Hearing Carry Over

sightings, hygiene, seizures.

email: euphorianth@gmail.com

Twitter: @euphorianth
4 Jan 12
Filed under: boardwalk empire 

The Collected Boardwalk Empire

21

Ourselves Alone

A Dangerous Maid

What Does The Bee Do?

Gimcrack and Bunkum

The Age Of Reason

Peg Of Old

Two Boats and a Lifeguard

Battle of the Century

Georgia Peaches

Under God’s Power She Flourishes

To the Lost

14 Dec 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
To The Lost All those cute things we said Boardwalk Empire was about—father-son surrogacy, central place theory, Paz de la Huerta—were very cute but incidental. There were times in the first season when I thought Boardwalk Empire was the revviest show on, when its decade of choice actually looked all swellegant and roaring. In season two it’s like they tried to tear down the twenties retroactively. No youth, no liberation, no fun at all.  We forgot Boardwalk Empire is a gangster program. All it does is kill and eat. Jimmy Darmody knew it, why the fuck didn’t we? There are no clean getaways. Oh wait, that was the shitty tagline from Drive. But seriously. HBO has always been really good at patting down the patriarchy and at least detaining it. If you’re a male authority figure you can expect to do more than just take off your belt and shoes now and then. Boardwalk Empire basically did a double-elimination tournament with fathers and sons and their administrations past each other. Nucky effectively went on vacation during his father’s funeral. Jimmy killed his. Nucky killed Jimmy who kind of turned out to be not so much of a son, after all. Nucky doesn’t want kids, not really, because he could never afford to be challenged.  Religion diffused throughout the season like soft blue light. In the finale Manny Horwitz lurked under a synagogue like a semi-demolished demigod, taking requests. For her audience with Esther Rudolph, Margaret brought her priest along—he immediately got all entitled with Esther, who shut him down like a boss. I love her. All manners of faith, and not a single reasonable decision by any of these brain surgeons. I wonder if there’s a connection?  Nucky, channeling Adriana La Cerva’s future intestinal tract, decides he can cross Margaret off the list of witnesses against him by marrying her. Amazingly he doesn’t try to obscure the fact that he’s a master manipulator who wants only to save his own skin, and it’s still not the douchiest proposal I ever saw. At least he didn’t submerge a ring in a tumbler of illegal hooch. Margaret, after the mandatory three-day waiting period, accepts and somewhere Paz de la Huerta sits bolt upright in the bed where she just fucked a homeless transsexual mime and goes “NUCCKKKKYYY”.  On the wedding are interposed, Godfather-like, scenes of Jimmy and Richard going buck on the new treasurer. I really really wish people would stop doing this kind of homage. Oh right, we forgot this is a gangster show.  Jimmy going willing to his own killing party reminded me visually and conceptually of the L.A. Confidential denouement, when Russell Crowe arrives at the Victory Motel fully aware it’s a setup. “This is as good a place as any for it to end”, he tells Guy Pearce. The rainswept War Memorial didn’t just look like the statue level of Goldeneye, it was every bit as gutty and theatrical as a Michael Mann ending. Sometimes this show is as good-looking as JFK at Hyannisport. By sometimes I mean all the time. You could spend all your time looking at what’s in the background or foreground of a shot and not notice all the tropes lying around like tripwires. Just remember to step over them like the kids stepping over the cables in the Jurassic Park kitchen scene.  I am supposed to have an opinion on Jimmy’s death. Michael Pitt himself seems on the fence about it. Terrence Winter is pretending not to know what blackout drunk means. I don’t know? It’s like on Six Feet Under when the writers would spend every hiatus figuring out what to do with David and Keith—break them up again? Bust David back down to the chat rooms? At a certain point a fictional relationship, just like an IRL one, has been taken as far as it can go and that’s as much as I care to oversimplify it.  Angela’s death was worse because you could at least argue it was gratuitous, and in any case it was way more important as a signifier. When you look at Jimmy’s murder from Nucky’s point of view, it was inevitable, necessary, and no big deal. And if you’re not able to look at something from the main character’s point of view, you’re probably just trolling yourself.  The process of Jimmy getting his house in order came off brittle and rushy, but this is second-wave HBO. Darkly emotive is no longer the house brand. All the shows still glisten at a glance, but substances aren’t what they’re making anymore. Boardwalk Empire, for its part, won’t ever stop being gesturalist. Why should it? Terrence Winter’s place on television, like Matthew Weiner’s, is legacy manifest. It’s more patriarchy but at least they know it. 

To The Lost

All those cute things we said Boardwalk Empire was about—father-son surrogacy, central place theory, Paz de la Huerta—were very cute but incidental. There were times in the first season when I thought Boardwalk Empire was the revviest show on, when its decade of choice actually looked all swellegant and roaring. In season two it’s like they tried to tear down the twenties retroactively. No youth, no liberation, no fun at all. 

We forgot Boardwalk Empire is a gangster program. All it does is kill and eat. Jimmy Darmody knew it, why the fuck didn’t we? There are no clean getaways. Oh wait, that was the shitty tagline from Drive. But seriously.

HBO has always been really good at patting down the patriarchy and at least detaining it. If you’re a male authority figure you can expect to do more than just take off your belt and shoes now and then. Boardwalk Empire basically did a double-elimination tournament with fathers and sons and their administrations past each other. Nucky effectively went on vacation during his father’s funeral. Jimmy killed his. Nucky killed Jimmy who kind of turned out to be not so much of a son, after all. Nucky doesn’t want kids, not really, because he could never afford to be challenged. 

Religion diffused throughout the season like soft blue light. In the finale Manny Horwitz lurked under a synagogue like a semi-demolished demigod, taking requests. For her audience with Esther Rudolph, Margaret brought her priest along—he immediately got all entitled with Esther, who shut him down like a boss. I love her. All manners of faith, and not a single reasonable decision by any of these brain surgeons. I wonder if there’s a connection? 

Nucky, channeling Adriana La Cerva’s future intestinal tract, decides he can cross Margaret off the list of witnesses against him by marrying her. Amazingly he doesn’t try to obscure the fact that he’s a master manipulator who wants only to save his own skin, and it’s still not the douchiest proposal I ever saw. At least he didn’t submerge a ring in a tumbler of illegal hooch. Margaret, after the mandatory three-day waiting period, accepts and somewhere Paz de la Huerta sits bolt upright in the bed where she just fucked a homeless transsexual mime and goes “NUCCKKKKYYY”. 

On the wedding are interposed, Godfather-like, scenes of Jimmy and Richard going buck on the new treasurer. I really really wish people would stop doing this kind of homage. Oh right, we forgot this is a gangster show. 

Jimmy going willing to his own killing party reminded me visually and conceptually of the L.A. Confidential denouement, when Russell Crowe arrives at the Victory Motel fully aware it’s a setup. “This is as good a place as any for it to end”, he tells Guy Pearce. The rainswept War Memorial didn’t just look like the statue level of Goldeneye, it was every bit as gutty and theatrical as a Michael Mann ending. Sometimes this show is as good-looking as JFK at Hyannisport. By sometimes I mean all the time. You could spend all your time looking at what’s in the background or foreground of a shot and not notice all the tropes lying around like tripwires. Just remember to step over them like the kids stepping over the cables in the Jurassic Park kitchen scene. 

I am supposed to have an opinion on Jimmy’s death. Michael Pitt himself seems on the fence about it. Terrence Winter is pretending not to know what blackout drunk means. I don’t know? It’s like on Six Feet Under when the writers would spend every hiatus figuring out what to do with David and Keith—break them up again? Bust David back down to the chat rooms? At a certain point a fictional relationship, just like an IRL one, has been taken as far as it can go and that’s as much as I care to oversimplify it. 

Angela’s death was worse because you could at least argue it was gratuitous, and in any case it was way more important as a signifier. When you look at Jimmy’s murder from Nucky’s point of view, it was inevitable, necessary, and no big deal. And if you’re not able to look at something from the main character’s point of view, you’re probably just trolling yourself. 

The process of Jimmy getting his house in order came off brittle and rushy, but this is second-wave HBO. Darkly emotive is no longer the house brand. All the shows still glisten at a glance, but substances aren’t what they’re making anymore. Boardwalk Empire, for its part, won’t ever stop being gesturalist. Why should it? Terrence Winter’s place on television, like Matthew Weiner’s, is legacy manifest. It’s more patriarchy but at least they know it. 

7 Dec 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Under God’s Power She Flourishes Incest has a high history on HBO. To review: on Six Feet Under Billy & Brenda Chenowith branded each other’s names on each other’s backs like in that song; Billy finally got fresh after which they were officially estranged for awhile; then she jerked him off in a queasy dream sequence that left Michael C. Hall and Lauren Ambrose hilariously appalled, like old dentists’ wives, on the DVD commentary. Tony Soprano dealt with his Oedipal preoccupations the correct way: pillow over face! Or would have, had it worked out. On Deadwood, E.B, or the actor playing him, anachronistically dropped “motherfucker” and they left it in. Game Of Thrones: fuck yeah, Negro! That’s all you had to say! But you have to go deep HBO to find the closest antecedent to what happened on Boardwalk Empire this week. On the polarity that was John From Cincinnati, there was the surfing prodigy whose grandparents raised him w/o telling him his mother was a porn star. Which he found out anyway. Incestwave isn’t just for foul bachelor frog macros anymore. It’s all over the subtext of Shame and it happened before our eyes in something like real time on a major mainstream tv show. We can no longer hide the consumer leverage ratio of all our souls. Moreover, there’s a nasty trend on HBO in the recent post-Classic era to, if you have a weak idea, bet the whole thing on the visual. Actual sex between Jimmy and his mom who looks like Gretchen Mol was always better implied, and the implication itself was only ever interesting if you wanted it to be. But no, we have to be taken aside and shown every damn thing like we’re cunts. HBO, you sad whore: look at your game, girl! In the words of Margaret Schroeder, your cunny’s not the draw ya think it is. The flashback scenes at Princeton were kind of awesome though. They were like a Fincheresque Fitzgerald story w/o a zombie Forrest Gump. Jimmy, we are told, read non-SparkNoted Webster and was war-averse, until he got drunk and fucked his mom. Then, enlistment! Is this why all those sixteen-year-old lads lied about their age to get in after Pearl Harbor, really? Back in the present, Jimmy is gumming heroin like a fish to get away from Angela’s death, about which (the death) Gretchen Mol is impossibly catty. She suggests Jimmy and Angela’s son might not even remember his mother. At which point Jimmy goes the full McMurphy on Nurse Ratched, repeating “I’ll remember, I’ll remember” like a TL crackhead, until the commodore proves himself to be a remarkably spry stroke victim. That scene more than the incest was the most fully Eugene O’ Neill to me; I was wondering when this most Irish of shows would get around to honoring the GOAT. Earlier in the season the death of the commodore would have led this recap; now I barely remember it. But that scene was so O’Neill/Sam Shepard. It was Martin Van Buren’s birthday last week. Where the hell is Uncle Junior? He must be getting like, barely above guild for all the screen time he’s gotten. What was the point of that casting, exactly? Nelson, new divorcée, turns down a criminal conspiracy and turns states’, forgetting that when you murder someone, it best not involve so great a cloud of witnesses. Now he’s on the lam which means he could spend the whole finale eating condensed milk sandwiches and skulking through evidence rooms, trying to stick Nucky. But if the Previously On doesn’t feature Paz prominently, I’m canceling my subscription because that’s way worse than wincest.

Under God’s Power She Flourishes

Incest has a high history on HBO. To review: on Six Feet Under Billy & Brenda Chenowith branded each other’s names on each other’s backs like in that song; Billy finally got fresh after which they were officially estranged for awhile; then she jerked him off in a queasy dream sequence that left Michael C. Hall and Lauren Ambrose hilariously appalled, like old dentists’ wives, on the DVD commentary.

Tony Soprano dealt with his Oedipal preoccupations the correct way: pillow over face! Or would have, had it worked out.

On Deadwood, E.B, or the actor playing him, anachronistically dropped “motherfucker” and they left it in.

Game Of Thrones: fuck yeah, Negro! That’s all you had to say!

But you have to go deep HBO to find the closest antecedent to what happened on Boardwalk Empire this week. On the polarity that was John From Cincinnati, there was the surfing prodigy whose grandparents raised him w/o telling him his mother was a porn star. Which he found out anyway.

Incestwave isn’t just for foul bachelor frog macros anymore. It’s all over the subtext of Shame and it happened before our eyes in something like real time on a major mainstream tv show. We can no longer hide the consumer leverage ratio of all our souls.

Moreover, there’s a nasty trend on HBO in the recent post-Classic era to, if you have a weak idea, bet the whole thing on the visual. Actual sex between Jimmy and his mom who looks like Gretchen Mol was always better implied, and the implication itself was only ever interesting if you wanted it to be. But no, we have to be taken aside and shown every damn thing like we’re cunts. HBO, you sad whore: look at your game, girl! In the words of Margaret Schroeder, your cunny’s not the draw ya think it is.

The flashback scenes at Princeton were kind of awesome though. They were like a Fincheresque Fitzgerald story w/o a zombie Forrest Gump. Jimmy, we are told, read non-SparkNoted Webster and was war-averse, until he got drunk and fucked his mom. Then, enlistment! Is this why all those sixteen-year-old lads lied about their age to get in after Pearl Harbor, really?

Back in the present, Jimmy is gumming heroin like a fish to get away from Angela’s death, about which (the death) Gretchen Mol is impossibly catty. She suggests Jimmy and Angela’s son might not even remember his mother. At which point Jimmy goes the full McMurphy on Nurse Ratched, repeating “I’ll remember, I’ll remember” like a TL crackhead, until the commodore proves himself to be a remarkably spry stroke victim.

That scene more than the incest was the most fully Eugene O’ Neill to me; I was wondering when this most Irish of shows would get around to honoring the GOAT. Earlier in the season the death of the commodore would have led this recap; now I barely remember it. But that scene was so O’Neill/Sam Shepard.

It was Martin Van Buren’s birthday last week. Where the hell is Uncle Junior? He must be getting like, barely above guild for all the screen time he’s gotten. What was the point of that casting, exactly?

Nelson, new divorcée, turns down a criminal conspiracy and turns states’, forgetting that when you murder someone, it best not involve so great a cloud of witnesses. Now he’s on the lam which means he could spend the whole finale eating condensed milk sandwiches and skulking through evidence rooms, trying to stick Nucky. But if the Previously On doesn’t feature Paz prominently, I’m canceling my subscription because that’s way worse than wincest.

30 Nov 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Georgia Peaches Spoiler galoshes on? Okay. Angela dies. Among the last words Jimmy says to her are: “I know there are things you think about me that you’re afraid to say”. Fleetingly, it turns out, they were one of television’s great conflicted couples: a mediocre artist and better mom banished to an archipelago of anguish by the once and future king who wouldn’t even marry her, lest he languish in the closet forever. This greatest theory of all, Jimmy’s gayness, may yet flourish. But at what fucking cost? One angle, the really progressive one, is HBO pushing Jimmy in a more unmitigatedly-Harrowian direction. The other is that they just executed the lesbians. Really, you guys? I was always whatever about Boardwalk Empire having a woman problem, any more than every show has a woman problem or the whole world has a woman problem. Now I can’t decide if that shit was deliberate or if Angela’s undignified death is shambolic retroactivity at work, a period-perfect excuse for the show not to take any responsibility for itself. Women lived and died hard in the ol backin days, is that the ontology we’re doing business with?  I am ruffled.  Manny Horvitz is still my favorite new character. His hair is steamrolled straight down the middle and if butchers have acumen, he’s got it in kilovolts. He is also a slab of beef you have to cook all the way through, get me? Jimmy Darmody doesn’t.  Jimmy’s like, the worst heir apparent ever. Is there a resource he hasn’t misallocated or decision he hasn’t fucked up? Chris Moltisanti, is that you? We’re going to find Jimmy in a hotel kitchen somewhere, shot by a stranger, and the only thing missing will be the rosary.  Mass wasn’t rewritten soon enough to save Margaret from the world’s most hilarious case of misplaced guilt. After being taunted by her own son, who fakes no feeling in his legs and clearly has none in the rest of him either, she takes a grip of Nucky’s cash and deposits it at the nearest rectory. The priest is like “this is unorthodox” while eyeing the dough like it wouldn’t melt in his mouth. If all Margaret wants is to be absolved of Nucky, why doesn’t she leave his thieving ass altogether? Oh right, bennies.  Technically we’re supposed to validate Margaret despite her Anne Neville vibes. She wants her kids to be taken care of and Nucky is genuinely good with them. But her freaky Beyonce streak from season one is about to peter the fuck out, honestly.  The last shot of Jimmy and the Entering Princeton sign is about the loneliest thing I ever saw. Steady, boychik. 

Georgia Peaches

Spoiler galoshes on? Okay. Angela dies. Among the last words Jimmy says to her are: “I know there are things you think about me that you’re afraid to say”. Fleetingly, it turns out, they were one of television’s great conflicted couples: a mediocre artist and better mom banished to an archipelago of anguish by the once and future king who wouldn’t even marry her, lest he languish in the closet forever.

This greatest theory of all, Jimmy’s gayness, may yet flourish. But at what fucking cost? One angle, the really progressive one, is HBO pushing Jimmy in a more unmitigatedly-Harrowian direction. The other is that they just executed the lesbians. Really, you guys?

I was always whatever about Boardwalk Empire having a woman problem, any more than every show has a woman problem or the whole world has a woman problem. Now I can’t decide if that shit was deliberate or if Angela’s undignified death is shambolic retroactivity at work, a period-perfect excuse for the show not to take any responsibility for itself. Women lived and died hard in the ol backin days, is that the ontology we’re doing business with? 

I am ruffled. 

Manny Horvitz is still my favorite new character. His hair is steamrolled straight down the middle and if butchers have acumen, he’s got it in kilovolts. He is also a slab of beef you have to cook all the way through, get me? Jimmy Darmody doesn’t. 

Jimmy’s like, the worst heir apparent ever. Is there a resource he hasn’t misallocated or decision he hasn’t fucked up? Chris Moltisanti, is that you? We’re going to find Jimmy in a hotel kitchen somewhere, shot by a stranger, and the only thing missing will be the rosary. 

Mass wasn’t rewritten soon enough to save Margaret from the world’s most hilarious case of misplaced guilt. After being taunted by her own son, who fakes no feeling in his legs and clearly has none in the rest of him either, she takes a grip of Nucky’s cash and deposits it at the nearest rectory. The priest is like “this is unorthodox” while eyeing the dough like it wouldn’t melt in his mouth. If all Margaret wants is to be absolved of Nucky, why doesn’t she leave his thieving ass altogether? Oh right, bennies. 

Technically we’re supposed to validate Margaret despite her Anne Neville vibes. She wants her kids to be taken care of and Nucky is genuinely good with them. But her freaky Beyonce streak from season one is about to peter the fuck out, honestly. 

The last shot of Jimmy and the Entering Princeton sign is about the loneliest thing I ever saw. Steady, boychik. 

23 Nov 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Battle of the Century It’s the central place theory episode. It’s easy to forget Boardwalk Empire is a show about a consumer service, what with the garrotings and cloven skulls and all. I bet there’s a piece going up on Slate right now, or better yet Grantland, computing range and threshold as applied to the Atlantic City booze business. Nucky Thompson, now that he’s officially retired, is free to compute his own range, or at least invert the principle. Which means packing some machine guns, like he’s in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, and bustling off to Belfast. Owen goes with him; fortunately for Nucky they go by steamship not helicopter. You’d think Nucky would make the same kind of self-exploratory hajj Margaret did, but he pays about as much attention to all the heritage around him as Ryan Bingham would. The show really sports being in Ireland, though; accents on top of more accents, excellent use of panoramics at the port, and the glorious scene where Nucky’s in the car and a shot rings out from the vacated estate behind him, like a Carol Reed movie or something. Richard Harrow—are the writers trying to Joshua Speed him? Was it too late historically in 1921 for straight-identified men to amicably sleep together and mess the Kinsey scale all to hell? If there’s an archive somewhere for Jimmy Darmody’s letters and personal effects would we find confusing evidence about the prince of Atlantic City? It’s fanfic-y but when Jimmy said “he’s with me” and encircled Richard’s shoulders with a languid arm, my subtext reader opened up and said Ah. What they did with the Dempsey fight is purely fascinating, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it recently. Teasing it out as a prolonged plot point and then resorting to all negative space, the formally-dressed crowds around the radio, the call of the knockout blending over the end credits: that was like some really astute DJ shit. Nucky isn’t present for it like it’s his father’s funeral and it’s hard to say which is more surprising. Esther Rudolph is such a hardass. I love it. When female characters are ballbreakers it’s usually not from such a woman’s pov, so it makes sense. You get little glimpses of what Esther probably put up with both to get and keep that job and she starts to look really exquisite. It helps that Julianne Nicholson has mad Samantha Morton/Natalie Portman vibes. It’s about to get real hard to get a decent cheeseburger at AC luxury hotels. The glorified slaves who make them don’t have a CBA, and they definitely don’t want an extra round of playoffs. I like how Nucky, who called this tune, plans to improve their quality of life while also totally mercilessly taking advantage of them himself. It’s like when Schwarzenegger used to oppose gay marriage except when he went on Leno.  Nucky says he doesn’t like secrets and now that he’s secured relations with the Northern Irish, he kind of needs Owen like he needs polio. Oops. Too soon?  Paz is back on a milk carton. Have you seen this PPD candidate? 

Battle of the Century

It’s the central place theory episode. It’s easy to forget Boardwalk Empire is a show about a consumer service, what with the garrotings and cloven skulls and all. I bet there’s a piece going up on Slate right now, or better yet Grantland, computing range and threshold as applied to the Atlantic City booze business. Nucky Thompson, now that he’s officially retired, is free to compute his own range, or at least invert the principle. Which means packing some machine guns, like he’s in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, and bustling off to Belfast. Owen goes with him; fortunately for Nucky they go by steamship not helicopter.

You’d think Nucky would make the same kind of self-exploratory hajj Margaret did, but he pays about as much attention to all the heritage around him as Ryan Bingham would. The show really sports being in Ireland, though; accents on top of more accents, excellent use of panoramics at the port, and the glorious scene where Nucky’s in the car and a shot rings out from the vacated estate behind him, like a Carol Reed movie or something.

Richard Harrow—are the writers trying to Joshua Speed him? Was it too late historically in 1921 for straight-identified men to amicably sleep together and mess the Kinsey scale all to hell? If there’s an archive somewhere for Jimmy Darmody’s letters and personal effects would we find confusing evidence about the prince of Atlantic City? It’s fanfic-y but when Jimmy said “he’s with me” and encircled Richard’s shoulders with a languid arm, my subtext reader opened up and said Ah.

What they did with the Dempsey fight is purely fascinating, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it recently. Teasing it out as a prolonged plot point and then resorting to all negative space, the formally-dressed crowds around the radio, the call of the knockout blending over the end credits: that was like some really astute DJ shit. Nucky isn’t present for it like it’s his father’s funeral and it’s hard to say which is more surprising.

Esther Rudolph is such a hardass. I love it. When female characters are ballbreakers it’s usually not from such a woman’s pov, so it makes sense. You get little glimpses of what Esther probably put up with both to get and keep that job and she starts to look really exquisite. It helps that Julianne Nicholson has mad Samantha Morton/Natalie Portman vibes.

It’s about to get real hard to get a decent cheeseburger at AC luxury hotels. The glorified slaves who make them don’t have a CBA, and they definitely don’t want an extra round of playoffs. I like how Nucky, who called this tune, plans to improve their quality of life while also totally mercilessly taking advantage of them himself. It’s like when Schwarzenegger used to oppose gay marriage except when he went on Leno. 

Nucky says he doesn’t like secrets and now that he’s secured relations with the Northern Irish, he kind of needs Owen like he needs polio. Oops. Too soon? 

Paz is back on a milk carton. Have you seen this PPD candidate? 

16 Nov 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Two Boats & A Lifeguard Nucky’s dream sequence was another compact piece of Sopranos recidivism, all staring faces and addictive ephemera. Added to which, Nucky and Eli celebrate the death of David Chase with fantastic aplomb, adding another thread to the most fascinating cycle of creative incest since Kant and the Rationalists. How does Matthew Weiner like being Eli in this scenario, one wonders? “You’ve obviously forgotten key events from our childhood” Nucky says dryly. Eli responds by saying it’s okay because now he knows how Mad Men will end. Angela goes to the beach for the single most King Of Marvin Gardens stretch since the Scorsese opener: umbrellas, billboards, frolic. Miranda July is there with her hemline not near enough to the mandated 7” from the knee. Some lady cop, a real proto-Eleanor Roosevelt, cites her for it. Angela finds herself drawn to this creature and her artisanal ways and soon they are making out at the launch party for a movie starring a talking cat. Nelson hilariously hires a nanny. She’s German or something; the twenties were one big immigrant yacht party. More accents than a Chinese phone book, and still all Nelson wants to do is order a tongue sandwich in Latin. Nucky decides he wants Margaret’s urchins to start calling him Dad. We know this because he says to them “I’d like you to start calling me Dad” while they’re sitting around playing Trivial Pursuit. Remember last week when I called the war for Nucky? Yeah, no. Apparently Nucky likes the unseen alternate ending to Gladiator in which Maximus survives his wound and gives Rome back to the people, defying the expectations of Senator Francis Bacon. But Nucky’s abdication isn’t on the up & up. He will lead from behind, like Obama I guess. As for Jimmy, I can just see the boy king brooding in that manse strewn with stuffed bears, being in drag and smoking, then killing himself in the greenhouse to save grunge by destroying it. Throwing the creepy guy who laughs like Richard Widmark over the railing was like the last spoiled fit of a platinum-selling has-been. So I ask you this, BE babies: is the heeling of Jimmy Darmody complete? His wistful doorknob moment with Nucky would indicate not, except his really bad victory speech says he’s feeling the Jimmy Cagney vibes hard and won’t stop til the top o’ the world, ma.

Two Boats & A Lifeguard

Nucky’s dream sequence was another compact piece of Sopranos recidivism, all staring faces and addictive ephemera. Added to which, Nucky and Eli celebrate the death of David Chase with fantastic aplomb, adding another thread to the most fascinating cycle of creative incest since Kant and the Rationalists. How does Matthew Weiner like being Eli in this scenario, one wonders? “You’ve obviously forgotten key events from our childhood” Nucky says dryly. Eli responds by saying it’s okay because now he knows how Mad Men will end.

Angela goes to the beach for the single most King Of Marvin Gardens stretch since the Scorsese opener: umbrellas, billboards, frolic. Miranda July is there with her hemline not near enough to the mandated 7” from the knee. Some lady cop, a real proto-Eleanor Roosevelt, cites her for it. Angela finds herself drawn to this creature and her artisanal ways and soon they are making out at the launch party for a movie starring a talking cat.

Nelson hilariously hires a nanny. She’s German or something; the twenties were one big immigrant yacht party. More accents than a Chinese phone book, and still all Nelson wants to do is order a tongue sandwich in Latin.

Nucky decides he wants Margaret’s urchins to start calling him Dad. We know this because he says to them “I’d like you to start calling me Dad” while they’re sitting around playing Trivial Pursuit.

Remember last week when I called the war for Nucky? Yeah, no. Apparently Nucky likes the unseen alternate ending to Gladiator in which Maximus survives his wound and gives Rome back to the people, defying the expectations of Senator Francis Bacon. But Nucky’s abdication isn’t on the up & up. He will lead from behind, like Obama I guess.

As for Jimmy, I can just see the boy king brooding in that manse strewn with stuffed bears, being in drag and smoking, then killing himself in the greenhouse to save grunge by destroying it. Throwing the creepy guy who laughs like Richard Widmark over the railing was like the last spoiled fit of a platinum-selling has-been.

So I ask you this, BE babies: is the heeling of Jimmy Darmody complete? His wistful doorknob moment with Nucky would indicate not, except his really bad victory speech says he’s feeling the Jimmy Cagney vibes hard and won’t stop til the top o’ the world, ma.

9 Nov 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Peg of Old Another thing we have learned: Jimmy Darmody didn’t watch Game of Thrones! You can’t put out a hit on the putative main character of a show on the same network that let Ned Stark’s head roll, and expect it to work. Jimmy may have gone all football coach-y and insisted it’s not whether you’re right or wrong, it’s whether you can make a decision; but he’s clearly no Vince Lombardi. He can’t even see the whole field.I’m really disappointed with Jimmy’s leadership. Chris Moltisanti, may he rot in peace, at least knew enough through all his machinations to only talk to Adrienna about killing the boss. Jimmy clicked on the Whack Nucky link as soon as it hit his inbox without even thinking about password security. Eli Thompson, phishing extraordinaire!I’m calling this war already. Without knowing yet what Arnold Rothstein will do, or to what extent Gretchen Mol will continue to live in Jimmy’s inner ear, or what it all means for Chalky White’s bonus, there’s no way Nucky Thompson is not still running Atlantic City this time next season. Nothing gets more obvious faster than a failed coup.Speaking of identity theft, Margaret’s real name is Peggy Olson! I swear Winter & Weiner are on some Jacob & Esau shit. Imagine Matthew Weiner with goatskin panels on his forearms and you not only have a really good belated Halloween costume you were really good at Sunday school. This is why The Sopranos still matters—see also: last week’s recap. The Sopranos is the thawing permafrost of recent television history; it releases more oxygen over a wider area than the fucking rainforest.This thing with Margaret is also the plot of every Louis L’Amour Western ever: Irish person comes over from Skibbereen or wherever and is forced to live more or less on the lam, ducking the law on one side and cartoonic prejudices on the other. When Margaret goes to Brooklyn to eat potatoes with her secret other family it’s got none of the seascape glamour of Don Draper’s California getaways. Her roots are ripped out in front of us all muddy and gangly. Just like that, this is a show equally about Margaret. I can’t tell if the neutralization of Nucky has been totally intentional due to the investigation plot or if they’re just trading up to get Kelly MacDonald into the lead actress Emmys. But she’s now officially a Carmella, not a Dr. Melfi. Which is why she really really shouldn’t be fucking the help. Still: Owen is so way more Irish than Nucky is, and is a fully functional member of the 88.4%, and has a hugely functional member. (I loved Margaret’s gaspiness but I wish she’d have done a Julianne Moore in The Kids Are Alright—welll…helLO!)Margaret’s chief difficulty with Nucky is his apathy, which is kind of Protestant-y of him, and the way his apathy settles over her own guilt like a cloud. She’s guilting for two right now, and at least with Owen she can still smell the blood on his hands. Nucky can’t stop washing his.Nucky’s attempt to turn Van Alden was about as effective as the U.S. incentivizing farmers in Afghanistan to switch from heroin to wheat. Van Alden’s like, well no cause now I get to use my big dossier on you while not jeopardizing my job! Thx though.Nucky knows the exact date he quit fucking Pax de la Huerta. Wouldn’t you?

Peg of Old

Another thing we have learned: Jimmy Darmody didn’t watch Game of Thrones! You can’t put out a hit on the putative main character of a show on the same network that let Ned Stark’s head roll, and expect it to work. Jimmy may have gone all football coach-y and insisted it’s not whether you’re right or wrong, it’s whether you can make a decision; but he’s clearly no Vince Lombardi. He can’t even see the whole field.

I’m really disappointed with Jimmy’s leadership. Chris Moltisanti, may he rot in peace, at least knew enough through all his machinations to only talk to Adrienna about killing the boss. Jimmy clicked on the Whack Nucky link as soon as it hit his inbox without even thinking about password security. Eli Thompson, phishing extraordinaire!

I’m calling this war already. Without knowing yet what Arnold Rothstein will do, or to what extent Gretchen Mol will continue to live in Jimmy’s inner ear, or what it all means for Chalky White’s bonus, there’s no way Nucky Thompson is not still running Atlantic City this time next season. Nothing gets more obvious faster than a failed coup.

Speaking of identity theft, Margaret’s real name is Peggy Olson! I swear Winter & Weiner are on some Jacob & Esau shit. Imagine Matthew Weiner with goatskin panels on his forearms and you not only have a really good belated Halloween costume you were really good at Sunday school. This is why The Sopranos still matters—see also: last week’s recap. The Sopranos is the thawing permafrost of recent television history; it releases more oxygen over a wider area than the fucking rainforest.

This thing with Margaret is also the plot of every Louis L’Amour Western ever: Irish person comes over from Skibbereen or wherever and is forced to live more or less on the lam, ducking the law on one side and cartoonic prejudices on the other. When Margaret goes to Brooklyn to eat potatoes with her secret other family it’s got none of the seascape glamour of Don Draper’s California getaways. Her roots are ripped out in front of us all muddy and gangly. Just like that, this is a show equally about Margaret.

I can’t tell if the neutralization of Nucky has been totally intentional due to the investigation plot or if they’re just trading up to get Kelly MacDonald into the lead actress Emmys. But she’s now officially a Carmella, not a Dr. Melfi. Which is why she really really shouldn’t be fucking the help. Still: Owen is so way more Irish than Nucky is, and is a fully functional member of the 88.4%, and has a hugely functional member. (I loved Margaret’s gaspiness but I wish she’d have done a Julianne Moore in The Kids Are Alright—welll…helLO!)

Margaret’s chief difficulty with Nucky is his apathy, which is kind of Protestant-y of him, and the way his apathy settles over her own guilt like a cloud. She’s guilting for two right now, and at least with Owen she can still smell the blood on his hands. Nucky can’t stop washing his.

Nucky’s attempt to turn Van Alden was about as effective as the U.S. incentivizing farmers in Afghanistan to switch from heroin to wheat. Van Alden’s like, well no cause now I get to use my big dossier on you while not jeopardizing my job! Thx though.

Nucky knows the exact date he quit fucking Pax de la Huerta. Wouldn’t you?


2 Nov 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
The Age Of Reason The blessed event has arrived! Paz has brought forth a child into the world. And it’s Hugh Grant’s! Paz will make an excellent mother and one day will insist her daughter, who has Michael Pitt’s eyes, is no It Girl.  If the above paragraph is too much pop incest 4 U, you may want to get another show. Boardwalk Empire has turned into a surprise holodeck of references that transcends the time difference. That it’s acquiring its own range of viral personality is just irony; all those surprisingly good Richard Harrow costumes are straight out of Descartes.  After another season or so it’ll be real interesting to see if BE begins to autocannibalize. There’s still not a lot of story! It’s just a string of themes and forms that shine and reflect off each other. This is no indictment of the show’s quality, just of how hard it is to pin down.  Dominic Chianese was on the program again this week, w/ actual lines! Did you know Martin Van Buren was of Dutch descent (but was not an Afrikaaner), led the country during a recession (but was not born in Kenya), and was beaten in his reelection campaign by the Afghan Whigs? I wonder if Herman Cain watches this show when he’s not back & forth between Fox News and the Wikipedia channel.  Margaret has decided Nucky is watching too much porn; that NYMag piece from last winter is blowing minds back in time now. Blow Minds, Not Loads would be an excellent tagline for HBO if it weren’t completely not what HBO is about. Still, if you’ve never seen a man hit in the erection by a thrown green lace-up shoe, call your cable provider.  Margaret has also decided she rather fancies the smarmy Irish manservant. Call it the Furio Dilemma. Nucky better stay away from helicopters.  These showrunners and their religious guilt. David Chase laundered his through the umbrage of Tony Soprano. Matthew Weiner, a Jew, was so in denial about his that he cast Colin Hanks as a guitar-playing priest. Terence Winter is a lawyer of no Googleable denomination, I don’t know what his problem is. But as Boardwalk Empire digs itself deeper into Catholic debt, all the Irish poisons amok, we may find out. Wiener and Winter are Chase surrogates with the same manic obsessive recesses. The Sopranos lives forever in both of them, and in both shows. Boardwalk Empire has a little farther to go, but season two is already way dark with the kind of nicked faith Graham Greene kept in Mason jars.    “He loves the Lord, sir” Nelson Van Alden asserts as to why that poor english patient won’t die. He goes on to spout that thing about prayed-for patients faring better than non-, but we know Nelson’s faith is a con, a cover-up for the part of him that wants to decapitate water-closet taggers and treat his wife like a third-world country and fuck girls like Paz de la Huerta. We believe in you, Nelson, but only cause your chin is so chuckable. You, too, have a little farther to go.

The Age Of Reason


The blessed event has arrived! Paz has brought forth a child into the world. And it’s Hugh Grant’s! Paz will make an excellent mother and one day will insist her daughter, who has Michael Pitt’s eyes, is no It Girl. 

If the above paragraph is too much pop incest 4 U, you may want to get another show. Boardwalk Empire has turned into a surprise holodeck of references that transcends the time difference. That it’s acquiring its own range of viral personality is just irony; all those surprisingly good Richard Harrow costumes are straight out of Descartes. 

After another season or so it’ll be real interesting to see if BE begins to autocannibalize. There’s still not a lot of story! It’s just a string of themes and forms that shine and reflect off each other. This is no indictment of the show’s quality, just of how hard it is to pin down. 

Dominic Chianese was on the program again this week, w/ actual lines! Did you know Martin Van Buren was of Dutch descent (but was not an Afrikaaner), led the country during a recession (but was not born in Kenya), and was beaten in his reelection campaign by the Afghan Whigs? I wonder if Herman Cain watches this show when he’s not back & forth between Fox News and the Wikipedia channel. 

Margaret has decided Nucky is watching too much porn; that NYMag piece from last winter is blowing minds back in time now. Blow Minds, Not Loads would be an excellent tagline for HBO if it weren’t completely not what HBO is about. Still, if you’ve never seen a man hit in the erection by a thrown green lace-up shoe, call your cable provider. 

Margaret has also decided she rather fancies the smarmy Irish manservant. Call it the Furio Dilemma. Nucky better stay away from helicopters. 

These showrunners and their religious guilt. David Chase laundered his through the umbrage of Tony Soprano. Matthew Weiner, a Jew, was so in denial about his that he cast Colin Hanks as a guitar-playing priest. Terence Winter is a lawyer of no Googleable denomination, I don’t know what his problem is. But as Boardwalk Empire digs itself deeper into Catholic debt, all the Irish poisons amok, we may find out. Wiener and Winter are Chase surrogates with the same manic obsessive recesses. The Sopranos lives forever in both of them, and in both shows. Boardwalk Empire has a little farther to go, but season two is already way dark with the kind of nicked faith Graham Greene kept in Mason jars.   

“He loves the Lord, sir” Nelson Van Alden asserts as to why that poor english patient won’t die. He goes on to spout that thing about prayed-for patients faring better than non-, but we know Nelson’s faith is a con, a cover-up for the part of him that wants to decapitate water-closet taggers and treat his wife like a third-world country and fuck girls like Paz de la Huerta. We believe in you, Nelson, but only cause your chin is so chuckable. You, too, have a little farther to go.

26 Oct 11
Filed under: boardwalk empire 
Gimcrack & Bunkum Before Richard Harrow the last person I saw pasting fastidious images into a book was the English Patient, who also had a demolished face and suicidal thoughts. All Richard needs is some syringes and tins of condensed milk and he’s in an Italian villa, winning Oscars. Don’t do it, Richard. You’ve got so much left to live for. Plus that old Indian fighter isn’t going to scalp himself. I’m glad I watched Pelts last night, otherwise all the surprise gore this episode might have been upsetting. As it was I got to see maybe the first-ever blood spit-take—I bet Game of Thrones is itching to get back on the air now! That was a real freshet of blood to try to outdo. Harrow’s melancholy is surprising me by how much I like it, even if intrinsically it’s no surprise. He’s a looser, less finite version of Officer Bud White; I suspect his being Jimmy’s man is not long for his conscience. Beating on people is bound to be bilious, if only because he’s a sharpshooter, used to working at a physical/emotional distance. Apparently that squirrel-roasting jake in the woods didn’t want Richard to ritually kill himself there because it’s only for killing animals? I wonder how he feels about Adrienna’s body being buried nearby. Elsewhere in Jersey anachronicity, Nucky and Eli got into a fight! A really good one, with minimal stunt doubling and Nucky looking particularly feral. On the great HBO fight scale it falls somewhere between Tony Soprano v. Baccala, which it resembled tonally, and Dan Dority v. Captain Turner, which it resembled structurally. HBO really is trolling itself w/ this show, even w/o much of Uncle Junior as President Martin Van Buren yet.  Honestly I just want to know what Nelson’s up to, and if he’s ID’d the w.c. perp yet. There’s a bar in the lower Haight he really really should not try to pee in.

Gimcrack & Bunkum

Before Richard Harrow the last person I saw pasting fastidious images into a book was the English Patient, who also had a demolished face and suicidal thoughts. All Richard needs is some syringes and tins of condensed milk and he’s in an Italian villa, winning Oscars. Don’t do it, Richard. You’ve got so much left to live for. Plus that old Indian fighter isn’t going to scalp himself.

I’m glad I watched Pelts last night, otherwise all the surprise gore this episode might have been upsetting. As it was I got to see maybe the first-ever blood spit-take—I bet Game of Thrones is itching to get back on the air now! That was a real freshet of blood to try to outdo.

Harrow’s melancholy is surprising me by how much I like it, even if intrinsically it’s no surprise. He’s a looser, less finite version of Officer Bud White; I suspect his being Jimmy’s man is not long for his conscience. Beating on people is bound to be bilious, if only because he’s a sharpshooter, used to working at a physical/emotional distance.

Apparently that squirrel-roasting jake in the woods didn’t want Richard to ritually kill himself there because it’s only for killing animals? I wonder how he feels about Adrienna’s body being buried nearby.

Elsewhere in Jersey anachronicity, Nucky and Eli got into a fight! A really good one, with minimal stunt doubling and Nucky looking particularly feral. On the great HBO fight scale it falls somewhere between Tony Soprano v. Baccala, which it resembled tonally, and Dan Dority v. Captain Turner, which it resembled structurally. HBO really is trolling itself w/ this show, even w/o much of Uncle Junior as President Martin Van Buren yet. 

Honestly I just want to know what Nelson’s up to, and if he’s ID’d the w.c. perp yet. There’s a bar in the lower Haight he really really should not try to pee in.

Next »   Designed by Sam Paro