“We all have to decide for ourselves how much sin we can live with.” – Nucky
Boardwalk Empire premiered to as much hype as I’ve seen for a new television show and now, twelve episodes in, we can look back and determine if it lived up to the hype.
In my mind, it most certainly did, but I’ve read other critics ponder that maybe the show is too slow. Others said it was almost too polished, like rooting for the Yankees. I can see both views to an extent, but the results still worked. We were offered a prestige series about gangsters in Atlantic City during the prohibition era and that’s what we received. And, moreso than that, it was really, really good.
“A Return to Normalcy” is a fitting end to the first season and if I had one issue with it, it would be that it felt more like a roadmap for Season Two than a particularly satisfying conclusion. Sure, conflicts were resolved, but only to create more conflicts in the future. I know, I know, this is what viewers should expect from a serialized television series, but I could have stood for a little more focus on what is currently going on than what will be going on.
That being said, it looks as if Season Two will be a doozy. The most important storyline will be the coup d’etat being implemented on Nucky (Steve Buscemi) by three of his former allies: Jimmy (Michael Pitt), Eli (Shea Whigham), and Commodore Kaestner (Dabney Coleman). All three have a bone to pick with the county treasurer. Jimmy learned his mother was whored out to Kaestner by Nucky himself. Eli was fired as sheriff, and though he was rehired, it was done so in as disrespectful of a way possible. Kaestner’s grudge has been sitting the longest. Years earlier, he took a prison sentence for Nucky expecting to be repaid when he got out. Repaid, at least to his liking, he was not.
But Nucky is unaware of this new conspiracy and thinks everything is just gravy for the moment. His ace in the hole, Ed Bader wins the mayoral election. His war with Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) comes to an end with a simple phone call to the Illinois State’s Attorney getting Rothstein of the hook for fixing the world series and getting $1 million in Nucky’s pocket for the service. Oh, he also gets the location of the remaining D’Alessio brothers and has Richard Harrow, Al Capone, and Jimmy finish them off in a scene reminiscent of the intercut christening sequence in The Godfather.
And that’s just on the business side of things. On the personal side, he has Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) back in his life, and all it took was regaling her with the painful story of the deaths of his son and wife. He had been terrified of holding his son because he was so small (which calls back nicely to a scene from an earlier episode where Nucky looks in at the premature babies in incubation on the boardwalk) and when he finally gets the courage to do so, he realizes that his wife had been caring for a dead child for more than a week. When Nucky has his son buried, his wife can’t handle the stress and kills herself only a few weeks later. This is enough for Margaret to realize that Nucky has some kindness in him and stays in town. Maybe not a lot of kindness, but enough.
While Nucky is unaware of the alliance poised to take him down, he’s also unaware of the fact that one of his former threats is soon to be out of the picture. Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) quit his job in the prohibition service after he drowned his partner in the river baptismal last week. He claimed that the partner died of a heart attack on duty and that this is why Nelson wants to quit, but truthfully he’s wracked with guilt over his hand in the death and his recent booze and sex party with Lucy Danziger (Paz de la Huerta). He doesn’t like what he’s become and wants to move to Schenectady just to get away. One big problem stands in the way of his freedom though: Lucy’s pregnant.
So as you can see, there are a lot of new stories that need to be covered when season two premieres (presumably) next September. Some (the coup) are more interesting than others (Van Alden’s love child), but at least we know the new episodes will have quite the interesting framework. And that’s not even including the minor happenings which I’ll get to in the bullet points below.
Thanks for watching along with me for this inaugural season of another great HBO series. I hope too see you all back on the boardwalk soon enough.
Lingering thoughts about “A Return to Normalcy”:
* Though Rothstein ends the season somewhat in Nucky’s pocket, he apparently is already making a move to turn the tables. He has Luciano kill… someone… not really sure who, but I’m assuming it’s important. Not only that, he makes a phone call to the failed business associate of Nucky’s, Harry Prince, who is suddenly much more well-off financially than he was the week before.
* Capone has really stuck to his “serious gangster” act as he even scolds Luciano for making immature jokes.
* Nan Britton still really thinks that new president Warren Harding is going to bring her to the White House with him. She even got the cake ring to prove it.
* Chalky wants an invite to the election night party and Chalky gets an invite to the election night party. There are perks earned getting the Black vote to Nucky and his associates.
* Van Alden slaps the hell out of one of the new prohibition agent recruits.
* Mary sends Angela a postcard from Paris: “Forgive me, but don’t forget me.” Angela’s response? A snappy new hairdo!
* Sorry I missed out on the review last week. My day job is in retail and needless to say, it’s very busy this time of year.
Some stats and info about Boardwalk Empire, “A Return to Normalcy”
TV SHOW – Boardwalk Empire
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1 Episode 12
AIRED ON – December 5th 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – HBO/Max
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas, Period Show
CREATED BY – Terence Winter
CAST – Steve Buscemi,Kelly Macdonald, Michael Shannon, Shea Whigham,Stephen Graham, Vince Piazza, Michael Kenneth Williams, Paul Sparks, Grechen Mol, Michael Stuhlbarg, Anthony Laciura, Jack Huston, Anatol Yusef
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.