I think Nucky will be forced to commit Margaret. It’s just about the only way he has to get the deed transferring the land to the Church rescinded. Or perhaps the priest will contact him first because he doesn’t want an issue with Nucky.
My jaw dropped when Nucky shot Jimmy, both the first and second time. Jimmy was one of the best things about the show.
I didn’t see that coming. Wow.
Alan Sepinwall has a great interview with Terence Winter about the finale and the season and series in general. Some really interesting stuff.
I like that they didn’t spare him though. The guy was so self-destructive, had pissed off so many people and was such a train wreck it would’ve been kind of a dodge to just let him whitewash everything and go back to Nucky.
Kinda running out of characters actually in Atlantic City though. They’re going to have to start introducing new characters faster or pace themselves a little on killing them off.
Pope needs new clothes. Gotta love the Catholics - guilt you into just paying off those sins. (Ex-Catholic here…)
Quite a finale! This is starting to look like a prequel to The Sopranos.
I feel sorry for those folks who gave up on the show last year because it wasn’t The Sopranos or The Wire, this season has been amazing.
Margaret is a pretty smart cookie, especially when Nucky bald faced lied that Jimmy was re-enlisting. I think it was brilliant that she pulled the fast one giving the land to the church..how does Nucky get back a gift to the Catholic church?
Unfortunately the one thing I’m fearing is Nucky may have his wife committed, or considered unfit, and therefore the signing over will be null and void. It would have been much easier for her as Margaret Schroeder to sign over the deed. Now as Margaret Thompson, in 1923, Nucky basically owns her. Both of them are Catholics, so as a result, Catholic men did not allow Catholic women many rights back then. Also considering women’s suffrage only occurred nation wide in 1920, she is in a very tough spot politically.
I missed your remark about having Margaret committed. I concur.
Quite simply as Margaret had no right give it away in the first place. New Jersey law at that time (in common with most states) gave wives no rights to property independently of their husbands. Nucky would have to give his consent to the property transfer before it could become legal. The signatures would also have to be properly notarized.
Michael Pitt really doesn’t do it for me as an actor. Maybe it’s the perpetually greasy hair :D. However I’ll admit as much as I didn’t care for his character at all in the first season, he grew on me in the second.
But his ending was pretty fitting and is more consistent than him surviving. I think they did a very good job with the finale and I agree that so far the show is getting better. No sophmore slump this time.
That was a terrific read. Thank you for posting.
So in otherwords he wouldn’t even have to go as far as having her committed to get the property back? That makes sense. It just seems like there may be a twist because it was gifted to the Church.
I think the issue will be more about how it plays out politically if Nucky tries to have the gift revoked. Next season I believe will see the church be more involved in the political scheming going on.
Nucky takes actions taken against him by those he considers family very personally, but In the end, Nucky is always looking out for himself. Jimmy betrayed Nucky, IMHO, not by branching out on his own, but by siding with The Commodore. That hit Nucky personally. Raising him, sending him to school, all the breaks he gave Jimmy after returning from war and not having him killed for his screw-ups. Turning to The Commodore. Calling him father and meaning it. That was the last straw. The ultimate betrayal. I really think Nucky looked at Jimmy as blood family. Which next season will not bode well for Eli if my suspicions are correct. Because he, just like Jimmy turned to The Commodore. But unlike Jimmy, Eli holds is more valuable alive. Jimmy did his part to make certain there was a dismissed trial. I suspect, and this is a hopeful suspicion, that Nucky is playing Eli because remember, the trial was dismissed without prejudice meaning those charges are still lurking, and Nucky needs a fall guy. That would be Eli.
I was really a big fan of his wife Angela. Not only was her death so sad, but I think it would have been a great character to show the arts culture from that era. I think her character also illustrated the tough state many women found themselves in from that time. Perhaps her death was necessary for Jimmy’s demise, but I really found her to be one of the few sympathetic characters on the show and would have loved it if she could have escaped to Paris or California and found love and happiness.
I’m wondering where the tension in the show is going to come from without the Nucky-Jimmy-Commodore-Gillian-Eli-Van Alden Mexican standoff. But I have to say, I will not miss Michael Pitt as an actor. I never believed him in that role.
Nucky had put the property in her name when he first got in trouble. She isn’t gifting something that belongs to him.
As far as what Nucky does about it… anything he wants to as long as he gets to it before it is recorded.
New Jersey enacted the Married Women’s Property Act in 1852
The real and personal property of any female who may hereafter marry, and which she shall own at the time of the marriage, and the rents, issues and profits thereof, shall not be subject to the disposal of her hudband, nor be liable for his debts, and shall remain her sole and serperate property, as if she were a single female.
Kind of bummed they offed Jimmy. Terence explains that this arc is not what he’d originally intended, and it wasn’t until episode 9 that he was sure that this was the direction to take.It does make me laugh when I think about the writers and HBO being set upon by about a million pissed off fan girls. I’ve never seen and heard so much “I AM STOPPING MY HBO SERVICE IMMEDIATELY!!1” in my life. The finale doesn’t bother me all that much. In fact, I kind of expected it knowing that Terence Winter is from the David Chase school of TV writing that teaches that you should attempt to spit in the face of your audience every chance you get.
Frankly I think they should have waited to kill Jimmy until the end of season 3 at the earliest. He was the lynchpin of all the other characters on the show and you don’t screw around with a character like that without being really, really confident in your ability to write engaging story lines–no matter what you have to work with. But maybe Michael Pitt was giving them trouble, or they believed the character was beginning to overshadow Nucky. Personally, it had gotten to the point to where I didn’t even really care much about Nucky’s story line. A corrupt half-gangster-half-politician interests me much less than a bad-ass-gangster-soldier-motherfucker(eww) with a trench knife and a stylish limp. Oh well.
Apparently the new male lead(well, after Nucky, of course) is a southerner, and a bank robber by trade. Least that’s what I’ve heard.
Darn it, never believe people on the internet! I was going by what some guy on the Television Without Pity forums said (he claimed to be a New Jersey attorney).
Her signature though was neither witnessed nor notarized so there is wiggle room for Nucky here.
They didn’t show her signing anything, just filling out the cover.
In New Jersey, deeds do not need to be notarized. She has a full household staff to witness anything she wants. Remember how she took the maid with her to witness her marriage?