The Boardwalk Empire is a creation which followed Romanzo Criminale in attempting to marry entertaining fictions with historical events including historical characters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. The second series came to an end with some powerful reminders of the evil committed by many of those in glamorised accounts of the lives of the gangster who profited out of the Prohibition of alcohol years in the United States.
In previous coverage of the second season I explained that the main character Nucky Thompson had resigned from his office as City Treasurer and was being indicted for election irregularities as well as under investigation for various crimes identified by the Prohibition agent Van Alden. His main route for bringing alcohol into his area was being blocked by coastguard and customs and Al Capone had arranged for a hit man to kill him but Nucky has escaped with a damaged hand. He had given his mistress Margaret the impression that he was seriously consideration her suggestion that he should give up all his criminal enterprises and settle down with her and her two children who he asks that they refer to him as their father. However although Margaret is pleased with the development, it far from the truth.
He had attempted to blackmail Van Alden who had a child by Nucky’s former mistress but Van Alden had cut a deal with the Fed attorney who had been sent to proceed with the prosecution despite Nucky’s effort to get political contacts in Washington to ensure that the case was dropped on technicalities.
Nucky decides to go to Ireland with Owen Sleater to meet IRA leaders allegedly bringing with him the body of his father to bury in his original homeland. He has all the appropriate paperwork to bring the coffin into the country without it being opened. This in fact contains repeating rifles and some ammunition which Nucky demonstrates to a group of IRA leaders. He says he can provide 3000 of the weapon in exchange for Irish Whisky. The plan misfires when the results of secret negotiations with the English are announced and prospect of a settlement which will end the killing. Nucky is however able to negotiate a deal with one of the group who own a distillery and had a substantial stock which he is unable to sell because of the conflict with the English. Nucky does a deal which leads to the import of the whisky as peaches with episode 10 titled Georgia Peaches.
While he was away Nucky had arranged for Chalky White to encourage his people to create unrest and go on strike. The focus is on the main hotel in town at the height of the tourist season - The Ritz Carlton. Here the all black kitchen crew work long hours for low pay and are required to eat basic food during short meal breaks. They go on strike during which time Nucky does a deal to sell a large quantity of the imported whisky and then to get the men back to work.
The Commodore and others begin to question Jimmy’s handling of the situation. Jimmy wants to settle the dispute so they can go back to making profits however the Commodore and others what a tough stand and arrange for Nucky’s brother Eli to organise some stick waving strike breakers to confront the pickets outside the hotel. In the melee the former Sheriff while Eli recovered from a bullet wound and back now as deputy is severely beaten up. This proves to be a message from Eli to keep his trap shut after he is interviewed by the Feds.
This then proves counter productive because the deputy is willing to give testimony that it was Eli who carried out the murder of the former husband of Margaret, Nucky’s present mistress. In the penultimate episode the Feds exert pressure on Eli to testify that he undertook the murder on instructions from Nucky, this they say will save him from the electric chair.
Because of the failure to use political influence Nucky has changed lawyers but despite his best efforts he warns Nucky it would be wise to put his financial affairs in order. Then they have a stroke of luck. Nucky has employed a black man during the period of the strike for which he is appreciative. He appears to be hanging around while Nucky and his new lawyer discuss his situation. Nucky is short tempered with the man but the lawyer presses the man to have his say. The man mentions that he attended the local Baptist church and was present at baptism ceremony at which van Alden had drowned his assistant!
Despite admitting his affair and fathering a child which appears to have brought into the good books of the Fed prosecutors van Alden has continued to supplement his official earnings with the cash taken from prohibition raids. He is approached with a proposition to raid a meeting at which Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and other local gangsters are putting up money for an illegal enterprise. It is suggested that a Prohibition raid at the appropriate time would net each of them $150000 and they shake on the deal. However events move quickly after the revelation that van Alden had intentionally killed his assistant to shut him up and when he is about to be arrested at the office and his gun is being taken the Prosecutor’s assistant is wounded and van Alden makes what appears to be a successful run for his life. Another witness against Nucky appears to have been neutralised.
Before Nucky had set off with Sleater to Belfast, the man had a sexual experience with Margaret but on return he keeps his distance. After her rejection by her brother in New York and his refusal to allow her to have contact with her sisters and help them she turns more to the local pastor who has already intervened over the behaviour of her son. While Nucky is in Dublin her daughter contracts polio with the implication that she might be unable to walk again. The girl is discharged from hospital wearing leg braces. The local clergyman is in attendance and he continues to put pressure on Margaret to renounce her dependency on the illegally obtained wealth of Nucky and his general patronage. She is consumed with guilt about everything including the disappearance/murder of her former husband. When she is issued with a subpoena Nucky makes it plain that he will not tolerate her giving any testimony.
However it is Jimmy Darmody and his wife Angela where the main focus of the final season episodes lies. As previously mentioned Angela has discovered that her husband was plotting to kill Nucky Thompson and she has taken up with a new arrival in the community, an authoress with bohemian friends. It was also Angela who had shown kindness to the facial damaged former comrade of Jimmy who had become his assassin.
Jimmy had commenced to deal with a gangster leader in Philadelphia who runs a butcher's which provides opportunity to dispose of the carcase of victims in his pies! Jimmy has an unpaid debt to the man which he ignores in his new status as the King of Atlantic City replacing his former Guardian. When the gangster crosses another of Jimmy’s associates he indicates it will be no loss if the man is assassinated. Unfortunately for the second time in a recent episode the assassination is botched and it is the assassin who is killed and when the gangster finds a match box from Atlantic City in the man’s clothing he makes the assumption it is Jimmy who has attempted to kill him.
He makes his way to Atlantic City and in the absence of Jimmy kills Angela his wife and her lesbian lover. In Under God's Power She Flourishes, the penultimate episode of the series, there are several flashbacks to Jimmy’s relationship with Angela during his time at university when he was yet to learn that the Commodore was his father and that his mother had been procured by Nucky when she was only fourteen years of age. We also learn of the circumstances which led Jimmy to joining up and serving in France during World War I and which led to his son being born during the long absence. The couple have only married recently.
Jimmy’s mother has a solution to the situation in which the child is told that his mother has had to visit relatives in Paris and that he will soon forget the women and regard his grandmother as his mother. There is the suggestion of incest between Jimmy and his mother. Jimmy is horrified at the idea that he and the boy should quickly forget Angela and this sends him into a rage he which he attempts to strangle his mother. His father intervenes and the two men struggle and Jimmy stabs his father wounding him badly but not fatally. It is then his mother tells him to finish the job so he stabs his father again, this time he dies.
Jimmy arranges for the death to be declared accidental and then discovers that under the Will the bulk of the estate falls to the former servant who attempted to kill the old man previously. Jimmy destroys the Will on the understanding that he will inherit and then his son. There is an import clue in this respect.
The final episode of the season begins with Jimmy and his minder raiding a meeting of the Klan and demanding to know the names of the three men that gunned down the workers of Chalky White, the event which opened the season. Jimmy then gives Chalky five thousand dollars for the families of the four victims about 60% that had been asked for and then the three men who we witness being beaten before being tortured to death in revenge.
Jimmy also announces to the remaining conspirators that he proposes to make peace with Nucky by insisting they withdraw their statements against him. His brother Eli is to take the wrap for the vote fixing. With the disappearance of Van Alden and the suicide of another key player the case against Nucky falls apart. He tells Margaret they should marry to prevent also testifying. When Margaret sees the way he is helping her daughter to walk she agrees to the marriage going to confession beforehand.
Everything seems to be going well for Nucky. The case against for the main charges which included murder and ballot fixing falls apart at the initial hearing and Nucky is released. The former deputy is left to carry the can for the murder. The present Sheriff, his brother Eli. is persuaded by Nucky to accept the charges laid against him for ballot rigging which will result in a sentence of two years of which the maximum he will serve is one, possibly less. Nucky promises to look after the wife and the many children.
It is then Jimmy who invites Nucky, accompanied by the Irishman as bodyguard to a talk. Jimmy explains that he was opposed to organising the hit on Nucky which is the truth and that it was Eli and the others who pressed that it should go ahead with what proved a botched operation. Nucky says he will look out for the man responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife but separately we know that the man who was responsible is doing business with one of Nucky’s crime associates and that this raises a dilemma about what should be done with the toss of a coin being suggested.
Nucky and Margaret have married and she has invited him back into her bed again. He mentions that the government has agreed the money for the new fast road between Atlantic City and New York. He asks his wife to sign over to him the land along the chosen route which he had bought cheaply.
We see Jimmy having a day on the beach with his son and the boy’s grandmother in attendance. We also see him with his friend from the trenches urging him to recover from his experiences. He then insists that the friend remains behind while he goes to meet the killer of his wife who Nucky has telephoned to say has been located. Jimmy says this is something he must do. When he arrives at the agreed meeting place there is Eli on shotgun duty, Nucky and man supposed to be the prisoner. Jimmy is expecting the situation and unarmed. He says that he died in the trenches in World War I. He warns Nucky that after a while the drink, the drugs and whatever does not help and you are left with the guilt and no one to help you cope with it. Nucky appear hesitant about killing his former ward and who he treated as his won son. However he appears to shoot and finish him off. So we lose someone who has been a pivotal character in the series, second only to Nucky himself and perhaps Margaret.
Meanwhile we learn that agent van Alden with his child and the nanny have moved to a new city as man and wife when they are given lodgings. We also see Margaret transfer some, if not all, the land from herself to the church and not her husband. We do not know if she is doing this on her own initiative as her price for the saving of her husband or with his blessing. There is to be another season of this award winning series. We also learn the second seasons of the Game of thrones based on the second book is to being in April.
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