They obviously needed an actress that was one step away from being a porn star, and Paz fit the bill.

11/24/2010 9:18:49 AM

So did I miss something with the photographer's wife? Why did she leave without Jimmy's girl?

And I suppose the Commodore was just Nucky's predecessor... does he hold any power now? It's pretty interesting to see Jimmy's dad, but at the fact that he was 54 when Jimmy's mum was 13.

11/28/2010 11:38:26 PM

awesome episode tonight. the show is moving right along.

11/28/2010 11:52:36 PM

I really hope Van Alden dies in some awesome way.

11/29/2010 12:38:29 AM

Agreed. That mofo needs to die. Horribly.

I love how Richard Harrow is silently becoming more badass. He offered to murder all the DiLessio brothers' innocent family members. LOL.

NEEDS MORE CHICAGO. Not a peep from Al Capone in this episode.

11/29/2010 7:39:54 AM

^^^^ I kind of got the impresson that she was messing with Jimmy's wife as some sort of sadistic game or something, cause the husband told her she was wicked and then kind of smirked as if he knew what she was doing. Either that or maybe he realized what she was planning and took her away before she could leave him.

11/29/2010 8:05:18 AM

I just found out my Aunt played/plays the Madame of the Brothel in Chicago... interesting (I didn't even recognize her)

11/29/2010 10:00:23 AM

The DiLessio brothers are the ones that robbed the fat dude on the boardwalk right? And the ones that shot Eli and robbed the casino?


Why were they trying to mess with Nucky in the first place? I'm trying to remember but did the head gangster in New York put them up to it?

11/29/2010 11:11:09 AM

Mickey Doyle, the weaselly pollock/irishmen owed them money. He informed them about an easy way to get some money by hijacking some of Nucky's payers while they were on their collection routes. That's when the fat guy on the boardwalk originally got assaulted.

But then, Arnold Rothstein got wind of them and they started working for him.

11/29/2010 11:29:18 AM

Quote :

"So did I miss something with the photographer's wife? Why did she leave without Jimmy's girl?"

Did she get money from Jimmy's wife for the ship? Had a feeling they were con artists or something. Either that, or the husband is a control freak and forced her to leave with him. I was a little lost there too, and was hoping that someone who pays a little more attention had a definite idea of what happened.

Quote :

" -I really hope Van Alden dies in some awesome way. -Agreed. That mofo needs to die. Horribly. "

Fuck that... I finally realised how awesome he is because of this episode.

[Edited on November 29, 2010 at 11:32 AM. Reason : VA]

11/29/2010 11:30:46 AM

Quote :

"Either that or maybe he realized what she was planning and took her away before she could leave him"

I'm thinking this. Mainly because of her expression when he spoke to her in French and her reaction after.


I was hoping Van Alden was going to shoot himself in the head after drowning his partner. But then I thought. Every good story needs a hated villain and his scenes are some of the best. But I do hope at some point he meets a violent end.

11/29/2010 11:50:59 AM

Quote :

"I love how Richard Harrow is silently becoming more badass. "

11/29/2010 12:12:13 PM

Great episode...sad next week is the finale

11/29/2010 12:12:44 PM

Last night's episode had a surprising sense of closure for a penultimate episode. A lot of loose ends tied up, most noticably Margaret leaving Nucky (although this certainly may not be the end of them), Eli being replaced, and Van Alden "dealing with" his partner (what a fucking loon; I don't want him to die, though, because he's one of the most fascinating characters on the show...few people can play psycho like Michael Shannon).

There's obviously still a few things that'll probably be settled in the finale, though: Rothstein (I think he'll go to prison for the White Sox scandal) and the DiLessio (sp?) brothers (whom I think Jimmy and Richard Harrow will badass together).

One interesting thing to keep an eye on is how Jimmy reacts to his father, Nucky's predecessor, telling him that "the wrong man is running this town," possibly implying that Jimmy, not Nucky, should be running the town.

EDIT: Oh, and as far as the photographer's girl leaving Jimmy's girl behind: I was a little perplexed by that as well. I guess we're just supposed to assume one of the two things already mentioned for now: that either she was playing some sort of cruel game with Jimmy's girl as payback for Jimmy beating up the photographer (did Jimmy beating up the photographer come BEFORE the scene where Jimmy's girl and the photographer's girl decided for sure to go to Paris together?) or that the photographer is a control freak and forced his girl to come with him to Paris. It might be something that gets resolved later, though.

[Edited on November 29, 2010 at 2:14 PM. Reason : .]

11/29/2010 2:00:48 PM

So the dude that plays Van Alden is 36. He looks about 50

11/29/2010 6:13:54 PM

Some interesting insights from Shannon himself on the (incredibly fascinating) character of Nelson Van Alden:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/11/michael_shannon_boardwalk_empi.html

Sounds like he was mildly peeved when the writers had Van Alden succumb to temptation and insanity in the first season.

11/29/2010 6:30:42 PM

That is a good read.

11/29/2010 6:41:40 PM

Quote :

"Did she get money from Jimmy's wife for the ship? Had a feeling they were con artists"

Seems like an awful long con for a relatively small payout...I interpreted it as the photog's wife having a change of heart during the scene where she helps him with his crutches.

Quote :

"Last night's episode had a surprising sense of closure for a penultimate episode. A lot of loose ends tied up"

I didn't think it had much in the way of closure at all, especially compared to penultimate episodes of shows like The Wire or The Sopranos...it seemed like many of the relationships the show features were thrown into disarray which isn't really the same as closure.

Quote :

"Sounds like he was mildly peeved when the writers had Van Alden succumb to temptation and insanity in the first season."

yeah I didn't really like that either, the writers were bordering on making him one-dimensional before the previous episode and the last two just cemented it. I get that the writers need to make law enforcement unsympathetic but this just seems like a lazy way of doing it.

11/29/2010 10:12:32 PM

Regarding Van Alden... We know very little about his past to conclude that he is one dimensional. We know NOTHING of his pre-marriage life and we know little about why he is the way he is. I think that is what is most fascinating about him to me.

We have been given clues about Nucky, about Jimmy, about Margaret but with Van Alden we just know he was presently a religious man. We know nothing about why he is that or what his childhood was like or why he might stray from the "straight and arrow."

This episode might feed in to the small minority that says it is "boring" but I think as the series progresses I get more engrossed in each individual character's story than any HBO show I've seen...

11/29/2010 10:49:10 PM

Quote :

"We know very little about his past to conclude that he is one dimensional."

If they eventually flesh him out that's fine, but right now he's just an insane zealot...you can't just assume he's multifaceted because we don't know much about his past.

11/29/2010 11:01:32 PM

I dont think they were intentionally trying to make him unsympathetic. Seems everyone has 2 sides/conflicts. And what better conflict can you have with a guy thats deeply religious and a LEO than to have him drink(during prohibition) and fuck a whore?

11/29/2010 11:06:41 PM

Of course they were trying to make him unsympathetic, it makes it that much easier to identify with Nucky and Jimmy in spite of their transgressions.

11/29/2010 11:12:46 PM

Is it me or does Van Alden kinda look like Jaws from James Bond?

11/30/2010 10:14:58 AM

I think you're missing the mark a little bit, armorfrsleep. I don't know if they're trying to make us unsympathetic towards Van Alden so much as they're just trying to use him for the sake of moral ambiguity. I do agree they're going about it in a somewhat lazy way, but I don't think they want us to be unsympathetic towards him, necessarily. They're just showing, as someone else said, that there's two sides to every character's behavior. I still think he is a fascinating character.

Also, regarding closure: I don't think anything major is going to happen between Nucky & Margaret or Nucky & Eli in the final episode. Next season, definitely, but not in the finale of this season. I could be wrong; that's just the sense I got. When I say closure, I don't mean that those storylines are done with, I simply mean that they're settled for this season. But, now that I think back, you're right that The Wire tended to settle a lot of stuff in the penultimate episodes of seasons as well.

^definitely does

[Edited on November 30, 2010 at 3:07 PM. Reason : ^]

11/30/2010 3:07:19 PM

We could argue all day about whether the writers intended to make him unsympathetic, but based the the past work of the people involved in this show it seems pretty obvious the me that the writers know exactly what they are trying to evoke in the audience with each character, and with Van Alden they're not showing us anything that is even remotely redeeming. If you think he's interesting that's fine, but to me he's just a stock character (hypocritical religious zealot) that's been around in one form or another for hundreds of years at least.

11/30/2010 3:21:56 PM

I see your point about the hypocritical religious zealot being a little bit stereotypical, but I think there's a little more to Van Alden than that. I think anyone who's just writing Van Alden off as an insane religious maniac is short-changing him; I think he genuinely wants to do good, but circumstance has made that nearly impossible and, as a result, has driven him to near insanity (although, as I've said, that probably isn't the best direction for his character THIS early into the show; perhaps it might not be so problematic after Van Alden's character was more established).

You mentioned the past work of the people involved in this show; what else have they done?

11/30/2010 3:46:03 PM

The thing with Van Alden is he COULD be a more complex character, but they've gotta show us something other than him being motivated and insane.

Quote :

"You mentioned the past work of the people involved in this show; what else have they done?"

Terrence Winter and Tim Van Patten are the ones I'm particularly familiar with...Winter was one of the main writers on The Sopranos, and Van Patten is an HBO stalwart who worked on The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Rome, and The Pacific amongst other shows.

11/30/2010 4:01:12 PM

Van Alden is easily the most fascinating character on the show: he baptized a dude to death!

To be clear, he's not just a hypocritical religious zealot. He's a full blown lunatic, and I look forward to learning more about him.

11/30/2010 4:16:19 PM

The lunatic part was implied when I called him a hypocritical religious zealot

11/30/2010 4:17:16 PM

I hadn't heard Van Patten's name before, but that's definitely a very impressive list.

I agree that Van Alden could be a more complex character than he currently is, though; that's why I was glad he didn't kill himself, and I hope he doesn't die in the Season One finale.

11/30/2010 4:19:16 PM

If hypocritical religious zealotry is a kind of lunacy, then half this country needs to be locked up.

But seriously, how can you feel that he is not adequately complex at this point in the show?

And how is he unsympathetic? Sesbo offed his star witness, and he had to see his smug face every day and pretend like he didn't know that this weasel murdered a man for nothing but money and used his badge to do it. I'm very much sympathetic with a man in that position...even a crazy one who resorts to deadly baptisms.

11/30/2010 4:47:05 PM

Quote :

"how can you feel that he is not adequately complex at this point in the show?"

Because vagaries and an unknown past are not the same as character development

Quote :

"And how is he unsympathetic?"

Do I really need to list the reasons?

-he whips himself with a belt for having impure thoughts
-he neglects his wife
-he refuses to help his wife see a fertility expert
-he withheld all those letters and money from Jimmy's wife
-he apparently doesn't like jews

I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.

11/30/2010 5:26:25 PM

Quote :

"I'm sure there are others"

yeah, like fucking that dirty skank Danziger.

11/30/2010 6:00:56 PM

Quote :

"Rothstein (I think he'll go to prison for the White Sox scandal)"

Rothstein was never indicted over the World Series fixing.

11/30/2010 7:13:55 PM

^ Doesn't mean he won't be in the show. Haven't the writers said in interviews that they won't follow history exactly?

11/30/2010 7:32:02 PM

This is the relevant part of the interview as far as this issue is concerned, take from it what you will:

Quote :

"You've explained before that Nucky is not the real Nucky so that you could take liberties with history. Obviously Big Jim (Colosimo) is real. Torrio, Rothstein, Luciano. How many other regular characters are real vs. either invented or fictionalized versions of people? Well, Eli, Nucky’s brother, is a version of what I guess Nucky’s brother was. Margaret really just came from the introduction to the book "Boardwalk Empire," which is really a history of Atlantic City, but Nelson Johnson started with a woman who came to see Nucky just as an illustration of what Nucky was like. A woman came to see Nucky to get money for her kids, and I just took that and spun it into this character. So she’s not real. I don’t even know if that woman in Nelson’s book was real, but it’s just a depiction of kinds of things that would happen. Yeah, everybody else is fictionalized. Although the Commodore is based on Nucky’s mentor."

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/interview-boardwalk-empire-creator-terence-winter

It seems like they'd be less likely to take liberties with the "real" characters than the mostly or entirely fictionalized ones, but there isn't a concrete answer to this question.

[Edited on November 30, 2010 at 7:49 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on November 30, 2010 at 7:53 PM. Reason : .]

11/30/2010 7:41:54 PM

SLAP

12/5/2010 9:35:54 PM

oh my Jesus! you silly federal agent

12/5/2010 9:49:46 PM

Is it me or does Van Alden kinda look like Jaws from Jaws?

12/6/2010 12:55:28 AM

Its just you

12/6/2010 1:01:12 PM

so anyone get the significance of Jimmy looking at his wife for an abnormally long amount of time when she had her haircut? It was kind of an awkward scene but I think it was meant to be

12/6/2010 2:44:08 PM

Maybe something about starting over? Maybe that was her hair style before he left for the war?

12/6/2010 2:55:01 PM

earlier in the episode when they were making up, he told her that when he was at war, he used to dream of touching her hair or something like that...so i thought he was looking at her for a long time bc he was pissed/hurt that she cut it short after he told her that.

but maybe it was just a fresh start thing.

12/6/2010 4:44:20 PM

Quote :

"earlier in the episode when they were making up, he told her that when he was at war, he used to dream of touching her hair or something like that...so i thought he was looking at her for a long time bc he was pissed/hurt that she cut it short after he told her that."

that's exactly how i took it

12/6/2010 6:24:48 PM

I took it the same way

And great finale.

12/6/2010 9:23:22 PM

good finale, and I really like the arc they are setting up for season 2 with Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore conspiring against Nucky.

12/6/2010 10:13:13 PM

I think the hair cutting was

1. her own way of kinda being in Paris or acting Parisan since she can't be there herself.
2. trying to get back to her dyke roots.

...since she got that postcard from her lesbo lover saying not to forget her.

12/7/2010 8:10:50 AM

^ and 3. Because of Jimmy's comments about her hair.

It worked twofold for her. But I definitely think that it was more against Jimmy than for him.

12/7/2010 8:49:45 AM

It was definitely that while he was in the trenches, he thought about touching and smelling her hair.

He even touched it...this was when they were making up and promising to try for a fresh start.

Jimmy was onboard, but after getting the postcard from her lady lova she rebelled and cut her hair.

The one thing that Jimmy remembered and looked forward to after the war....

12/7/2010 10:59:14 AM

I like the show, and will continue to watch it, but overall it feels too heavy on the soap opera stuff and too light on the action. it feels like 95% of the show is simply dialog between two people with that occasionally-annoying piano music in the background.

12/7/2010 11:43:26 AM