Welcome to episode 1 of The Pubcast. My name is Brendan O'Neill and I would normally be joined by Mike Cross and Michelle Riley. From these first few episodes we are revisiting our previous podcast, Boardwalk Breakdown. Basically we're shutting down the Boardwalk Breakdown podcast and moving those 13 episodes over here so we can keep them alive and well in our archives.
So the Pubcast is our new podcast where we'll talk about all kinds of stuff and not be limited to only talking about Boardwalk Empire and we'll actually begin on episode 14. So just consider these first 13 episodes as bonus content. Slanja. Welcome to the Boardwalk Breakdown podcast featuring Michelle Riley, Michael Cross and me, Brendan O'Neill.
Basically, we're fans of the HBO show Boardwalk Empire providing some analysis and silly commentary. If you have any comments or questions you can contact us on Twitter at Boardwalk Break. Enjoy the show. So I want to start before everything started.
Okay. I want to start like season one trailers, previews. When were you in with this show and what drew you to it? I can say for sure the first commercial I saw for the HBO, little teaser trailer of 30 seconds for the show.
I was in the first five seconds. You saw Jimmy Dormity with the Don in the lobby or something like that or not. I don't remember. I love the prohibition here.
I love that stuff. I've done some research about it. I have another project I'm working on. I want to talk about.
Really? Yeah. I'm working on a book. I've been working on Toronto five years and I've never gotten any further than the first few pages of it.
I think that whole spats era, the prohibition era, the flappers. I mean, some of this stuff goes back to even college. Having touch points on that. The beginning of it for me really became when I saw those trailers with Steve Buschami who happened to be one of my favorite actors at the time still is because he's typically playing an off the rails character in somewhat.
It's straight, but this is a character who is off the rails. There's no question. He's playing a straight man in a, you know, for his character. And as soon as you see, I think for a lot of people we're in, you see produced by Mark's.
I'm going to say that I actually probably read about Scorsese's working on this project. It costs $18 million. It's TV show for HBO. So that's that was 18 million for the pilot for the episode.
That's how I came to it because you know pretty much you say Mark's. I mean, right there. Secondly, you got Irish and you got mafia. I will say though that all in all the show is a lot darker and more ominous than I sort of expected.
Really? I thought it would be as bad. Yeah, I think I was at times like that. Right.
I mean, it's also got there's you can totally do a happy whitewash 76 trombones version of it too. Sure. You know, but it's not prohibition. That's the 20s.
Right. And that's not Scorsese either. That's the other thing. That's kind of the giveaway.
I mean, maybe there was a thought there that and I could see how you got there. You're like, Oh, the, you know, the roaring 20s or, you know, the mission or the fun. But as soon as I see Scorsese and I've got Steve Buschami, I mean, I mean, I know what's going to happen. There's going to be a lot of quality killing going on.
Yeah, and I'm in. So I knew right away. No shortage of that. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know if there was something in between that probably was, but this is effectively on the heels of Gangs. It's another classic. It's amazing. And the Jimmy Dormity character kind of looks like Caprio a little bit.
There's a little bit of it. We kind of tied in visually, at least a little bit. I did right away. I know it's a caprio.
Yeah. Right. He found the cheaper version of Leo. I mean, I don't know if we want to jump the shark on that, but the thing is like, I mean, I, to me, it seems like they were building the show around him as much as Nikki from day one.
All right. So that's a point I want to talk about. Do you remember? I don't know what year it was.
The first episode, the first season of ER. Yes. You were brought into the show through the eyes of Noah Wiley's character. Right.
It's like it's first day of where? Because something like that. The whole first couple seasons, you're effectively seeing things from his perspective, the newbie. I think Carter.
Yeah. I actually liked that show. Yeah. I felt like an after a three-year-old.
Yeah. Well, I'll talk about the show anyway. So he comes in as the innocent and you're sort of learning how the ER works through him because you're watching him do stuff. He's asleep in the one of the surgery, bays or whatever.
It's for sure. Hey, one. Listen, I know this is the show. I am not a medical person.
I have no medical background although I have some freelance friends. Obviously we talk about it later. So I think Jimmy plays that role in the first few episodes of World Bank of Butter. He's the innocent.
He's just back from the war. He's coming back into the Nucky's world. He doesn't know. He's mad that he's not involved.
He's below Mickey Doyle. I'm a totem pole and he's pissed off about it. He's just his driver now. But he's the, uh, Noah Wailey.
Carter, whatever. Yeah. I mean, he's standing in for you, I guess. The one of you were.
Right. So discovering what's happening. When he finds out stuff, you find out stuff. Yeah.
All right. So season one, let's jump into that. Okay. We're basically already into it.
Um, 18 million dollars for the first episode. The trailer. Absolutely crazy. Yeah.
How you got the pilot, right? Yeah. Can we first say the music? Oh, it's great.
It's really great. Who wrote that? No, it's Brian. Don't sound massacred.
Really? Yeah. Um, I happen to. And I always like it.
It's one of those. It's very long. The open to that. It's very long.
And I find myself listening to it. What I love about it is how much it does not match the time. Yeah. I know.
So out of character for the, the era that we're dealing with. Was that song written for the show? It was not. It existed before, right?
Yeah. It existed before. But do you remember that old song must be the season of the win? Yeah.
Yeah. You know, and that was actually featured at the end of the Nicole Kidman one to die for? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Every time I hear the board, I can't play the song anyway. That's a song I think of because it kind of has the same progression. Anyway, I digress.
So in watching these DVDs, and I'm a sucker for the commentaries, I don't, when I buy these things specifically for the commentary. Right. You've already seen the show. Yeah.
Right. So I just want to hear them talk about it. One of the things that jumps out at me is that everyone always talks about the opening scene and the bottles and the rolling. The water, the time, how some of that CG and whatever.
The next thing they talk about are nucky shoes. Yeah. Well, Shami gets stopped everywhere he goes and asked about the shoes and where he find them. And people are, now, Mike and I are obsessed with these shoes.
Yes. I mean, I need to own one of these pair. And I won't pay 600 bucks for them. What kind are they?
They're like, I forget. They're like, I don't know. You're teeny, you're a teeny. It's some sort of a Italian maker.
They're 600 plus. I smell a birthday present. Oh, fours. There you go.
And they're extremely six hundred thirty bucks. I mean, I was my husband. You know, two time. I get pair shoes.
I will agree with him, but it's a hundred. No, I'm buying those shoes in my life. Look, I know what I'll tell you what. Fantastic.
When I get there, I will. Fantastic. If I get there, I will definitely be, you know, I would definitely be. I need to enter a contest somewhere where I win something.
I mean, look at these things. Yeah. People on the hot desk. That's a good looking thing.
Does it say? Does it credit the show? Well, you know what I searched because I couldn't remember. I thought they were Fior and Teenies, too, but I started getting there.
Whatever. But Forsieri and their three Irish people talking about some Italian and Fior, I know about. And yeah, it's like me when I saw Justin Timberlake in the black and white two tone winged tips. And I'm like, oh, those look sharp.
And I found out they're a Christian Loubethans. Yeah. $975 a pair. I was like, well, maybe we'll wait.
All right. So that's what I heard from the blue rays over and over again. The opening scene, you know, the credits and the shoes. The other thing before we get into it is that basically these, just like a Gangs of New York, this series was based on a book.
Right. The book is not some great worth of fiction or whatever. I mean, it's like a historical take on how Atlantic City developed, right? The history of.
I mean, like, Gangs of New York, if you read it, I read it. It's a historical account of how these gangs operated in New York. And there's none of, of course, I mean, no surprise. There's none of this character driven stuff in the book.
It's all about, right? Here's how Atlantic City was formed, one that we know today. And I mean, it's amazing to me the amount of historical accuracy they have in the show currently. It is.
And actually, that's one of the things that, I mean, listen, I'm from Chicago, so since I started having Al Capone in there and the side story or parallel stories that's wrong. Chicago, I'm immediately, of course, you can draw in, right? And I love that stuff. But it is interesting how you'll hear, you'll hear, you know, even Lance, what's his name?
Lansky? Lucky Lance? Lansky Lance? Lansky and Lucky Luciano.
Charlie Luciano. Even Charlie, you know all of those names. You know all those names from real and obviously. Chicago, mafia history.
Well, yeah, one of the ways I got into it, well, before the show, when I started researching the book that I'm hoping to eventually write, is that I used to live off of Tui Avenue in Scokey. And I looked up just by chance and John Tui was a big gangster name back in the probation. I didn't realize that I thought it was just down in the harsh, Chicago, Sistro and Scokey and the South Side. And it was all over the place.
I mean, to a great point, Deena's family and my wife, Stanley Owns, are about to property in Northern Wisconsin. And there's a golf resort that Al Capone used to hide out. I mean, the place is called the Four Seasons. It has been for 100 years or 90 years.
And we all call Capones. That's where you're going, huh? When he was on Chicago. So Four Seasons, four deuces?
Yeah, I don't want to take this into like crazy tangent here. It's just occurring to me. And as we're talking about this, I really didn't think of this through before. We think about his connection to Italian mafia movies, whether it's good fellas.
And then obviously, gang to New York, we're talking more about an Irish mafia. Although it's not really Irish mafia. And then this, of course, it's really interesting to me how they are sort of... Casino.
Casino. Yeah, which might, you know, I guess he was Jewish. Well, I mean, he was Jewish Italian. There was a little bit of Irish, but the Irish guy was the one who got his head squeezed off.
Yeah. Of course the Irish guy takes the vice. But that's actually, I mean, I don't even know why I bring that. It's just that, you know, in college, I had written a thesis paper on the Godfather.
Oh, damn. Where is that? I want to read it. Oh, I'm sure I still have some.
Oh, see, I did do the right thing. It's like the movie. Another great movie. I would have faith on that.
No, I mean, what I love about it is that it does follow that historical... It does take the historical data. It, of course, is manipulating it, right? As only Scorsese can do.
But pretty true to the fact. True to the fact. But by just, you know, like shifting things, 5%, 10%, 15, 20% here or there, just making it a little bit different. I mean, the character of Nucky Thompson, there was a guy, Nucky Johnson, who was the primary driver behind this era in Atlantic City history that drove a lot of this activity during the prohibition time.
So he's following the script. It means, yeah, based on true story. Almost everyone in the show is a historical figure. Right.
Except Jimmy, I think his mom and... I think Jimmy... Richard Harrow. Richard Harrow is probably one of my favorite characters on the show.
Everybody else is like a real historical figure. I mean, for the most part. Yeah. I mean, I even wrote Richard Harrow on my notes just so that I, I mean, certainly thought...
I heard the, you know, where writers will put a name, give a character a name, or the first name or last name, sort of, give the hint to their personality or their circumstance. Richard Harrow was Richard Harrower before, but they couldn't, they kept getting tripped up by the Harrower part in the name of the became Harrow. They couldn't figure it out. Yeah.
It's interesting. So anyway, season one, and we're gonna go through every episode. We're not gonna give it, every episode, every season. We're not gonna give justice because, I mean, each, 12 episodes of dozens and dozens of characters and plot lines.
Plot changes, plot lines, plot changes. The basics for season one are the premier opens at the eve of, or on the eve of prohibition. You know, we see all kinds of partying going on in like the end of the current time of free drinking, I guess you wanna call it, before the Volstead Act. Jimmy's back from World War I.
He comes back to Nucky and he's mad that he's not sort of, doesn't have any sort of status. He got this injury off the country. We find out later why he went over there, but in season two or three. But he's sort of pissed off and he's just, Nucky's driver.
And then Margaret comes into the situation. Margaret is, and I'm gonna argue, she might be one of the more demented characters in the show. I would agree. She, I also find her to be frustrating because she vacillates so many times.
She's the only one, I think, I think the only one, maybe short of Richard Harrow. The only one who seems to have any sort of a moral compass. And she throws it away at any moment. Which is actually more upsetting than somebody who's pretty straight out about their morale.
The intensely despicable people in the show. And she might be the worst because of that. Right, with the Less Integrity I would say. I would certainly argue that outside of very sideline characters on the show, there is not one character on the show with any redeeming qualities.
It's a strong stance to take. They all have some kind of... No, you're right. And of course that makes for interesting, right?
We don't want to see normal suburban dad who goes to work in nine, comes on with sex. I'll give you one. She's not a major character. But in the first season she plays a role.
Of course, two seasons, I think. Maybe at best you say it's Jimmy's wife. Yeah. She's sort of innocent.
Yeah, very innocently caught up. But I do think the whole point of how, I mean this is for every drama, right? Nucky, the show starts with him really having what is clear to be a lot of angst around his past and around his father. Yeah.
And you know, the season... I think psychological on this. That's right. Well, no!
In the key, I'm just at the bottom of the past now. No! No! You know, I'm talking about burning my mother now.
But I mean, throughout, throughout everything that happens with Nucky, the truth is you are invested in him because you think this might be the time when he reveals his conscience, right? Every time, you know. So when he ends up with Margaret, you know, you think maybe this is going to be the thing that saves him. And I think he might even think it might be the same thing.
Well, I would argue that he and Margaret are very similar. I mean, you know, that constant wave of looking like you're going to do something that falls on the moral side, the proper side of the moral line, whatever that moral line might be, or moral line from the time. And then he completely fails you. Right!
And I think it's... It's kind of a score. I think it's the same in this first season. In the first season.
Yeah. And I think Scorsese drives a lot of his characters like that. And he has you on this roller coaster throughout. And the unique part for this is that it's not a Scorsese vehicle.
It's not a movie. It's not a two and a half hour punch you in the gut. You know, kill 75 people and you walk out of the movie theater, either laughing, crying or smiling, whatever. It's more of a slow kill.
I'm sorry. Exactly. So he constantly burns you with, I'm going to build this guy up right to the edge of where you're going to really like him. And then he's going to do something that absolutely fucking drains it.
It's people who are thinking they're doing the right thing. Even when they do the wrong thing. Exactly. Well, they're just...
And that's the moral compass thing. Is that the bulk of these characters or the protagonist characters? None of them have that. Right.
So it's really just watching. You're like, you know, it's like being in a window watching these people completely toy with other people's lives and their own lives in a lot of ways. Well, I mean, everybody's trying to get over it, right? And I mean, there's nothing new on that.
But it is guys in these, you know, the ebb and flow of this. So Margaret comes in along these lines and, I mean, depending on where you are in the season, she comes in and she's got this abusive... Abusive husband hunt. Damn, Chairman's every time.
Seriously, but thank you. Yeah. So she comes in and she comes in and she comes in and she takes some money from him and he takes the liking to her immediately. And then various things happen and eventually, Nucky has her husband killed.
Right. And that doesn't stop her from immediately shacking up with Nucky and moving in and being... or Nucky being her benefactor. Right.
And she just wants the good life without any of the struggle to get there. Well, I want to stop. As the only woman on this panel, I do want to say, there's a big difference between current day, wearing the good life. Of course.
And the circumstances that that woman was in. So she needed a benefactor. Or the world she would have been in after her husband was at. Wow.
Which would have been... Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit more severe there.
She was really... Right. You could even take the tact and make a play for her saying that she's been trying to find a way to provide for her children. Right.
Absolutely. And so I do actually think that that was part of the appeal to Nucky because again, he was going to find redemption in taking over these children and providing this instant family and boy liquid he did for her. So however he had rationalized the murder, and really the murder was secondary to the fact that he needed a patsie to take the blame for the situation. But he was able to justify all these things because he thought in the end the end justified the means.
Yeah. Well, what I love is the word you used in there was redemption. Right. And it seems like that's a constant recurring theme throughout is it's like...
And maybe that's what I was speaking up when I'm playing about the ways. Right. I think so. It's like these characters are constantly looking for redemption and they get right to it and then they immediately claw themselves back down.
Right. It's something very Nucky and alien about this. Right. Right.
And it's character development and it's character driven and I understand why it's done. It just makes for very gripping kind of rollercoastery ride. I can't tell you the countless times that I've finished an episode of this and sat there with the TV on pause or off or just started thinking back to what just happened in the 45s. Sometimes.
And because it's so, yeah, and sometimes I'd even go back and watch a second time so I could catch things that I was missing. Yeah. Just very, very compelling. Now we jumped ahead a little bit with Margot, but so...
Nucky's got this girlfriend Lucy. Oh my God. That's just crazy. King Train right.
Love her. So he obviously, she's just there and whatever. Right. He's looking for something more apparently.
I mean, there's a scene in I think the first season where he's talking to whoever whatever political big way he's talking to about issues, whatever, and Lucy tries to pipe up and be involved and it's just a mess. And then that parallel is a later scene where, you know, they make fun in typical 20s fashion. Like the women don't have a voice. They don't know what's happening in the world or whatever.
They're disposable. Whereas when he meets, I think Margot's bringing him something at the club. That's. Oh, thank you very much.
That's a funny time out of me. Totally. About to usher her out. And then one of the guys he's talking to, one of the political allies he's talking to, makes a comment, I think, to Margot, I think specifically designed to sort of trip her up.
And then she comes back with a political answer that is actually well thought out and put together pretty well. She shocks the hell out of all the guys and Nucky. And right there, you can see Nucky sort of... Yeah, the...
Oh, I want to be with her. Fuck this Lucy. She's out of control and she's a mess. This is the one I want to talk to.
Well, there's some alluding to a past with Nucky and there was clearly at some point a wife and a child, I believe. And I don't know where we stand on that today, but... I think it's still there. Yeah, I think that's still there.
Well, I'm sure we're going to find out. That's got to be seasoned by it. It's got to come and play. But I mean, obviously there's that escapist, you know, equality.
Well, it's like a girlfriend and then they're saying, well, this might work. But it's also, you know, very strategic too. It could be good for his career if she's savvy enough to help that situation. There's so many ways that would be helpful.
Yeah, and it's also like, you know, he feeds into his ability to feel better about himself because, you know, all the good deed he's doing. And it feeds into sort of pragmatic aspect. Well, he was sort of embarrassed to have Lucy by himself. Now he sees Margaret as someone who can be next to him and hold her own in these larger conversations.
Right. Yeah, interesting. Love it. Alright, so a lot of blah, we go through all kinds of stuff.
The season goes on. One of the guys who shows up, who I think in the first two seasons, is vying for the creepiest character in the show. He's an abandoned, fantastic, unbelievable. Michael Shannon, the stodo guy, by the way.
He's a stodo guy, definitely. So he's got this whole religious, he has a stuff, fanatical-ness to him with his wife and you see his whole relationship. But he eventually spirals out of control, not so much in this first season, but he's also a glimpses of his creepiness. I mean, Michael Shannon's amazing.
Unbelievable. Every time I see him, not so much in this first season, but since then, I only think of that video of him with the sorority girl letter when he's reading the letter. And he throws out con punch. Con punch.
I mean, when I go back and see these episodes, I'm like, oh my God, man Alden's dead con punch. One of my absolute favorite points about Michael Shannon is, is that when Boardwalk Empire started, he was only 36 years old in the character. He looks 46. 40 at least.
50 plus. He just plays that straight man so unbelievable. It's brutal. He looks so uncomfortable himself.
He looks like a guy who is very uncomfortable in his own skin. That's what I found from the get go. Who, again, without lacking, not necessarily lacking a moral compass, but lacking any kind of direction. He was a guy who had no...
Well, he was clinging to religion as his direction. Right, right, and as was most about the stable, we don't believe in clinging to religion for the purpose of guiding your life. I mean, it's a good thing to have, but let's see, that's a whole other podcast, let's not go. But I just love this character.
Oh, he is amazing. For how he plays the character, just the incessant awkwardness of the character. Or the righteousness that he has. I'm a boner, everybody else.
It's red doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong for these reasons. And then in his own life, he is a fucking mess. And in an instant, here we go.
He's the ultimate hypocrite in the show. The Scorsese characters go. As you think they're on the rise doing the right thing, he immediately snaps. Yeah.
And completely goes, it doesn't want to be on you. Again, where all these characters are, boardwalk on fire, becomes a villain. And I actually think you were asking something, Michael, you were kind of going into the religion thing, which is to say, you know, we made an statement that Nucky was somewhat using Margaret to feed his ego in terms of the good that he was doing to feed her. You know, he's being righteous about religion at a certain point.
Totally, yeah. Just because he's doing it. And that may be a way for him to mitigate the demons he has inside it. Exactly.
But like on her balance, right? It's a classic Scorsese movie, you were saying. And it's not just all these characters. As soon as they stand up, they cut their legs out.
They're always falling down constantly. It's the introduction of Chucky, Chucky. Chucky. Absolutely.
I'm holding that off because he just might be my favorite character. He might be mine too. We could probably do a whole podcast. But I'm going to talk about the relationship between Nucky and Chucky.
It's very similar to the one between Nucky and Margaret, which is to say, on the face of it, they seriously think it's first, like maybe there's this brotherhood between them, right? There seems to be some out of it loyalty or agreement or at least brother in arms. Or are they just using each other? Clearly, it's really challenging.
And I think you find out later down the road, especially in season four, really. But it is interesting how they both seem to have this, which immediately, because of the circumstances, when you add the racial's plot line to it, you sort of bolsters thinking, well, how brave Nucky is. Standing up to the KKK. Right.
And on top of his name. But it is again so Machiavellian, so pragmatic. Yeah, it's. There's any number of reasons behind it, although on its face, like it was unheard of.
I would have to imagine what it was. It was fairly rare. It was not a common thing. Right, but it wasn't also confined to the warehouse at Chockeys.
He was in the Red said and everything else. So we're fairly open in terms of the fact that they had the nightclubs that were owned by the African-Americans that were frequented by. Yeah, so this is one thing I want to come back to because during season one, Jimmy is frustrated. Nucky, and he's doing all kinds of stuff on behalf of Nucky, and it's not right.
And Nucky says, all right, get out of here. Get out of my face. Yeah, go to Chicago. Yeah, go to Chicago.
Cool off. We'll get you back here eventually. It doesn't say that, but it's kind of a lie. So in Chicago, Jimmy gets a girlfriend, apparently.
Some sort of prostitute in one of the Capone-run bars or. Jotorio. Jotorio. Is a raffle.
Facilities? What's called that? A multi-purpose facility? I'm a T.C.
It's like an indoor batting cage. Exactly. A different basket. Yeah, a different basket.
It is different. All kinds of games for everybody. That's great. Chicago hasn't changed.
No. So her name is Pearl. And there's a whole thing there. One thing I wanted to point out is that, and this comes out in the Blu-ray commentary, is that the one scene where, I forget, whatever gangsters, I can't follow.
They're too many characters. I know, right. They want to stick it to Jimmy in some way. They want to send a message to Jimmy.
Right. So if they're going to hurt his girlfriend, Pearl, and they grab her, they go up there, they grab her by the throat, and they slice her face. And I'm like the top of the corner of one, put her forehead down across her eyes, down her face, other way. So that's essentially the exact same scar that Michael K.
Williams, Chalky White, has in real life. It's all right. He had a scar. And he said he cannot watch that scene, still to his face, and has watched it, because it's so reminiscent of what happened to him.
Oh my God. He was in a bar fight, however long ago. Yeah, I got it. A friend of his was getting about to get his ass kicked.
He got involved in trying to stop it. Before anything really started, a guy had a box cutter of some sort of it. Oh my God. Slash him across the face.
So he can't watch it. And this is the guy who's been in the wire and whatever else. Why is there a handsome guy? Yeah.
The looking guy, a fantastic actor, in a million things, but he's like, I can't watch that scene. It's disturbing because that's what happened to me. The same cut. It was quincy.
No. It was direct to realize it was a whole... I never really did quite understand what the point of that was. And then she later died.
Yeah, they were trying to hurt Jamie and send him away with a message basically. That's just brutal gangster stuff. Yeah. I think it was a good one.
All right. We're like halfway through season. Let's get... We've got to talk.
I mean, the bottom line is that the whole... The whole plot line was really about Jamie going to Chicago so that those connections could be gave. And that's really what's furthering the story is the Al Capone's with the Joe Torrios. And then of course, always with New York with Ross Dean.
Yeah. And one thing we need to touch on before we go is the character of Arnold Ross. Oh my God. And actors.
This is not amazing. Absolutely unbelievably good. The vocal cadence. True to form to what Ross Dean sounded like at the time.
Exactly. The historical data is that that it is the kind of the cadence he talked in. He was very proper. He was very...
Yeah, the guy was really... He was really happy when people would curse. So apparently the actor Michael Stuberg, or Stuberg, has... He was doing...
Before Barack and Barack Obama, he was doing a play with a guy who ended up playing Eli. Oh. That'd be having talked about it. We were...
Yeah. I mean, we haven't talked about it. We're trying to wrap up a whole season. I know.
We really went too long. But... So anyway, those two guys were going to play when they were hired for Barack Empire and neither knew that I'd want to have been hired until they showed up on set the same day. Oh.
Wow. Interesting. But the Ross Dean guy, he was so well researched that the directors would say, do this or do that. And he would say, no, I think Ross Dean would do this because he was about five reasons why this guy would do this.
He knew the character so well. Wow. Absolutely. I think, you know, in some of our notes we have, we talk about creepiest characters.
I don't know, Ross Dean was genuinely a creepy guy. Yeah. He was always about how he could fix things and how he could... What's he most famous for?
Most famous for the same. Well, he's a famous for the same. My team is a world series. Right.
I'd like to think that I have a little personal connection to that as well. I do. Dr. Graham.
Dr. Moon, my Graham. Oh, it's a great story. Oh, it's a great story.
My dad is from Chisholm, Minnesota. In Chisholm, we had a doctor for, a school doctor for all the kids in the school and the school doctor was not Graham. He had suffered his, uh, reputation after being involved. He played baseball and was sent up to the range.
He played baseball with who? He was on the White Sox. The 1919 White Sox. Yeah.
Who Ross Dean famously, did he actually fix the White Sox? He did. Yeah. He definitely did without question.
Those guys were not making a lot of money back then and it was just, it was too easy to buy him off and he offset the, what he was paying them with, what he was gambling against them on. Well, that's an interesting part about the guy is that he is so composed and he is so proper, but he has clearly got a compulsion. Oh my God, I'm believing. Around the gambling.
The gambling is not, I mean, yes. It's not, it's beyond the addiction. It is. It is.
It is really just a, he's just compelled. Yeah. Everything that drives him involves gambling and, uh, and really everything that drives him is around fixing gambling. It's not even about the gamble.
It's about making the odds. So far in your favor that it's not worth not doing it. So that's, that's a fun time. That's a fun time.
That's a fun time. Season three, I think when he's gambling and not these plays and he fixes the winning game and it's a whole issue. Yeah, that's definitely an interesting point. And before we jump ahead, just talk to one more character out there that we haven't even touched on yet, but Commodore.
Oh, I wanted him. I love David Goddaddy Coleman. Yeah, it's having a woman in an epic kind of a. Swan song of a career.
I mean, yeah, I mean, he's a guy who has been very extremely prolific in almost a second hand kind of a way throughout his career. He's been in countless dozens of movies. He always does a phenomenal job. He always plays somewhat of a foil.
And he's always very, very true to. Yeah, he's believable in everything he does. And he displays no interest in being liked. No, no, no, absolutely not.
What is what is asked of the character? And the Commodore to me is probably the most despicable character from being one. So we learned that, I mean, the Commodore is sort of a background character not really there until the final couple of three or four episodes. And we find out that A, before the bad stuff, this is the place where we're going to be.
Bad stuff. This is the light stuff. Yeah, the Commodore was involved with Nucky on an election fixing scam. And the Commodore went to jail for it, effectively taking the fall for Nucky.
And when the Commodore got out, Nucky had taken the Commodore's place as the guy who... The guy in Atlantic City. The Commodore was pissed about this. He wants to be back in the game.
He's not. The bad part that we find is the Commodore basically employed Nucky to do whatever. And one of the things he did is Nucky found Gillian on the boardwalk or somewhere brought a 13 year old Gillian to the Commodore as his... Offering.
Offering. That's a funny word. And Jimmy was concerned. Gillian gets pregnant at 13 or whatever, and she's so young in the show.
And Jimmy is Commodore's son. That is the life stuff is revealed at the end of the show. It's the last episode. And Gretchen Mullen, a tour de four.
She is phenomenal. So I don't know... She should win an award. Before this series, I didn't know her for anything except four rounders.
Right. She was Matt Damon's girlfriend. Great rounders too. Great movie.
Yeah, no, I never really had any affinity, but this is the role of a lifetime. She's in the running for creepy character too. Oh my god, absolutely. I mean, the second season is when she gets really creepy, but sorry.
The beauty of the Scorsese vehicle is that everybody's in the running. Exactly. It's not whether or not you're in the running, it's whether or not or how long you're in. Right.
You know, how far deep you are into the running. So, I mean at the end we have the situation where Eli, the Commodore and Jimmy are all... ... and gang of the shoots, gang of Anaki and Eli has been shot at some point with all the...
... amount of stuff that's been going on. So we're really, really waiting to see what's going to happen. And Jimmy's poised to...
You know, the season ends with Jimmy poised to be a central character. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, all right.
So that's effectively season one. It is. Yeah. All right.
One of the things I want to talk about, and this is backtracking a little bit, but sort of a... ... it can continue beyond season one, is this... ...
when this season started, the first season, when the series started, was the first time I had heard the name Tim Van Patton, probably 20 years. From the White Shadow. From the White Shadow. The Van Patton's direct everything.