“I ain’t building no bookcase.” – Chalky
I, like most people who have seen it, am a huge fan of The Wire, an HBO series focused on the illegal sale of psychoactive chemicals. It never got its due with mainstream audiences, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a serious television critic who doesn’t list it among the best series of all time. If a show as intricate and nuanced as The Wire could have a breakout character, it would have been the gay, ghetto Robin Hood known as Omar Little, played with perfection by Michael Kenneth Williams. Williams could have retired immediately after the series ended and would still be one of the most iconic television actors of the 2000s, but it’s becoming a thrill to watch him shape the character of Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire. His monologue about his father’s lynching to the KKK Grand Cyclops who is suspected of hanging one of Chalky’s employees was a magnificent, hold-your-breath kind of scene. You knew the story about how his father had built a beautiful set of bookcases for a rich, white townsperson wasn’t going to end well, but Williams kept everything perfectly subtle until the big payoff. And this was all before he unrolled his father’s carpentry tools.
“Anastasia” had quite a few menacing moments like this one, but maybe ironically had some of the show’s most beautiful cinematography since the Martin Scorsese-directed pilot. Not surprisingly, it was also the best episode since that debut.
There was a lot going on in Atlantic City, but the Chicago story is a nice place to start. Jimmy (Michael Pitt) meets up with Al Capone (Stephen Graham) and starts to accompany him on his various money-collection expeditions. In the Greektown neighborhood (which I actually just drove through the other day to avoid the terrible traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway), one bartender is too scared to pay Capone because he had been having his booze supplied by a mob boss named Sheridan. Johnny Torrio has Capone and Jimmy meet with Sheridan to work out an arrangement, and while Capone is able to muscle Sheridan into paying Torrio 50% of his profits, his hot-headedness offends the Irishman.
Jimmy develops a relationship with Pearl, a prostitute with dreams of being a movie star. She makes the terrible mistake of kissing Jimmy goodbye in front of Sheridan and his cronies just before Capone embarrasses Sheridan. Sometime later, one of those cronies purchases an evening with Pearl and then violently drags a knife across her angelic face. And let me tell you, it was one of the most brutal images I’ve ever seen on television. Sheridan meant to send a message and it looks like it might be the reason Jimmy stays in Chicago longer than he had originally planned.
Back east, Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) is snooping around, looking to whack Jimmy, whom he doesn’t know is out of town. He meets Gillian Darmody who initially tells him off. But after he becomes infatuated and follows her around town and to her shows, she accepts his advances. Unfortunately for her, gonorrhea is very contagious.
Nucky (Steve Buscemi) has a gigantic “surprise” birthday party thrown for him (and he even does a pretty good job of actually acting surprised) and in attendance are a bunch of other political types who all want their hands on some money meant to be appropriated towards constructing roads. Nucky is very interested in this as it will make his bootlegging operation much easier since Atlantic City is surrounded by nothing but swampland. One senator stands somewhat in Nucky’s way, but by the end of the episode, a couple of cases of Pimm’s Cup seem to have tided things over, for now at least.
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the Margaret character, but I find her innocence in the face of so much corruption to be endearing. Also, I just really like Kelly Macdonald as an actress. We got some welcome progression in her storyline this week as she keeps getting closer to Nucky, even sharing a dance with him at his birthday party (she was there to deliver a dress to Lucy). And she seemed to surprise Nucky with her quick wit and passion for women’s suffrage. The mere fact that she stood up to Senator Edge might be what brought Nucky’s attention to Margaret, even as Lucy seductively emerged from a gigantic birthday cake.
But Margaret’s conscience isn’t quite as clean as it used to be. While her boss isn’t looking, she stuffs a nightgown from the boutique into her purse and walks out with it.
Finally, we have the D’Alessio brothers, who were the actual murderers of Chalky’s associate. Chalky himself was their intended target, but their victim happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Mickey Doyle still owes them $7,000 and he has a plan for them to get about halfway there: robbing one of Nucky’s subordinates.
It’s hard to see where all of these storylines are headed (not to mention ones that were skipped over this week, like Van Alden’s investigation), but the atmosphere is getting darker week by week. Every character has some kind of antagonistic person or institution bearing down on them. And if you listen closely, you can almost hear someone whistling “The Farmer in the Dell” as he approaches.
More thoughts about “Anastasia”:
* I’m not sure what to make of the Anderson story that gave this episode its namesake, but it’s a pretty odd little saga in its own right.
* Capone has ambitions, I tell ya.
* Nucky points out how much power Chalky really has. The question is, does Chalky know it?
* “Easy, Princeton.” – Capone
* “You should try some opium.” – Pearl
* “That’s one way of reading it.” – Jimmy
* “I do expect to have everything.” – Nucky
Some stats and info about Boardwalk Empire, “Anastasia”
TV SHOW – Boardwalk Empire
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1 Episode 4
AIRED ON – October 10th, 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.