitty monikers and fetid fight song. Also, am I crazy, or did they re-cast Willie? I do not remember Eli's eldest looking like that at all.

WG: More cameos, Ron Livingston from Office Space and Swingers. He could use a knowledgeable companion. Gillian has him dead or addicted to bath salts inside of 5 episodes.

OMD: Let's hope he doesn't go the same way that the Jimmy surrogate went last season. Stay away from the bathtub, Ron. Stay away.

WG: I happened to catch a few old episodes in the run up to the new season. I was struck by how much I like this show. The meticulous attention to detail. Character development over plot. Breathing life into infamous history. Narrative that moves a notch slow, not pimping the audience on false starts or cliff hangers. That being said, there is an ingredient missing. Something about tonight’s episode seemed lacking. The end of Season Three was electric. The confrontation with Gyp and getting sideways with the New York mob. Capone riding to the rescue. The delicate balance between Nucky, Chalky and Capone’s racist gunsels. I’m conditioned to be a little disappointed to have to begin that slow build up again.

OMD: This episode definitely spent a lot of time setting the stage, and Jeffrey Wright didn't even make an appearance. I thought for sure that Eddie Cantor's friend was going to be Nucky's distraction this season, but that ain't happening. Talk about misplaying a hand. There were a lot of bodies that hit the ground in this episode, but with the exception of Warren Knox's play at the Borst farm house none of it was of the surprising variety. I guess we'll see what Knox has planned next week, at least in part, judging by the scenes for next week. We did get a glimpse of some of Nucky's bigger plans, as it looks like he's going to try to make a play in Florida, if we're to take the post card and maps in the folder to mean something (a safe bet given their penchant for wasting no moments). I think some of the let-down might be coming from the fact that we have no damn idea what Harrow was doing clipping guys across the Midwest. The two guys at the Tippecanoe were surely dickbags, but what the hell did that desk jockey do? Regardless, Terence Winter has earned my trust. I'm sure the season will have plenty of payoff.