Episode One of the new season aired last night. Any reactions?
Omar–I mean Chalky–is a bad ass. I’m glad they showed him vulnerable and afraid when the klansman pointed the shotgun in his face. Of course 10 seconds later he’s picking off a klansman from a moving truck.
Half-face(Harrow?) is shaping up to be a delightfully creepy character. Pasting pictures of happy families in his bible, uh, was interesting…
I nominate the line “You know when Jimmy was a baby, and I would change his diaper, I used to kiss his little winky” as the biggest WTF line of 2011.
That didn’t really strike me as creepy–I found it rather sympathetic, even touching. That’s what he wants, and what he can almost certainly never have because of what happened to his face. It’s not like I’ve had great luck finding That Special Someone, but there’s always a glimmer of hope–to essentially know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’d always be alone, would be horrible. That he was pasting them into the Bible wasn’t really here or there, for me.
Solid episode–it’s good to have the show back. I can’t believe that I actually thought Van Alden was going to have a drink. Guess the whole standing contract with a sloppy hooker led me to doubt just how strict his morality really was.
And man, do I love seeing all those sharp suits. Glad I don’t have to do it–I sweat something fierce just waiting five minutes for the train, never mind having to spend all day in my jacket or, god forbid, a three-piece–but they do look mighty slick.
Especially considering she said this to Jimmy’s wife! Her expression was priceless and you could see her thinking, “well, that explains a lot…”
Great show, glad to see it back on the air! It really does a great job of getting you back into that era.
Nice pacing of the nutcase (FBI) husband and wife celebrating their 13th anniversary - talk about the odd-duck couple.
I re-watched the episode and I think you’re right about Mr. Half-Face. It’s actually really sad, not creepy. I think the WTF moment between Jimmy’s wife and mother put me in the wrong frame of mind for the rest of the episode.
Speaking of Half-Face, someone HAS to go as him for Halloween. I wonder if a person could get away with carrying one of those dummy rifles that high school JROTC members carry. A relatively authentic period scope could be made with a quick trip to a hardware store.
Get the clothes from a resale shop and the tin face-plate could be made with some sheet metal and paint…
Gah, if only I were 40 years younger!
ETA: about the FBI agent and his wife: I think someone on another forum said it best when they summed up their relationship as “the awkwardness of a first date, every day”.
Besides the infant cocksucking revelation (a true WTF moment if ever there was one), my other reaction of note was seeing Uncle June portraying a Klansman. I hope his wordless cameo isn’t the only time we see him this season.
Salon had a good article on the series that sums up how I feel about it http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/boardwalk_empire/index.html?story=/ent/tv/feature/2011/09/25/boardwalk_empire_season_2:
I want to love the show, but it just doesn’t quite live up to its potential and the treasurery agent is just too cliched to be compelling for me. It seems to miss by just the smallest margin in being great.
That’s somewhat how I feel as well, though I do like the show a lot; I just don’t love it. I’ll continue to watch because it’s still better than most other shows on TV and it has a number of really interesting characters. I do wish the pacing would pick up a bit.
I actually enjoyed this episode quite a bit more than I had expected to. For parts of last season it definitely felt like a bit of a chore to watch and keep everything straight, but this episode just told an interesting story in a fairly straightforward fashion with characters we already know, with many entertaining moments… particularly Van Alden getting his wife hot by arresting people in front of her, and Nucky’s speech transitioning from the black audience to the white audience.
Yeah, that transition between Nucky’s speeches was awesome.
Does anybody know why the DVD of season 1 hasn’t been released yet?
Wasn’t there a scene or two in Season 1 when Jimmy walks into the dancing girls’ dressing room and his mother is topless and neither think twice about it? I thought that was strange, but winky kissing definitely tops that.
His mother was either 13 or 14 when he was born (she got pregnant at 13), so he was probably almost like a doll to her. And while she’s far from innocent or retarded she’s still very childlike in some ways.
Hmmm, I don’t know about that. I think I’d remember if Gretchen Mol went topless on this show. Maybe a skin-colored outfit?
I wonder if she’ll ever betray Jimmy in a big way. We know little about her but she already pings my radar as being one of those manipulative women with one of the dreaded Cluster B personality disorders. I don’t trust her.
If they would release season 1 already I could go back and review!
No comments yet on last night’s show? When did you realize why Mrs. Schroeder went to Nucky’s office in disguise?
I still hadn’t made the connection when she pulled the ledger and cash out of the drawer(!) Too much whiskey I suppose.
However, I did predict that Chalky couldn’t actually read. It makes perfect sense for his character.
I’m really digging the fact that HBO allows the graphic violence. Pernsley literally getting his teeth kicked in and Jimmy using his trusty trench knife to slice a few arteries here and there.
There’s still just a little something missing from this show. Which might explain why Breaking Bad gets a 3-4 page discussion every week and Boardwalk Empire gets a few posts–if that.
Was there any confirmation that Chalky couldn’t read? I thought he said it was the wrong book because he knew that Pernsley couldn’t read and it was his way of having fun with that fact. I think Chalky can read just fine.
Well, when the other guy asked him what he was reading, Chalky replied Tom Sawyer, although we could see that the book was David Copperfield. And after the other guy was taken care of, he asked the others who could read. Also, when the other guy asked him about the book, Chalky just described the action in the illustration. So even if they didn’t explicitly say that he was illiterate, that was the clear implication.
I retract my previous post on the subject… Just saw Michael K. Williams flat-out say that Chalky can’t read in the HBO GO extras for this episode.
Interesting that Chalky’s wife and son believe that he can read…otherwise why would his son have sent and his wife deliver the book? Unless, they figured that he could get someone else to read it to him.
I also liked during the jail cell scene that Chalky just sits on the bottom bunk with no fear and addresses each of the other men in the cell and they respond back with deep sincerity and fealty towards him…you knew it was going to end badly for Pernsley.