Nucky gets Margaret a job at a French clothing store, and she is very unprepared. She meets and is embarrassed by Nucky’s mistress, Lucy, who seems to be jealous of the attention Margaret is getting. Lucy also seems to be trying to get a more permanent relationship with Nucky by talking about having a child.
We are finally officially introduced to Chalky White this episode, the Michael Kenneth Williams character, as he becomes the replacement for Nucky’s local alcohol business. One of his men is hanged outside of his place, and though not stated or implied, in my mind Doyle is the primary suspect as he is having money issues with lenders.
This was a very strong episode. We see the cracks forming in the relationships between the characters. Eli is a little jealous of the attention Jimmy gets from Nucky and he is unhappy being treated like an idiot. Jimmy and his wife are uncomfortable around each other because each of them has different expectations and because they are unused to spending time together. They only knew each other for a short time before he went away, but there is hope in that relationship as she starts using the vacuum once he leaves (implying she is not unthankful even if he is not the man she wants in her life). Nucky seems to be growing bored with Lucy or at least with her desire for intimacy. When the entertainer was singing about liking the dumb girls, Nucky did not look entertained in the least. More likely than not, he does not like the dumb girls, and Margaret, although possibly a charity case like Lucy said, is intelligent and attractive which Nucky has definitely noticed and Lucy is starting to suspect as well. Finally, Nucky and Chalky may have problems as well since Nucky depends on the black vote for elections and racial issues are bound to come up when he hires a black man to work his illegal liquor business both from white competitors and white prohibitionists.
Most of these things are issues Nucky has to deal with as they are cracks forming in the relationships he has with people. Prohibition has complicated things a lot for him. For one thing, election rigging is relatively simple compared with the FBI attention that Prohibition brings with it. For another, Jimmy may have been right in that first episode when he questioned Nucky’s willingness to be a gangster. Corrupt officials are relatively benign compared to the gangster. Certainly Nucky is hardy and willing to kill to get what needs done, but big money like alcohol creates for a much more intense form of competition with people like Rothstein than whoever his political opponent would be. And there is no way to charm away a Rothstein like Nucky might the populace.
On the law enforcement side, the brief look into Van Alden’s family life paints him as the workaholic, the perfect tool to crush Nucky and the rest as he loves his job more than his wife (presumably) and will do anything to get his man. At the moment he is the necessary figure that attacks Nucky form the legal side, but hopefully his smelling of Margaret’s ribbon will paint him as an interesting rival for Margaret’s affections against Nucky (since that seems to be the way the show is heading at the moment, although it could easily be a fake out). At the very least, it provides a complication into his otherwise moral, asexual personification.
I think the best part of this episode was how funny it was. Van Alden’s partner mentioning that Rothstein’s relation is Jewish after Van Alden quotes the Bible, and correcting the insult the mother translates (“little…faggot penis”) were surprisingly dark in this episode.
We are left with the last scene in this episode of different people reacting in different ways to the rain, Nucky most importantly looking at the wet steps he has left on his hotel floor perhaps pondering how everything leads to him and leaves a visible mark, or perhaps how he needs to hurry and erase those marks as soon as possible. Then again, though water is easily cleaned up, the bodies every episode are not.
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