With The Hour set to make its Series Two premiere on American airwaves Wednesday night on BBC America, now seems as good a time as any to sing its praises. The first series--a swift six hours that will re-air in its entirety on BBC America starting Wednesday at noon ET/11:00 am CT leading up to the 9 ET/8 CT Series Two premiere--is a clinic in taut, suspenseful storytelling in the realm of period drama.
Perhaps the best and certainly the laziest way for me to explain what is so great about The Hour is to tell you that if you were to build a show from the strongest elements of The Newsroom (The Hour had its first series run well before The Newsroom ever started airing) and Mad Men, both of which are extremely flawed to me, and inject an element of intrigue absent from either program, you would end up with Abi Morgan's spectacular program about a fledgling news program in mid-1950s England, running up against the powers that be as they try to hold their lens to a more truthful version of the story that the government wants them to tell in regards to the Suez Crisis. As the news program--led by female producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai), fronted by Hector Madden (Dominic West), and fueled by Freddie Lyon's (Ben Whishaw) drive and insatiable journalistic hunger--works to fight censorship from the very arm of government that airs it, Morgan uses The Hour as a platform by which to also explore gender inequality, espionage, adultery, murder, and government conspiracy against the backdrop of the rapidly changing culture of mid-century England.
In terms of the show's mise-en-scene, the production design and art direction are top notch, and it is beautifully shot. 1950s England is unwaveringly brought to the screen. The fact that the storytelling is compelling could just be gravy if it didn't stand out so well on its own merits.
Basically, get your shit together and set your DVR to record BBC America's rebroadcast of the first season of The Hour, and then record each new episode. You won't regret it.
In the penultimate episode of Season Three, Gyp Rosetti's men storm the Ritz Carlton. Nucky shoots his way out of there, but not before Eddie Kessler takes a bullet. With nowhere else to go, Nucky turns to Chalky for help. Gyp turns Atlantic City upside-down trying to find Nucky, offering $25,000 to any man who brings Thompson to him. Gyp's men take up home at the Artemis Club. Richard Harrow begins to prep Tommy for a departure that Gillian stumbles in upon, leading her to banish him. Harrow begins to ready his arsenal. Capone comes to A.C. thanks to Eli's efforts in Chicago. Nucky and Chalky agree to terms. The powder-keg is primed to blow sky-high.
OMD: More so than any other episode this season, "Two Imposters" flew by. I was actually surprised when the episode ended. The suspense was really amped up here. Nucky was on the run, not knowing who he could trust. There were, what, five times Nucky could have gotten got this week? I was on the edge of my seat for virtually the whole episode.
WG: Much of Season Three has been a brutal tease: a great scene here, a clever line there, an interesting sexual fetish or an unexpected moment of tenderness, but ultimately things just didn't quite add up. This episode brought that promise to fruition. I had the same thought when the credits rolled regarding the time, was it a full 60 minute episode? According to my DVR, it certainly was. It was tight. Like it had been left overnight in the fridge marinating in episode tightner.
OMD: It looks (at least for now) that my supposition that perhaps Nucky tipped off Joe Masseria himself was overstepping his cunning. They could still reveal that Nucky provided some of the backing on Lansky and Luciano's heroin deal, but I'm leaning toward my initial read of the situation being wrong--unless, of course, I'm second-guessing just how subject Nucky is to the sway of jealousy.
WG: I don't know if I'd give up on your initial sussing just yet. The Feds (apparently?) popping Luciano on the rooftop with the sheets blowing in the wind at least leaves the door open to Nucky's involvement. Masseria could have arranged it himself. Means? A corrupt favor called in from the Harding administration? We shall see.
Preserver of innocence
OMD: So fuck Gillian, right? Looks like if anything happens, Harrow will go down swinging--er, shooting. Can Richard really start a family from such prodigious bloodshed as would be unfurled across the Artemis Club if he does, in fact, walk out of there on his own power? I suppose for Tommy's sake, there can be only one. He'll either be resigned to a life of a whore's son, or an existence with a family haphazardly pieced together from remnants of people damaged by the war. For a split second, I worried that the sidearm flashed by Gyp's goon would be discharged in this episode. Thankfully, Harrow will not be departing us in nearly as anticlimactic a way as that. Perhaps more importantly, Gillian's presence on the show wouldn't seem to serve much of a purpose going forward, would it? All I know is that it's about to get all Taxi Driver all up in the Artemis Club. I hope Tommy's innocence can be saved.
WG: If Harrow is starting a militia, I'm in. I want a cot inside the compound. He's got to end up backing Nucky in some form or fashion doesn't he? Gillian might be the one to rub out Gyp. Preview scenes are notorious for setting false expectations, but it appears that eventually she'll end up on the leash holder end of Gyp's Fem Dom erotic asphyxiation fantasies. On the other hand, she's been on a death spiral since Jump Street, with each episode revealing a new repellent low. And her quality in benefactor front men has declined as well, from the Commodore, to Jimmy, to Luciano, to Leander, to Gyp. She's got a career arc like Barry Zito. Don't let that flash of playoff luster fool you, it only gets uglier from here on out.
OMD: I liked the way Nucky handled himself in the penthouse suite in this episode's open. He's a crafty bastard. His skills in self-preservation clearly extend past that of back rooms and the political sphere. I'm thinking I may have sold him short up until now. I'm guessing his foes did as well.
WG: Agreed. Buscemi was excellent. He walked a nice line between running scared and maintaining. Sometimes I have trouble buying him as the heavy. Jesus, he's mixing it up with the legends of the mob world, and seeing him grump his way through dealing with idiotic bit players or mundane love affairs makes him seem dainty by comparison. But not in this episode. What a great scene in the opening when he was grappling through a door with a would-be assassin. Great camera work. Despite being alarmingly on the run in his own town, you never really got the sense that he wasn't in control. He had his dark moment of despair in the canvas-covered truck. And really, what says despair more than canvas-covered trucks? But other than that, he was nails.
OMD: Lucky's dealing with the Mute from Buffalo just go to prove what my grandmother always told me: "Don't trust any Buffalo motherfuckers." It's too bad Lucky's grandmother didn't pound the same advice into his numb skull. It really does seem like there's more the the heroin score than the audience is aware of though, doesn't it?
WG: Is your Grams Anjelica Huston from Buffalo '66? Yeah, the writers have left some room to maneuver with the heroin plot. Leaving it vague makes me think they've created some space to tie up loose ends.
OMD: Anjelica Huston from The Grifters.
Chalky's got beachfront property in addition to his nice family home. He's the 1%. I, for one, hope that the show becomes The Nucky, Purnsley, and Chalky Hour, hijinks will surely ensue. Something is going to have to happen now that Owen is gone. Of course, if Harrow takes out Gillian and even perhaps Gyp, you'd have to think he'd have a place at Nucky's side.
WG: Nucky, Purnsley, and Chalky - the original Rat Pack. What the hell took so long for Nucky to give in on the Babette's redevelopment project? Maybe Sid Bechet will be all up in that piece during Season Four for reals.
OMD: All right, seriously, what is the point of lugging Nucky's desk all the way to the Artemis Club? Nevermind. There is ultimately no point in trying to figure out what crazy-ass shit drives Gyp Rosetti. He probably wants to have sex with a whore on it while getting his balls smashed in each of the top drawers.
WG: Human sexuality is a strange thing. Gyp has already hung dong. Time to bring the scrote and ball-play into the foreground. That desk though. None of those odd details happen just for fun. I'm guessing something crucial is within. Or it could be a ham-handed symbol of Gyp's ham-handed takeover.
OMD: How great was the tension that was ratcheted up while Samuel was operating on Eddie Kessler? The cutting back and forth between that wacko in the yard offering up $25,000 to anyone who will turn over Nucky Thompson and Kessler getting the bullet removed then getting stitched up was first-rate. The quipping between Chalky and Gyp was fucking great, too. It was nice to see Michael K. Williams get his time in the sun, especially since he's already "done cooking."
WG: Very glad to see Chalky get meaningful minutes. Another stellar scene to see Gyp and Chalky square up. How can you not have those two guys together on the screen more often?
OMD: So Winter & Co. dug pretty deep for the title of this episode. Kessler's poetry recitation is of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If--" in which the two imposters are said to be "triumph and disaster" each of which the reader is supposed to treat the same. The promise at the end of the poem after a series of conditions that must be met is that "yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, / And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!" Kessler is a regular old sage, even while knocking on death's door.
The Queen of the Sur
WG: The poem was vaguely familiar. Nice get. I took a couple of semesters of German in college, but that didn't prepare me to decipher what Kessler was moaning over and over on the harried ride from hotel, to hospital, to Chalky's beach house. In real life, Louis "Kessel" was Nucky's main man. Personal protector, valued confidante, shaman, and partner. I hope he makes it.
OMD: I took enough Spanish to be able to understand roughly 35% of what's going on in a telenovela and to be able to order food at a Mexican restaurant while having a decent idea what I'll be getting.
More so than any other episode this season, I was laughing aloud pretty frequently. With the tension as high as it was, there was a lot more cutting of the tension with chuckle-worthy lines. The biggest laugh of the episode came at the end thankfully. A laugh before the war. Shit is about to get extremely fucking real, but there's nothing like Capone descending from a truck after eighteen hours on the road and dropping the line, "And then you and me sit down, and we talk about who dies. Huh?" Fucking priceless.
WG: Awesome closing scene. The way the sea of soldiers parted and that little bulldog came forward with the great line. It should have been cheezy as hell, but it worked. A fist pumper.
OMD: Holy shit, am I excited for this next episode. It certainly looks to be the most explosive episode of Boardwalk Empire yet.
WG: Let's hope it lives up to the promise created in this episode.
In "A Man, A Plan..." Nucky sends Owen to try to off Joe Masseria. Margaret and Owen make plans to run off together. Harrow and Julia Sagorsky get cozier with one another. Nelson Van Alden gets caught selling Sigfrid's homemade aquavit in Capone's territory. Owen is shipped back to Atlantic City in a crate with his throat slit. Margaret is revealed to be with Owen's child.
OMD: First off, I'll apologize for our absence last week. I was out of pocket, as was Wordy. I, for one, had no HBO until Wednesday night and was sure as shit not going to dump this on a weekend in which absolutely no one was on the interwebs.
So I guess I'll start with the obvious, my prediction that Owen was a dead man walking was proven to be on point. Owen was getting too cocksure. Margaret was getting happy and making plans for a future. Clearly all of this was going to get snatched away. These two can't have a happy ending; the only one that might be in the cards would be for Richard Harrow and Julia Sagorsky. Call me Karnak.
WG: Karnak, what's St. Louis like? Nice call. And like a cockroach twinkie, I could see Mickey Doyle surviving against all odds as well.
OMD: If there's one thing that has been established in our time on God's green Earth, it's that St. Louis is as close to Hell as we shall ever find.
The pregnancy angle was obvious. As soon as Margaret told Dr. French Stewart that it was all "nothing [she hadn't] been through before," the bastard son of Owen Slater being firmly set in her womb and his future of growing up without his father was set in stone. I thought for sure that Nucky was actually the one who served up Owen's head on a platter, but the look of surprise on his face when Margaret ran off crying makes me doubt my assumption. I have a feeling that without the audience being privy to any of this, Nucky has gone through Lansky and Luciano parlaying his control of the Old Overholt Distillery into a partnership that Joe Masseria doesn't know he's a part of yet. It is possible that I'm probably giving Nucky too much credit, though, and this presumption requires the belief that Lansky and Luciano are stepping out much further from under Rothstein's umbrella than they may be ready for. Still, Lansky and Luciano had to have known exactly where the attack was coming from and only Eli, Mickey, Nucky, Owen, and Agent Stan Sawicki could have known. Sure, it could have been Mickey, Sawicki, or maybe Eli, but the most calculated move would have been for Nucky himself to feed the information to Lansky and Luciano.
WG: Your fundamentals are solid. As you've deduced, the spanner in the works is Nucky's realization that Margaret was wounded much deeper than expected over the boxed corpse. You are tracking something though. The details of Owen's death were probably too open ended, which leaves the Lansky/Luciano plotting angle wide open. I don't think Sawicki was in the box, which may have something to do with shipping costs.
OMD: Back to the opening of the episode, the makeshift post-war nuclear unit of Harrow, Julia, and Tommy Darmody was quite the picture. Beach. Ice Cream. Neptune on stage before heading back into the sea. I really think Tommy's not long for the whore house, though it would be quite the bold move for Harrow to actually take Tommy without Gillian perishing in some extreme way. I hope Harrow surprises me and slinks off into the night with Tommy and Julia in tow. Perhaps to live amongst the Indians. At the very least, one hopes that Julia is done with her abusive father's bullshit. Walking out with Richard seemed to portend change in course.
WG: Is it just me, or does Julia look a lot like Gillian? Doppelganger a go-go. I'm wondering if Julia would be able to leave her father? He's an abusive half-mad shitheel, but he's got his reasons. Another plot thread that I'm looking forward to getting unspooled.
OMD: George Nelson Van Alden Mueller got too big for his britches and faced Capone in an interesting exchange. Getting too big for one's britches seemed to be a recurring motif in this episode. Really, this was the episode in which seemingly all of the chickens came home to roost--well, excepting Gyp and Nucky (at least not directly). Nelson, Owen, Margaret, the drunk Mr. Sagorsky, and to a lesser extent Nucky's operation, Gaston Bullock Means (though no one was there to see it), Women's Sexual Education: all got knocked down a peg or two.
WG: Great scene with Capone and Van Alden Mueller. That he fell back into his Calvinistic ways and starting reciting bible chapter and verse was a nice twist. It was odd to see him scared. He rarely shows emotion, other than anger, heartburn, or stunned acquiescence. Capone was fortunate that Sigfrid wasn't around. No one forks husband.
Emperor Palpa--er, David Glass
OMD: Stephen Root's performance was once again delicious. Holy shit, does he take the reins in every scene he's in. Means's machinations were a sight to behold, even if he was caught red-handed by Jess Smith. Of course, that was all immaterial because Jess was a basket-case. The best part of it all was Means got $80,000, half from each Nucky and Harry Daugherty to watch Smith pull the trigger himself.
WG: Means is fantastic. His eccentric flair reminds me a little bit of Langrishe from Deadwood. The look on his face when big faltering Jess took his own life was the definition of the cat that swallowed the canary. Shaking down both Nucky and Daugherty for $40K was smooth. Reminds me of the larceny Royals owner David Glass pulls with MLB luxury tax proceeds and Jackson County taxpayers.
OMD: Chalky needs to be running a Cotton Club Atlantic City just to give him something to do. He has been so relegated to the background this season that it would only be recompense to the audience. Thompson will surely be turning to Chalky and his brethren for help to rise up against Gyp's men, but Chalky's central presence in just one episode and another three scenes thus far needs to be rectified.
Sidney Bechet
WG: Chalky should get the new Babette's gig just to showcase up and coming Jazz legends in Season Four. Duke Ellington. Louis Armstrong. Jelly Roll Morton. Kid Ory. Sidney Bechet. Fuck Ken Burns. I want to see Chalky lay it out.
OMD: In profile, young Sidney Bechet actually bears a striking resemblance to Erik LaRay Harvey, the actor who plays Dunn Purnsley. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to have them be kin for the sake of getting him to play there. It'll have to happen by September of 1925, though, as he heads to Europe with Josephine Baker & Co. in the Revue Nègre, and I think he stays abroad until 1929. I'm no jazz historian, though, so I could be mistaken. Regardless, I'm guessing Bechet brings the house down on many occasions.
So Gyp's bludgeoning of Franco with a shovel on the beach pretty much seals his fate, right? I'd be shocked if he didn't go down this season, and it would seem that he's likely to be given up by his right hand now, wouldn't it? Tonino has to see that it's only a matter of time before Gyp turns on him in a similar fashion, and he crushed the skull of his first cousin. Gyp's fate will be directly tied to that action.
WG: When he's on the screen, I get all tingly in my thighs, but Gyp is too crazy to be kept around. I'll call my shot and guess he gets got in the final episode.
Nucky is in a post-concussive haze following the attempt on his (and Rothstein's and Luciano's and Lansky's) life. Owen, Margaret, and Eli attempt to minimize his interactions with others so as to hide his weakness. Gyp has set up shop in Tabor Heights, taking in shipments on its beaches. Nucky attempts to enlist the help of Rothstein, Lansky, Luciano, Waxey Gordon, Peg-Leg Lonergan, and Frankie Yale in the war he's about to wage against Gyp, but they all turn their backs on him.
Pain in the junk. The worst kind.
Old Man Duggan: This episode seemed very much akin to when Al Swearengen was knocking at death's door, doubled over with stones following the balls-out brawl with Seth Bullock in Season Two of Deadwood. Nucky's not right, his position is arguably weakened. Those around him look on with worry (at least in part informed by their concern for self-preservation) while trying to cover for him in his infirmed state.
Wordy Ginters: Gleets! Holy shit I loved me some Deadwood. Coincidentally or not, the director for this episode, Ed Bianchi, worked on Deadwood, the similarities may be more than accidental. I liked how he ginned up a jagged, fuzzed out and skittish vibe from scene one to the very end. Mirrored Nucky's concussed mental state nicely.
OMD: Chalky White sighting! It's been too long. If anyone has been underutilized this season, it has been Michael K. Williams. He had the one big episode and got to strong-arm an effete actor. Otherwise, not enough Chalky.
WG: I concur. I'm currently plowing through the book Boardwalk Empire is based on, and real life Nucky's recognition of how important keeping minority demographics properly coddled was a key to his long reign as AC power broker. But yeah, Michael K. is the man. Think about the cast up in this piece. Excellent acting. Phenomenal cinematography. Although it is very good, it still adds up less than the sum of its parts.
OMD: Yes, unfortunately, it seems like the potential of the show seems destined to be not quite fully realized.
I'm a little surprised that Gyp allowed Sheriff Ramsey to live. Restraint isn't a character trait that he seems to be imbued with. Quite the little town hall meeting. The $200 a month that Gyp's giving the townsfolk of Tabor Heights equates to just over $2,700.00 in 2012 money. I'd have to say I'd gladly put up with a crazy mafioso in my backyard if it meant I was netting $32K per annum. You?
WG: The address requirement was a little disquieting. What are you gonna do? You take the money and keep your mouth shut. I was shocked to see Sheriff Ramsey still sheriffing at the best public meeting ever. I assumed he was ground into powder. Should have realized that for Gyp, without fire, there is no death. I also dug his little reassurances: "Barbers cut hair, cooks cook, librarians keep checking out books... Bible school is canceled."
OMD: I think the weirdest part of this episode was Manic Nucky. Seeing Nucky out of sorts is obviously all kinds of weird, but we've been treated to that throughout the season as he's been trying to manage his adolescent romance with Billie Kent. Manic Nucky was truly bizarre. His wishing of a happy day of birth to his step-daughter was something else.
WG: How much coke did Buscemi inhale as "prep" for that scene? Worst birthday party ever. Seeing Nucky off-kilter flatters Winter's choice of Buscemi as the lead. Would you buy Gandolfini hamming it up like that? On the same hand, when Nucky has to get physical, it doesn't work nearly as well. Regardless, I've always been a Buscemi fan, or at least a fan of the work he's been in. Trees Lounge.
OMD: Trees Lounge was actually the reason I got into Hayden in the first place. But yes, he does lack the natural physicality to pull off scenes like the beating of Billie's actor friend in the last episode.
How much did you want to see Harrow take the smirking Legionnaires out behind the woodshed? Fuck those smug, grinning toolbags. Once he's worked those shitheads over, I hope Harrow takes Tommy and Julia Sagorsky off and starts a makeshift family with them.
WG: Seems like things are headed towards a twisted little family with Tommy and Sagorsky. That would be a happy resolution. Many monsters on this show, but Gillian may be the most ghastly. I wonder how many will end up surviving in the end? Did it surprise you that Harrow could handle himself on the dance floor? Me neither.
OMD: I'm sure Harrow learned to dance with his sister back in Ohio or wherever the hell he's from.
Wick dipping
This was certainly the episode in which children were scared shitless. Nucky traumatizing Emily with his unorthodox cake-cutting. Teddy exposed to the Gypsy man of his nightmares on the phone. Tommy exposed to swinging middle-aged scrotum while poor man's Matthew Modine was dipping his wick in Josephine wax vat. These kids are sure to be well-adjusted positive contributors to society, right?
WG: Absolutely. Kids are resilient. They won't remember this stuff in a few years when they begin snorting bath salts and having sex with priests.
OMD: So Margaret promising to run away with Owen when the time is right pretty much seals his fate, eh? It probably does not mean that Nucky offs Owen himself, but Margaret can't have nice things, and Mr. Slater is an immigrant girl's dream come true, fresh from the glen. He'll surely fall for daring to fly so close to the sun, and the pyromaniac in the Continental Army-issued hat walking the beach in Tabor Heights is likely to be the one to melt those wings. After all, what is Margaret Schroeder-Thompson if not destined to waste away in a loveless marriage?
WG: Spot on. Margaret isn't the one who gets hurt in this scenario. The whole thing was a bit muddled. I foolishly thought Margaret's pre "going to war with Masseria speech" pep talk to Nucky signaled loyalty. Evidently not. Gyp in the hat. Perhaps may favorite scene this whole season was the disembodied hand smashing the glass, and reaching in to snatch that sweet colonial lid off the Pamuk-visaged replica of Mad Anthony Wayne. Meaningless aside: when I was courting Mrs. Ginters, she had a part time job at an upscale tchochtke joint called The Colonial Shop. Truth be told, it was my imagined witty repartee with an unrelenting and heavy dose of questions about their tri-cornered hat selection that won me a first date. They sold no hats. I have yet to hear a valid or logical explanation of the goods and wares actually sold by The Colonial Shop, other than artisanal candles and primitive furniture. They are out of business. Marriage creeping up on 15 years. Victory for Ginters and the symbolic tri-cornered hat.
OMD: Hard to imagine a colonial gewgaw shop not thriving in Athens of the Plains. I'm glad something came from such a brave business venture. I can only assume your house is littered with Yankee Candles.
It would seem that Nucky is backed into a corner, what with Gyp being insane and Rothstein, Yale, Lonergan, et al wishing him luck in his future endeavors. If one were to handicap his odds of taking on Gyp and coming out victorious without a little help from his friends, they would not be in his favor at this point. At this point, can we assume that the absence of Remus (Torrio's hooch connect for any who may have forgotten), the running of Old Overholt, and the old connection with Johnny Torrio--along with the continued presence of the Chicago storyline in the first place--would indicate that Nucky will get help from Torrio's crew and that Nucky will later be called upon to come to Torrio and Capone's aid when things on the O'Banion front heat up? Does this mean a Florentine holiday for Torrio and Nucky in which they walk arm in arm through the museums, taking in the finest the Renaissance had to offer?
WG: Another in a long-line of plausible spin-off series that I would definitely watch. Much better than Burt Wolf twaddling around Europe with a fanny pack. I was expecting a rah-rah, everybody joins Nucky's quest, pep rally type situation. I'm glad they turned shoulders. Makes for a much more interesting end of the season. Historically, Nucky did preside over the first "gangsta's convention" of sorts. There were many discussions about cutting out the rough stuff, making nice, and sharing the wealth. The end of prohibition made much of those Occupy Wall Street tenants moot, but I appreciate the sentiment. You've likely got it sussed just about right. Torrio to the rescue, or more likely, Capone. Winter has often talked of his fondness for the unexpected. As we hit the home stretch, I'm looking forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve.
OMD: I sure hope he surprises me. While being right about the way the season ends up would be all fine and dandy, I'd rather be shocked.
Nucky, Gaston Bullock Means, and Esther Randolph plot to enlist Andrew Mellon in their mission to take down Remus and Daugherty. Van Alden begins working off his debt to O'Banion, but not before going out at Farraday Electric Iron Company with a bang. Gillian uses Proxy Jimmy's body to gain Tommy's inheritance and sets about avenging her son's death by siccing Gyp on Nucky. Babette's on the boardwalk would appear to be no more and Billie Kent would appear to have gone right along with it.
Old Man Duggan: Primitive ages these folks lived in. Proxy Jimmy passed for Jimmy rather easily. "Jimmy deserved better than this." Well said, Harrow. Apparently all you need for the County Coroner to pronounce you Dead James Darmody are a dopey haircut and his dog tags. Well, that and an unscrupulous mother/lover.
Wordy Ginters: Cremation too. It occurred to me that a scene from an early episode this season reveals that Harrow knows Nucky killed Jimmy. After rubbing out Manny, Harrow marched into Nucky's office to tell him that Mickey running around claiming the kill as his own was bullshit. Nucky, understandably, was worried that he might be next on Harrow's revenge tour. I don't recall the reason why, but essentially Harrow gave Nucky a pass. He knows Proxy Jimmy is in the kindling box. That Jack Huston was able to milk an ambiguous response like that with half a face is evidence of his royal acting bloodlines.
OMD: Harrow had known where Jimmy was headed when he left, and Jimmy had told Harrow to stay where he was needed. Harrow didn't blame Nucky for doing what needed to be done because Jimmy was a soldier. Harrow basically believes that Jimmy was in the game and that he understood why Nucky took him out. Nucky and his family always did right by him, so he doesn't begrudge Nucky anything.
It sure looks like Van Alden will get to go after Capone after all. Not exactly in the way I had envisioned, but still. My favorite Van Alden moment in this episode was the iron to the face. So great. That buffoon got his without a doubt. The entire staff at Farraday were toolbags. I don't know about you, but I am glad they're all traumatized. I hope he walks by the front door every day and just leers at his former co-workers Fuck that face-burned mook. I just hope we get to see Mr. and Mrs. "Mueller" pushing their kitchen aquavit at every Norwegian celebration.
WG: That scene was tense. The build up was tantric. The steam iron in Van Alden Mueller's hand was hissing like a snake. And the way he destroyed the office reminded me of Frankenstein on a rampage. The best part may have been the way Van Alden Mueller mustered up a "smile" into the headwinds of future skin-graft patient's withering smart ass repartee. The friendly grimace that emerged on Van Alden Mueller's mug reminded me of a teenager trying his first shot of whiskey, not wanting to make a face to play tough in front of friends. As we've mentioned before, a lot of the characters in Boardwalk Empire run cool, with icy hostility pushed down below the surface. No one shows the intense effort required to keep a lid on it more than Van Alden Mueller.
OMD: Now we're getting to the meat and potatoes of the women's issues. The build-up was as slow as one could expect from an HBO Drama, but we're finally getting to what feminists worked for: reproductive rights; birth control. It seems to be an especially timely episode given the women's issues playing a central part in this Presidential Election. We get to see up close and somewhat personal what a woman would have to have gone through just to get birth control to keep their pawing husband's sperm from impregnating them. How demoralizing would it be to have to go to French Stewart's doppelganger every time you needed a diaphragm?
WG: Being a man and everything, it is sadly too easy to overlook how brutal life was for women in that regard, up until the very recent past. Other regards, too. Let's see. Right to vote? Check. Equal pay for equal work? What year does that get accomplished? I believe the pill came on the scene in the 60s? Jesus. Dutch Caps? It was a refreshing bit of lightness to see Owen and Margaret waxing nostalgic about tinkers and bandy-legs in the Pony Rain. Pony Rain. Sequel to Purple Rain. Replace Prince with U2. Setting moves from Minneapolis to Belfast. Switch out Morris Day & the Time with The Alarm. The Edge doesn't have a word of dialogue but carries around a mirror so that Bono can ensure that his sunglasses remain at a rakish angle at all time. Slainte.
A Man not to be trifled with
OMD: Johnny Torrio's trip to the homeland and the ensuing waxing nostalgic/poetic about Italia (I loved the Pompeii allegory) brought back a flood of images related to the seminal 1986 Burt Reynolds star vehicle Heat, in which Nick "Mex" Escalante spent his free time gazing longingly at a poster of Venice. If you've not seen it, you've not seen the best action sequences in the history of the medium that is film. Capone sure seems to be on edge now. Has Torrio taken a turn to the existential? I can tell you that I'd pay to watch Greg Antonacci turning history into allegory as Johnny Torrio.
WG: Agreed. Sweet, silly, Torrio. Traveling does have a tendency to open your eyes to different possibilities, an antidote to the myopia one can fall into. Timmy Van Patten contrasted Torrio's new found laissez-faire outlook nicely with the half sides of beef hanging in the background (ribs!) at the stockyards. I can only assume Upton Sinclair was creeping around just off camera. I share your hard-on for Heat. Best Burt Reynolds movie ever, right? I'd entertain arguments for Hooper. Deliverance was more of an ensemble thing than a proper Reynolds vehicle. Stroker Ace maybe? Thoughts?
OMD: In the Burt oeuvre, I'd be hard-pressed to omit Sharky's Machine, and the White Lightning / Gator combo is pretty sweet. I also hold Malone and Stick in special places in my heart.
"Whatever you're trying to pull, there's something you best keep in mind: You exist in this town because I allow you to." Well, Gillian, I'd say your days are numbered because I think Lucky will know he told you where he was heading for dinner. Only so many people knew. Your number is coming up soon. It's only whether Nucky or Lucky does her in.
WG: No doubt, a definite contender for the next cremation. It's one thing to seek counsel from Leander, quite another to mix it up with Luciano, Nucky, and Gyp.
OMD: As for Gyp, again with the fire? This time it's at least a flaming ball of it. He really gives zero fucks about collateral damage. Bystanders be damned.
WG: Now that we've established that the pack of homely jackals at Easter dinner in the last episode included Gyp's wife and daughters, how hard are they trying to make Gyp unlikeable? Jesus. One of them looked like a buxom Ernest Borgnine. That family was seriously ugly for television standards. The big blow up at Babette's seemed a little too impersonal for Gyp. The failed attempt to get any of his target sets up some interesting themes going forward. The bosses in New York and Chicago are moving to the fore.
OMD: I was shocked that he'd do something as hands-off as just blowing up their dinner destination. I'm sure they were watching from nearby, but still, you would think Gyp would want to light the match and see the looks on their faces.
Horniest ginger in the Western Hemisphere
Who's hornier: the sex ed nun or Ethel from Downton?
WG: Ethel. She's had a taste and is ruined because of it.
OMD: Did this episode make you more or less likely to pick up a bottle of Old Overholt next time you hit up the liquor store? It seems as though the backroom dealing is going to succeed in taking Daugherty down. I like that Mellon is in the mix now. Interesting character. I like that he worked to get the top marginal tax rate cut from 73% in 1922 to 24% in 1929 only to have all of his work undone by FDR. All that work for naught.
WG: Mellon serves well as a stereotypical barron. Maybe if Mitt wins, we can return to those halcyon days, when something as juvenile as democracy wasn't a hurdle for leaders of men. Galt lives!
OMD: How about Nucky beating down that nunce Gilbert Longacre? Bully for you, Nucky. Lesson to all: Don't call Nucky "sir."
WG: I guess Nucky's rough upbringing gave him the skills to handle himself. I thought maybe Bin Fartin would get over on him. Barely plausible.
OMD: It would seem that with the presumed death of Billie Kent the Winter & Co. will make sure to punish any character as soon as they abandon their beliefs for the glitz of the gangster lifestyle. There's a cost to every action. Once she was kept, that was all she wrote.
In Wreck-It Ralph, Disney has produced its first full-length animated feature that has piqued my interest in at least twenty years when I was pumped for The Rescuers Down Under. Whether or not I actually saw that film or not is a fact I do not recall, but I remember my eleven-year-old self thinking that it looked pretty cool. Successfully mining the thirtysomething nerd demographic's limitless need to feed the pangs of nostalgia with any media they can get their hands on, Wreck-It Ralph is casting a much larger net into the adult realm than Disney has been in the habit of doing with recent releases like Tangled or The Princess and the Frog. It would be positively shocking if it didn't register much more meaningfully with adult males than Disney's recent fare.
Now if this was simply an ineffectual and shameless attempt at pandering to and exploiting our collective youth, I wouldn't be saying this. Wreck-It Ralph hits all the right notes en route to a spectacularly smart and fun ride down a lane that's not quite Memory but certainly has enough callbacks to our misspent youth to make us all feel right at home in the arcade.
As one can surmise from the trailer, the titular character is Wreck-It Ralph the villain from an old eight-bit video game, Fix-It Felix Jr. that is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. As it rings in that momentous occasion, Ralph stands at the edge of an existential precipice, finding little fulfillment in his life as the force of destruction in the predestined world that has been constructed for them. Tired of being hated and feared, Ralph decides he is going to go on a hero's journey, venturing across the arcade to other games to bring back a medal to put Felix's many medals to shame.
Ralph's journey is a blast. Voiced by the incredibly likable John C. Reilly, the innocently brutish protagonist rumbles his way through other video game worlds with hilarity and hijinks ensuing. Unfortunately, his desire to strike out and play the hero has widespread ramifications, as his place in the world, while unappreciated, is vital to its survival as without him their world that has been constructed falls apart.
This being director Rich Moore's first foray into feature film direction, one might initially be concerned, but Moore cut his teeth directing a bunch of episodes of The Simpson's and Futurama. At the very least, one could reasonably assume that being true to the fanboy demographic should be in his wheelhouse. That assumption is proven to be a safe one, as Wreck-It Ralph delivers just as much pleasure as any of the Pixar standouts of late like Up, Wall-E, or Toy Story 3. It actually deftly explores adult themes of existential longing and bringing meaning to one's life. The Bad-Anon support group meetings are particularly hilarious, even if it may rush completely over the heads of the children in the audience. Buoyed by additional superb voice work from Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Mindy Kaling, Alan Tudyk, and Jane Lynch and an exceedingly clever script from Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston, Wreck-It Ralph is a rousing success.
First things first, I haven't seen The Raid: Redemption yet, and it's been said by some that Dredd is strikingly similar to The Raid. I was not coming into this film with that in the back of my mind. There is no standard of differentiation that I'm holding Dredd to that some others might. I can say that I've seen Judge Dredd, and while there's a certain charm to it, it is the charm of 90s action bloat and a misrepresentative dystopian vision that simply doesn't match with what the world is supposed to have become.
Dredd would appear to be everything that Judge Dredd, its predecessor in having come from the same source material only, was not. Where the first adaptation from the comic failed to capture the requisite dark tone of the post-nuclear holocaust world, director Pete Travis (Endgame, Vantage Point) and writer Alex Garland (novelist and screenwriter of 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Never Let Me Go) aptly capture the impoverishment, the filth, the violence, and the near-hopelessness. Mega-City One as realized by Travis and Co. is a dark fucking place, and what happens in this dark place is pretty goddamn sweet.
Perhaps most importantly for a film like this, the action sequences are tightly wound and crisply choreographed. The violence comes hard and fast and in such a way as to make me feel as though I had just seen the filmic realization of the best dream I have ever had. Karl Urban as Judge Dredd rumbles through this nasty hellscape stoically, not once bearing his entire face, blowing away elements of the criminal underbelly who have been ordered to take him and his ride-along trainee Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) out by overlady Ma-Ma.
Now the film's primary shortcoming is in its casting of the villain. Lena Headey simply lacks the gravitas to pull off the character, which happens to be one of my main complaints with Game of Thrones, but I digress. Luckily, there are so many thugs thrown Dredd's way that Headey's inadequacies aren't as magnified as they could have been were her character more front-and-center. Her proxies on the ground do her dirty work, her techie slave does her bidding while listening to Matt Berry's theme for Snuff Box (which at the very least means that the works of Matt Berry exist after the nuclear holocaust, making Mega-City One a place in which I'd be fine living), and her drugs breed dependency and an according mania in the people living in the tower.
Urban is perfectly serviceable, the updated performance of Peter Weller as RoboCop without the benefit of a backstory. Thirlby is the heart of the film, as Dredd is simply a conduit for law, order, and righteous destruction. Despite my hesitations about her following the abysmal Juno, Thirlby imbues the film with a vulnerability and humanity otherwise largely absent (I am not faulting the film for this, as it is due to post-apocalyptic circumstance for the most part). While supporters Wood Harris and Domhnall Gleeson stand out amongst the faces, it is Thirlby whose performance helps distinguish Dredd from the half-dozen stock post-apocalyptic tales graces the screens of the cineplexes every year.
Dredd is far from a perfect film, but it's perfectly enjoyable if you want to see body parts flying in the throes of a righteous rampage in the name of the law.
It's Easter time. Nucky and Eli bury the hatchet. Harrow and Tommy head to the Sagorsky household for a boisterous affair. Gillian has Proxy Jimmy over for dinner and a murder. Gyp gets in hot water with Joe Masseria.
Wordy Ginters: Easter Sunday 1923. Various versions of death and rebirth. Sweet and sour Jesus. The Thompson, Sagorsky, and Gyp holiday celebrations featured a banal angst that most rubes can identify with. Trying to remember all the names of extended family you rarely see. Overbearing relatives and poorly concealed hostilities. Talent shows. Can anyone get under your skin better than family? On the flip side, the contentment, comfort, and peace that comes from breaking bread, and maybe hoisting a glass or two with your kith and kin is often well worth the aggravation.
Old Man Duggan: You hit the nail on the head there. Spring has definitely been turned on full-blast. This episode kept almost everything at home and in the family, which made for some nice moments, but were it not for the last five or ten minutes, this would have been the second straight episode in which very little happened. At time, the pacing seems glacial. Thankfully, Nucky's juggling livened up an otherwise slow first two acts. Old Man Sagorsky was definitely supping with Sour Jesus. I will say Howard Korder and Allen Coulter struck a nice chord with the push in on Nucky as Margaret was singing. Gave him a chance to fall back in love with her, even if it is, as she says when Nucky proffers a juggling tutorial, too late.
WG: I was definitely late to the scene, but I did recognize that Gillian was going tweak the traditional Easter message of death and rebirth to rebirth and death well before she sank Proxy Jimmy in the tub. As we've alluded to many times, Boardwalk Empire is a twisted motherfucker. That Gillian screwed that guy before she killed him was a total frat move.
OMD: I definitely wasn't sure what her plan for Jimmy Part Deux was until he was in the tub. I'm really not sure what her motivation for killing him was, but I guess she had to kill Jimmy to kill Jimmy's memory. Why she had to do this is beyond me, but she's a tough and batshit crazy nut to crack.
That meatloaf is horseshit, ma.
WG: Seeing Gyp with his family answered a lot of questions. The overbearing Mother. Obsessive suit cleaning. Remorseless brow-beating. Intentionally or not, that scene was total Saturday Night Fever. Watch the hair. Was one of those crones around the table Gyp's wife?
OMD: It was equal parts Saturday Night Fever and The Fighter. I got the sense that they were all sisters. Growing up in that hen house likely turned Gyp into the erotic asphyxia indulging unhinged psychopath he is now.
WG: Speaking of movies, I don't want to sound like Jamie Lee Curtis from A Fish Called Wanda, and I had no idea what the hell he said, but Gyp's Italian prayer made me swoon. The Thompson's went traditional. Harrow's elegant prayer was stellar: "Keep us mindful of the needs of others." Gillian and Proxy Jimmy in the middle of the sick little ritual, "Father, Son, Holy Ghost, he who eats fastest eats the most." Speaks for itself.
OMD: That, ladies and gentlefellows, was Wordy on Prayer.
He's a Socialist, not a Bolshevik.
WG: Julia Sagorsky. Nice. Thoughtful. A private plate for Harrow. Being the flaming lefty that I am, I appreciated the Gene Debs name check. Easter dinner got a little tense, but Harrow handled Old Man Sagorsky adroitly. When in doubt, pull the "I will kill you" gambit. I knew Tommy was sunk when he spied the dead son's army figurines. Hell, I wanted to spend some time in that room, maybe set up a sweet ambush from underneath the bed, or some rear flanking action. You know damn well I'm wailing on that bugle inside of five minutes.
OMD: I like that Julia seems genuinely concerned for Harrow and his happiness. I suppose she sees a bit of her brother and ruined father in him. I loved when he told her that she was leaving the house, too. She tried to resist at first, clinging to the prison of her home and situation, but then let go of it. Perhaps they can find salvation in one another's arms.
WG: Rumor has it that you sing like some mythical Irish God of music? I'm assuming you rock the vocals for the Duggan family Easter family entertainment portion of the holiday? Maybe a little "Sailing" by Christopher Cross? "Pusherman" by Curtis Mayfield? Bill Callahan's "Baby's Breath?" Would that our rapidly crumbling society still engage in such wholesome pursuits. Instead, we retreat to our phones, the bottle, and for many, I suspect, our Japanese pornography. My talent would probably be sneaking into the kitchen at 2 am for another helping of ham and coleslaw. Provided were talking Aunt Nance's coleslaw of course.
OMD: There was a time in which I was known to warble for the masses. Most of my training was for choir, so it was of a classical nature. Private voice lessons. Qualifying for state solo and ensemble. Not very applicable to any sort of singing I was interested in doing past high school, so that's where it ended. I could probably still spin a song of love in a foreign language if called to duty, but these cords haven't been stretched in ages.
WG: What did you make of Nucky bringing Eli back into the fold? He's going to co-chair the warehouse with Mickey. Eli kills him next week, right?
Mickey?
OMD: I'm beginning to believe that Mickey is immortal. Kurgan couldn't even take him down. Nucky clearly got nostalgic for being part of a family. Promoting Eli to a position he's at least mentally capable of doing fed that urge, an urge that is a long way from being fed by the marriage he has ignored for almost two years.
WG: "Confession is for the people in steerage". Nice.
OMD: I liked the line about losing a fortune being the requirement to become a Knight of Columbus, too.
WG: Gyp in church = Keitel in Bad Lieutenant. Many of the characters in Boardwalk Empire are played with such restrained coolness and detachment, I appreciate a dude like Gyp who has some fucking fire. Sure, it's over the top CGI fire, but it speaks to me. I like to watch him rage. He may have bit off more than he can chew to keep himself alive, but I'm glad he's around for a future episode.
OMD: Letting Gyp be his general can't have been the smartest move for old Joe Masseria. I can't imagine this is going to bode well for his criminal enterprise. Masseria obviously stays above the fray for now, but unleashing a lunatic who he readily admits cannot be controlled is not the soundest of decisions. I will make for some explosive action, something that had to happen after two shows of resetting the chess board and the primary agent of carnage laying low whilst licking his wounds.
Much like writer/director Martin McDonagh's last film, In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths is very much an existential, comedic take on the violent criminal underworld. Unlike In Bruges, however, this is a much more reflexive film, taking the Kaufmanesque approach at writing the film on the screen from within the film on the screen. McDonagh proves to be gymnastically adept at balancing the plot with the art of screenwriting as displayed on screen, knowingly toying with the characters and the audience alike in a cheeky but charming way. Not surprisingly (at least for any of us who saw his Oscar-winning feature-length debut), Seven Psychopaths is an extremely pleasing and exceedingly funny trip through madcap shoot-'em-up the likes of the best of the Elmore Leonard adaptations.
Much like those Elmore Leonard adaptations, Seven Psychopaths is blessed with a wonderful--I'm taking back the word "wonderful," Louis C.K.--cast, and I'm not just saying that because of the fella you see to the left in an atypically (but fully intentionally) large image here. Clearly, McDonagh feels a kinship with Colin Farrell, who in this film doesn't just play the surrogate of the screenwriter but actually plays the screenwriter himself, and Farrell doesn't disappoint. It's nice to see him have moved past trying to place the Hollywood game and playing interesting characters again. As the sane, normal person who stands amidst the chaos, documenting, Farrell is great--a straight man to all the insanity transpiring around him, not only acting as a stand-in for McDonagh, but also playing a bit of the Every Man and thusly a stand-in (albeit a drunk one) for each person in the audience. Around him are the brilliant Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, and Tom Waits, all suitably nuts and all uniquely drawn. Walken is especially illuminating, his role one that plays against what he is typecast as in seemingly all of his other roles. It's refreshing to see Walken as a pacifist, even if he is off-kilter. There's no menace in his character, and the audience is treated to a role in which Walken is allowed to be *gasp* charming. Rockwell is Rockwell at his best, leaving one to wonder why he isn't in everything. Waits is deliciously batshit crazy, the bunny affectation a brilliant touch on [presumably] McDonagh's part. Harrelson is also great, though the role is less interesting than the three caballeros or Waits's character, whose background I do not want to spoil.
For its colorful cast of characters, the script is pretty damn smart, weaving subplots in and out of the narrative with an ease and dexterity that is hard not to marvel at. The humor offsets the violence, and the film is not so in love with itself as to not take potshots at itself, such as its hammering of Marty for not writing any female characters of any import. When all is said and done, you are left with a grin on your face and a desire to sit through the credits to see if there are any messages to strong hippie killing women.
The greenhouse at the Thompson abode is set ablaze. Fucking vagrants ruin everything. Nucky get nicked for possession of a pint o' whiskey and thrown in the clink for more than a day, perpetuating the season that shall henceforth be known as The Waylaying of Nucky Thompson. Harrow may have found a new flame via a visit to the American Legion. Gillian scrounges up a Jimmy look-alike to schtupp. Margaret and Owen rekindle an exterminated flame. Old Man Duggan: First things first: Fucking Mickey. That motherfucking cackling buffoon didn't get got after all. Sonuvabitch. I suppose it's all for the better, as that would have been an unfulfilling offing. My money's on Eli offing that fool.
Wordy Ginters: It makes sense in retrospect, his death would have merited some kind of commentary, or at least a good laugh, from the other characters. Glass half full: we'll get the pleasure of seeing him die again (right? Please tell me he'll die). Screw South Park, but maybe it could be a Kenny-like meme. Off him in every show.
OMD: As far as episodes this season are concerned, this one seemed to accomplish the least. Obviously, we got a pretty explosive midseason bit of catharsis last week, so a slower episode was all but a certainty, but aside from the Nucky/Daugherty conflict coming to a head and ultimately taking a step forward there wasn't much that happened here. Boardwalk is no Justified as far as pacing and action is concerned, but occasionally it does feel semi-glacial. It's an aesthetically pleasing glacier, but a glacier just the same.
WG: Other than the surrogate incest, I agree, a beautifully shot but bland chapter. Seems like I've heard grousing on those points regarding this show before?
OMD: So, Terence Winter's got to be a pyromaniac, right? Seriously. Gyp, Teddy, Nucky, smelly vagrants? All predisposed to tickling their fancies with flames. Flamers, if you will. He's surely big into cleaning by destroying.
Winter's muse
WG: Does Winter's toss and turn at night worried that he allows a full glance into his twisted inner soul? Pyromania. Incest. Erotic asphyxiation. And maybe most twisted of all, the debased mind capable of dreaming up Mickey? Winter must be getting triple-teamed by the muses of Henry Miller, William Burroughs, and Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca.
OMD: Jess Smith's breakdown in front of the Boy Scouts called forth memories of Jerry Sandusky. I think it was the sonic quality of his whimpering that screamed pederast to me. "How could we let it get this far?... We stole, Harry. We stole." Breaking down whilst looking out upon a sea of boys in uniform. Not feeling well because of bad sausage. The episode takes its name from the song the scouts sing, signifying an importance to the plot. Sure that importance is tangential, as it cements Means's decision to turn on Daugherty, Smith, and the rest of the crooked Harding administration. He dies shortly thereafter succumbing to a gunshot wound that is ruled a suicide but dubbed suspicious by Senator James Heflin from the Great State of Alabama. The subtext is there in the scene, even though I'm surely given a yard and taking a mile.
WG: Excellent insight on the impending Jess Smith demise. I also am particularly fond of throwing "Sandusky" and "bad sausage" into the fray with nary a smirk. And fuck the Boy Scouts. I'm currently reading the book that Boardwalk Empire was ostensibly built upon. Have you read it? What little research I have done on Means reveals him to be perhaps even more interesting than he is as portrayed by Stephen Root. To continue waxing historical, I did like the way Winter introduced the veterans at the Legion Club. The Veterans Administration scandal is one of the major black marks against Harding's administration. Forbes sold Government/Veterans Administration supplies to private contractors and received millions in kickbacks. Thank God nothing like that happens in today's world.
OMD: I've not read the book of the same name as the series. As for the Harding administration, there are so many major black marks that it would be easier to keep track of what they didn't do wrong.
"Ging Gang Goolie" was written by Robert Baden-Powell in 1920. It's gibberish but is thought to have been inspired by African languages Baden-Powell heard during his time in His Majesty's service in the Second Boer War. I'm sure he served right alongside Bates and Lord Grantham (we really will start getting caught up on those pieces soon, folks). Oh, another Downton tie-in: Esther Randolph opining, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" whilst supping with Nucky. She surely hangs out with the Dowager Countess when abroad, right?
Clearly a Survivor
WG: Wouldn't it be cool to see some offshoot production where characters from different series mix with each other? Esther might be too radical for the Dowager, although it would be fun to see them rattle sabers. I'm guessing Esther is hanging with Sybil. Other pairings I'd like to see: Columbo and Fonzie open a Fro-Yo joint in Los Angeles, preparing delicious healthy treats by day, and solving mysteries and repairing jukeboxes by night. The three original Charlie's Angels and Schneider from One Day at a Time in Survivor: Grand Island, Nebraska. Louis C.K. moves in the with guys on The Big Bang Theory, and completely destroys them comedically, mentally, and spiritually.
OMD: I'd give anything to have that last one happen.
You'd let Kelly MacDonald spank you, right? If I were that kid actor that plays Teddy, I'd be ruined for the rest of my days.
WG: Kelly MacDonald would likely make want to be naughty on purpose. We very likely saw the birth of a debilitating life-long fetish for Teddy.
OMD: Looks like after being adrift in the wake of Jimmy's death, Harrow has something to live for again. Julia Sagorsky.
WG: Great scene when Harrow was tending to the bruised and bloodied old man Sagorsky. He's a tender assassin. I think it’s the vibe Rowdy Herrington was going for with Swayze in Road House. No nonsense tough guy on the outside. The tender heart of a warrior poet on the inside. Speaking of which, this is the best thing I've read on the internets in quite some time:
OMD: Gillian is one fucked up broad. Fucking the ghost of her son. I don't know whether or not that is more or less depraved than actually She surely has designs on grooming good ol' Rog to act as Jimmy's doppelganger where people will only know of him by name, right? I mean she's still putting on airs as though he were alive. She can't just be seeking out his doppelganger in the hopes of bagging a ghost, can she? And Roger humps like a hump, eh? And thanks, Ed Bianchi, for treating me to a backlit shot of Roger McAllister's hairy taint. That's an image I can't unsear from my brain.
WG: A fools game to suss out what might be going on inside Gillian's brain. Dollar signs and fucking family members tumbling over and over on a hamster wheel. I thought for a moment in the last episode, when she sat down to write a letter to Jimmy, it might be a suicide note. Obviously she's looking for a Jimmy Two. Roger (J2) seems like a dope she'll be able to manipulate, much like Jimmy ultimately was. Have these clowns been watching too much True Blood? I'll get my porn off the internet for free like everybody else. I can scarcely believe I'm saying this out loud, but a little less fetish, and a little less taint, would be a good thing.
OMD: It'll be interesting to see how Nucky's end of things shakes out on the D.O.J. front, as Gaston Bullock Means eventually gets ousted by Daugherty, who remains in office until 1924, when Silent Cal orders him to resign. The Ohio Gang is still about a year from getting tossed out of D.C. on their ears, Jess Smith excepted. At the very least, it is refreshing to see Nucky back to pulling the strings on the political marionette. Nucky the Manipulator is much more interesting than Nucky the Sex-Crazed.
WG: Agreed. I kind of enjoy seeing Nucky lost at sea in love with a barely caring Billie. There have been enough hints and foreshadowing that she'll be toast soon. I'd rather see Nucky mixing it up with Rothstein and Gyp, than running around with Eddie Cantor and making moon eyes at Billie. Billie though, damn. An attractive woman in an unconventional way. Props to casting for coming up with an actress who meets my completely ignorant stereotype of what a 20's showgirl would look like. She's got a bit of depth to her as well, which is a nice change of pace compared to the typical stunning cardboard mistress archetype.
OMD: Margaret and Owen back at it. Let's hope she's not overwrought with Catholic guilt like she was last time, which has derailed her arc for a strong seven or eight episodes. Granted, it was her actions--both with Owen and the ensuing tithing of the highway money--that drove Nucky to the bed of a mist--nay, actress, but I don't know if I can stomach another half-season-plus relapse into guilt-ridden compensation. Oh, and nice touch with "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" to close out the Irish greenhouse tryst. The song was originally penned by a Canadian school teacher George Washington Johnson, who wrote the poem in 1864 for a student of his that he fell for, married, and then watched her die as she'd fallen ill. At least all of this is the case if we're to believe YouTube user ILoveJenni47. It seems like a long ways to go to formulate that entirely.
Dreamy.
WG: I'm guessing Margaret will be just fine. Partly slacking the reins on her naughty inner desires, and partly revenge for Nucky's disrespectfully public cadding about. Owen is the one who might end up in a pinch.
Ever see This Boy's Life with a young DiCaprio and Bobby DeNiro? "When You and I Were Young Maggie" is the song Leo is singing with his stereotypically gay buddy at the piano when they awkwardly share a kiss. That song serves as a backdrop for the only man-on-man kiss DiCaprio has blazed on the silver screen. I'm not nearly the authority that ILoveJenni47 is, obviously, but I’m putting it out there.
OMD: I've not seen it. Not really sure why. I will note that one of my friends was with another male friend of his and they were stopped by the border patrol while returning from a 20 minute trip of regret and disappointment into the Nuevo Laredo. Though he had no illegal goods in the car, he did have--and I'm pretty sure I'm remembering the story correctly--Leonardo DiCaprio book that was almost entirely pictures and geared to the tweener girl demographic. This was a gag gift he'd gotten for somebody, but if you asked those Border Patrollers, they'd say he blazed a man-on-man kiss that's been seared into their brains.
And you thought I was going to go with this, didn't you?
OMD: Lucky's dealing with the Mute from Buffalo just go to prove what my grandmother always told me: "Don't trust any Buffalo motherfuckers." It's too bad Lucky's grandmother didn't pound the same advice into his numb skull. It really does seem like there's more the the heroin score than the audience is aware of though, doesn't it?
OMD: I think the weirdest part of this episode was Manic Nucky. Seeing Nucky out of sorts is obviously all kinds of weird, but we've been treated to that throughout the season as he's been trying to manage his adolescent romance with Billie Kent. Manic Nucky was truly bizarre. His wishing of a happy day of birth to his step-daughter was something else.
