Boatloads of booze are better than a bottle of Ancient Age stashed under the sink with the cleaning products. I would slam that shit with Richard Harrow, above all others on this show, except I’d be afraid it would run through his neck clean to the floor, like a severed head in a Vertigo comic. Stop the scrapbooking bro! You’re too young and too alive for shrinemaking, unless it’s to Anjelica’s firmness of arm.
Nucky, which just auto-corrected to Buckeye, now has the same haircut as Ed from Radiohead. Only Steve Buscemi is not even close to that good-looking, so he just looks like Hitler with the mustache Photoshopped out. Nucky is also still not married to Margaret, although it seemed that way for a second cause he had some other pair of tits in his face. Their relationship is still so weirdly recognizable; two people circumstantially pulled together who stall out almost immediately after making it official. Maybe they’re both Aries?
Nucky’s other relationship, with Jimmy Darmody, is recognizable but not weirdly so. Way more than Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire is starting to look like Sopranos alternate history; like what if a more dead-inside Christopher had led a mutiny against Tony way before Adrienna drove the wedge, when he still had Tony’s full faith & credit. Or like if Tony had gotten a clue and done something way less passive-agressive than get Chris drinking again.
HBO’s real motto is that Paul Newman line from The Road To Perdition: sons were put on this earth to trouble their fathers.
Michael Shannon took time away from his kickass rock band to do his American Gothic comedy tour again. Nelson Van Alden is the funniest character on television. He’s so the Republican presidential field, a potter’s field of libidinous breakage and TrueCoat orthodoxy. Every unsanded plane in his big face makes me want to go eat spaghetti with Kim Basinger. He brings his killjoy of a wife to Sodom-by-the-sea and a swellegant restaurant that sells liquor. “The lady will have coffee,” Nelson huffs, “and I will have a cup of cold buttermilk”. Later he asks her if she’d like some butterscotch pudding—Alanna, watching with me: “does he just eat butter-stuff?” Then he smashes the maître d’s face in, which makes Mrs. Van Alden #wet. Another Sopranos power move.
As for Paz de la Huerta, our obstreperous Oompa-Loompa of late who apparently just lays around set all day til they call for her, does her one scene per episode, and then, I dunno, coathangers a fetus out of herself: she is large with Nelson-seed and v. much still in his life. (I didn’t use her character’s name, cause why. You know what the fuck’s up.) What could be really interesting is if the show becomes about Nucky and Nelson not as antagonists but as parallels, massaging their combined four main relationships like analog synths. The four of them are so interconnected anyway.
Now that the women have the right to vote there’s not much for them to do; Boardwalk Empire’s best feminist days might be already behind it. Maybe Margaret will still get her Peggy Olson on; she seems bored enough to. But Nucky’s staying out all night and she’s stuck between going backward sexually and going backward emotionally, buy 1 get 1 free at the Chris Rock store. I bet Jimmy’s mom has more Paris Green cans hidden under some coffee grounds and is willing to sell that shit off!
Is it weird that she kissed Jimmy’s little pecker when he was a baby? Gracious no, it’s 1921 and Oedipus the King hasn’t even been written yet, dummy. It’s weird that she told us, maybe.
