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. Welcome to the Boardwalk Breakdown podcast featuring Michelle Riley, Michael Cross and me for a new new meal.
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. All right, so season two is a whole new day.
Season two opens and on the heels of season one where the Commodore is trying to take over for Nucky again. And Jimmy and the crowd. Nucky suspects the Commodore Jimmy and Eli's alliance. And three of them decide to sort of in a nice parallel at the Poldock.
Frame Nucky for election fraud, which is exactly what Commodore would have to jail for. Right. Right. So that's going on.
Lucy is pregnant with Ben Alden's child which is amazing. It's a ridiculous combination of people. That definitely took guts to write that into the script. That was a curveball.
Yeah, curveball. Almost far-fetched. But, all right, Ben Alden's insane enough that fine. Great.
Yeah, yeah. All right, so Lucy, with Ben Alden, she has the kid. And then the scenes with Ben Alden in the apartment with Lucy and the kids screaming and his just being uncomfortable, his own skin anyway. And then this kid screaming in his ear and Lucy being Lucy in front of him, he wants to kill everybody in the room.
He wants out. He wants out. Those scenes are amazing. Right.
So anyway. With an anti-counting a little bit later. Yeah, yeah. And here's an interesting twist that I enjoyed particularly because Margaret meets Nucky's new driver.
Yeah. And his new driver, not Jimmy, his new driver, this guy Owen Slater. Oh, the Irishman from Ireland. And it's sort of a shadowy figure.
You don't know where he came from, what happened? It's really IRA associated. It's from Ireland. Yeah.
Very Irish. But that's kind of hidden the first couple episodes museum. I have that feeling. Right.
I mean, you don't come from New York. No big price. No big price. No big price.
I work for Nucky Thompson a few minutes. Right. Great character though. Great character.
Really like him. He's English. Born in London. Yeah.
He's a handsome gentleman. Oh, right. So that was a great sideline to the story. But Margaret really, really developed a relationship with Nucky in this season.
It's for the worst. Yeah. I mean, for my mind, you always have the van at Alden segment. But clearly you have the mob wars.
And we're going into full-scale wars in this season. You always have this relationship between Margaret and Nucky and then later with Owen. And then you find out just sort of details about the whole Jimmy Commodore jillion situation. I would say those are really the main points in season two.
Jimmy's role is interesting because he's always trying to find his ways. Always trying to be the guy. He's not quite the guy yet. He seems like, you know, I know later on we're going to get into creepy as character status.
He's the most lost person on the show. He might be the saddest character. He definitely isn't the running for saddest character because he's a guy who, you know, comes back from the war. He's obviously put forth a heroic effort of some sort there.
And now he comes back. He's nothing. He's doing things that are clearly going to be his undoing. And as you're watching them, you know that this is coming eventually.
And it's almost... He might be the most compelling person in the first two seasons. There's almost that want for him to succeed in a way. He's the most potential in every stage of his life.
He feels the friends standing at the war. It depends on how it goes forward. You know, the situation with Nucky goes south. I mean, it's just every way you think he's going to be the star.
He's poised to be the quarterback in every situation. And he's so desirous to be Nucky. Now that's his dream is to take over for Nucky, right? To be the guy in charge.
To be the guy in charge. But where I was going to go with that is that they're so astronomically different people. Right. Jimmy's fundamentally good.
Right. Jimmy is fundamentally good. And his rule is going to be with the fist, right? Where Nucky is fundamentally flawed, and his rule is with the pen.
Or with the brain, right? He rules by authority. Nucky's naturally corrupt. He has to make an effort to be the politician.
Exactly. Jimmy is naturally a regular guy. He has to make an effort to become a gangster. And he never quite makes it.
Is he the character in the show that we should be looking at at this point as the one who might have some redeeming character? Absolutely. I mean, I think that's the way they position them from day one. Is that is?
And you're not a flawed person. Just a flawed person. Not only that, but the redemption. You feel like you're waiting for this connection.
You're watching the show and you're going, well, Nucky, sure is awful. But gosh, if he can forge this relationship with Jimmy. He has father's son. He has father's son connection.
And he can make good on this. There's going to be redemption there, too. And Scorsese never fails to deliver. Of course.
I'm killing that dream. So it's like the end of Casino. And when people are being shoveled into a cornfield in Northwest Indiana, they're like, I knew this was coming. You were hoping it would end differently.
But you knew what was going to happen. So in Jimmy's effort to become a big shot, he makes allies with guys like Ross Dean are introduced to many horror bits from Billy. Billy's from? Yeah.
One of my all-time favorite. The playwright, director. Yeah, butcher. Butcher, played by William Forsythe.
William Forsythe. Amazing. Amazing actor who is, I have to interject that this is one of the complete psychos of the acting world. Yeah.
Always plays the complete. He is a psychopath. He's got something in the eyes. He's never played a regular guy.
He is never once played straight back. And he always plays it to the nth degree with epic proficiency. Yeah. Absolutely not.
Yeah, epic is a kid's health. As a character actor. So in Jimmy's relationship with those two guys plus Eli, they developed this plan to kill Nucky, right away. And there's that one scene in Babbats where the Nucky's schmoozing with whoever and getting ready for the show.
He looks down the sort of aisle, but it's a crowd of people and you kind of see through. And Jimmy's walking toward him and Nucky sort of, oh my god. Looking around like, what would I do? This guy's going to kill me.
In Jimmy's eyes. Jimmy's about to come toward him and do something. Jimmy grabs him, hugs him and says, something like, be careful what you wish for or whatever it is. I'm a little whisper to him, I'm like, watch your ass.
It was loud. But that's it. It was loud. Yeah.
It was like a box away. And no one knows anything. And the right behind Jimmy is the gunman. Shooming Nucky.
Like he puts his hand up, gets shot through his hand. The rest of his body is OK. But that was the failed assassination of Nucky. And as the scene sort of closes, you can see Jimmy walking out of that.
That's like through the doors. And here in the background, I'm like, oh, he's alive. And Jimmy's face sort of reflects that. Either he's, you can't tell.
Either he's annoyed that he lived or he's relieved that he lived. He sort of reacts like, oh, he's alive. He's alive. Whatever that means to Jimmy.
And we never seen. No. I think that's another great thing about the Scorsese vehicle and how he drives his character's and his plots is that sometimes you have to make the decision. It's the David Chase and the Sopranos, then, where the guy walks in the door of the restaurant and Tony's sitting there and then it's fake to black.
You kind of get to decide a lot of these situations where a character's at it. And I actually sometimes I resent that. Sometimes I think a lot of people resent that. Well, I mean, it's Americanism at its finest.
We want the fucking answer. Right. I know. Right.
I don't need to be given options. I want to be told what to do. That's why so many people biked about this. Right.
And I generally have comfort in being able to make the decisions or draw my own conclusions. I actually kind of like that because I can play out multiple scenarios in my head. I know a lot of people do have trouble with it, though. I mean, people were curious at the Sopranos, right?
In that case, and I remember this specific moment with Jimmy, I like the fact that I didn't know whether he was alive or pissed that he was alive, right? I mean, you're not sure what it is. Yeah, you get a reaction. You don't know what it is.
And the great thing about it is you never get the answer. You really don't. I mean, I don't know. I think when I look back on that, I think, and this is just me being sentimental, I think that I was like, oh, see, he really didn't mean to shoot that guy.
That's your naivety. You know, it is. It's like, oh, he loves him. He loves him.
He didn't mean to hurt him, even though I just haven't gone down to the nightclub. But yeah, you do. There's part of you that wants to say, oh, they're family. You know, they're not really.
But I mean, they're basically family. Well, they were family. That's the underlying message in the first couple of seasons with Jimmy Darmody is this was a father-son relationship that completely went sideways. And there were points where it obviously weren't had to.
I mean, it was driven to that by plot development. But there were points where it started to go south, where it could have gone either direction, and it always went south. It never works out for Jimmy. No matter what ever happens, he doesn't ever work out for anybody in the show.
Well, speaking of never working out for Jimmy, I mean, one of the big things that's revealed in season two is just how messed up Jimmy was because of his mother. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you get a lot of Gretchen Mall and Jimmy in season two, which is where she throws her hat in the ring for a creepiest character.
No doubt about it. Any creepiest character about mine, possibly. There were some very, very painful moments where I was turning my head away from the screen. Yeah, absolutely.
But I think it was quintessential to the development of the story. It was buildings in statewide. Of course. And you knew it and never wanted to even let yourself think it.
And then you saw it and you're like, yep, that's right. Yeah, that's where they were going. And oh god, I need to throw up. All right, so before our listeners we'll just say in the clinical sense, there's a scene where Jimmy's mother who really cares for him decides that she must be with Jimmy in a sexual way.
And he is not really of his right mind when this happens. And it allows it to go forward. And it obviously downstates him for the rest of his life. There's a lot of flashback in this season to sort of Jimmy's life before the war and how he got involved in the war.
And it was a golden child. He was a golden child. And Gillian's advances on Jimmy effectively forced Jimmy to go in the war to get away from all this bull. Right, exactly.
I mean, he had an opportunity to be a Princeton. I mean, I take a little messed up. But he was, and I think that's one of the reasons why Nucky did have this underlying feeling of disdain for James because he did have a father-son relationship with him. And he did think, you know, like you see so many gangster movies, you know, I'm going to do this shit.
But my next generation is going to be straight, right? It's fast and alpaccino, right? Oh, my God, Father. It's God, Father.
It's all of it, right? And so I'll be the monster. And I think Nucky thought, you know what? I know this whole thing is insane.
And the Commodore is what it is. But this kid's going to Princeton. We're going to be legit. I'm going to be legit myself.
And when Jimmy didn't file through on that, I think Nucky was pissed and let down. The history books are filled with that stuff. I mean, I think resettled was hell in this situation. Fathers, the only goal of the father is to make the son or the daughter better, better than you were.
Right, and so often. Was that the American dream? Or it was? I mean, I think.
But I mean, people justify a lot of behavior in the name of providing or whatever word you want to use. Yeah, without question. I'm happy to take the blame as long as you don't. Right.
So in that time, after Nucky is shot, Jimmy, for a little while, is the short-lived successor to Nucky. He's got his. It doesn't last long time. It's minutes.
It's totally minutes. Yeah. He's taken meetings in the old Commodore's state. What a beautiful house, too.
When they talk about that, I don't believe it. He's actually there. If you see the shots that are actually in that giant room with the awesome coffered ceilings, and the whole is elaborate, when they're actually in the room, if there's a real place like in New Jersey or somewhere, when they're in the physical room, the real place, none of them are smoking because they're not allowed to, because of the historical aspect of the city. So it's all CG- Interesting.
The regulations and whatever. So anyway, Jimmy's the guy in the land city for about four and a half minutes, and then he is effectively taken down. Manny Horvitz, our favorite butcher, kills Jimmy's wife. And let's not get into all that there's any number of endless plot points here.
But here are the highlights. Jimmy's wife is killed by the butcher. Van Aladin flees his existing relationship to go to Cicero, I mean, to get away from Lucy. And he brings the kid, and he, it's a whole thing.
And then Annie. And then Annie. He starts a new life in Chicago. He doesn't go to Cicero for redemption.
He's a pretty Swedish name. I mean, seriously. Blox from Elkh. Eddie Lauren Marlates has been there, blessed and peaceful since 1952.
That's right. So that's another podcast. It's a whole Betty Lauren Marlates. That's a different podcast.
Nucky Mary's Margaret, eventually. So she can't testify to him in any of his illegal. Yeah, talk about it by manic move. I know what I'll do.
I'll marry her. Then she can't bring me down in court. And of course, she counters with the perfect balance, which is fine. You want to make me wise?
Looks like the Catholic Church is getting a few acres. Yeah. So she gives them, basically, everything that he's been working for these past two years is this big way. The land grab for the road.
So that in his relationship with the presidential election, they're trying to get all that money and everything set up for the highway to go into the next city. He's been working on that for years. It's about to happen. Or it goes to it.
And Margaret gives it for free. Of course, the Catholic Church for that Margaret is loosely associated with it. And we might also just say that that is true, but she really does go through this crisis when her son is sick and she feels that she is being punished. And so what does she do?
She uses nuggies chips to be her debt. And she gives the land away. I almost don't like, I really don't like to talk about the kid portion of this. It's so upsetting to have kids, well, I mean, we all have kids.
And to have there, to imagine them seeing or experiencing any of this sort of ridiculous insanity and violence and whatever else, I have a problem with it. Well, that being used as pawns. When they're on screen, I'm like, oh, I don't want this. I want this world to be full of adults and kids.
I mean, this is probably a time in the world when being a kid was probably not as grand as a friend in any other time, right? Oh, please, Michael. I mean, kids, hey, are you kidding me? These kids are right in the world right now.
I mean, it was probably a difficult time to be a kid. Probably probably a difficult time to be a kid. They were looked at as afterthoughts, also rans. It was sort of in between time.
It wasn't 1850s. It was in the end of the farms. It wasn't the 1950s where it was leave it to beaver. Yeah.
It was this tricky little window where I think everything was a skew at that point. Yeah. So that's something great fodder for season three. So we kind of know how things end with the, we're things to end with Eli, who we really haven't devoted much attention to.
But Eli Commodore unfortunately passes away because why? His wife, his maid has been poisoned. Yeah. So his maids and poison.
Which I thought was hilarious. I really thought that was hilarious. Jimmy finds out, right? And then he sort of rolls, facilitates the maid being fired, Commodore getting back to health.
But then shortly after, in the same season, Jimmy, who is high on heroin at this point, killed Commodore. Right. Well, you know that day was coming. I know.
But it's a weird thing that he wanted him. I mean, they shouldn't have named Jimmy at a piss wreck. Right. I mean, at this point, there's so many.
Oh, yeah. He wanted the Commodore at full strength before he took him down. Right. That's the underlying story there, is that he wanted that Commodore died from the moment he set foot back on.
I don't want this maid taking him down with a little bit more than me. I'm doing it. And I'm going to do it in a violent way. And he did.
He's got a stature without just walking into the scene. Yeah. I know this is important. He can really carry the screen.
He's got it. He's amazing. Absolutely. All right.
So we're through season two. I mean, two full seasons. Oh my god. How much time do we have for Jim?
Well, yeah. Well, that's kind of end of season two beginning of season. All right. This is clearly an end.
What's happened before we get to the end of season two? I think we have to wrap that up with the. With the death of Jimmy Darmody. I have to say that I felt that wind was knocked out of my body when I happened.
I was in the field. And I ran a rainy beach beach. Right. Yeah.
I'm surprised it went on this long. I'm surprised he didn't kill him in season one. Or the early part of season two. I think I saw coming forever just matter of how or what would be the final straw.
But even when you saw it, like, oh, that's major. It's still style. That's that's that was our character. The guy whose eyes.
Well, we were. I think we're seeing you. And you're sat at the beginning is we're viewing this whole. So now you know that that opportunity for redemption is gone.
Totally. And let's move on to the next massive. Right. So you really do feel sort of lost as to it's also one of those things where you're like, really, the second season, they're going to kill off a main character.
I mean, it took a strong strong. Marty Scorsese does what he wants. But that move sets up season three. I don't want to jump in the season three just yet.
But for the first season and a half, let's say, the theme was you can't be half a gangster. The last half of that season, culminating with Jimmy's death, is now on the floor. Not on the floor. Not the political stuff.
Now I'm the worst thing in the world. I'm the gangster. And it had to be done. I mean, it really had to be done.
Season three is home. I mean, season four or two. But season three is so goddamn gangster. There's people are dying left and right in season three.
And it's double crosses. And there's no whole bar in season three. Did you have something you wanted to say before we got to season three? Well, I kind of do.
I kind of want to recap. Yes, please. We have sort of a midpoint for the first two seasons and the last two seasons. Because season three is a real turning point.
I don't know where it's going. Well, season three, we could have a fucking terrified. Two hours to chip. Season three is a chip.
Exactly. I mean, I would literally get anxiety watching him. Yeah. So if we're marking our scorecards through the first two seasons, creepiest character.
I'm going sl-well, I want to go with Ben Alden. I think he is scariest and creepiest. But I got to go with it. But at the end of that last couple episodes where Jillian, you see how Jillian fucked up Jimmy and how she is fucked up.
She makes you creepiest. She's the most twisted character in the show. I mean, I think that they're trying with Richard. But that's benign at this point.
He's not creepy. He's actually good at all. No, but he was introduced to Intimidate and I regard. And then Alden, for sure.
The flogging, I mean, come on. It's almost like he's creepy early. She's creepy late. I mean, because she's the most recent thing I can think of.
Maybe the most severe. Yeah, but she's her thing just builds. I mean, she is truly, I mean. Delusional?
Oh, she's all about that. You have to admire her poise. Oh my god, the water. I will say for me.
And I looked at where we were going with the outline on this. I was thinking, give me a saddest character and give me a creepiest character. I think creepiest, I'm going to go with our Rossie. And in a very particular role of a historical character.
I like that. Because he's just a strange kind of. He's got a go. He's got a go.
I like that. I like that. Characterized him differently. I would say he's a scariest one.
Because he is cold calculated. Right. I don't know what's happening behind his eyes. No, but I'm waiting for that.
Something's going to crumble with him. No, but because he's a historical character, not. Sure. It's going to play out.
Right. It's going to play out. Right. Exactly.
So that kind of is what it is. Sadest character I would go with. Which Ellie. You're right.
Because they're way. She's a product of her environment. She's been broken since she was probably 10. And everything in her life has been surrounded by negativity.
Yeah. Bad ass who are thinking. I mean, she's kind of been driven down this path her whole life. It doesn't justify any of the actions that she's taken.
It just makes it a whole sad story. It does. And that is why as the seasons progress, you are able to, even though you don't want to, you are able to develop some empathy for her as she moves in. Which, until we get to season three.
No, in season four even. No, we don't think. With Ryan Livingston, I mean, you finally say, oh, come off. Through the first two seasons.
There's an opportunity for a happy one. Yeah. Who would you fear most? Who, which character had you been in that world?
I don't know how much we never. Yeah. Ross Dean. Which one do you not want to have on your bad side?
Ross Dean. He's a guy who gets shit done in the worst possible ways. He gets Ross Dean. Nucky?
Nucky is a guy you don't. No, I think there's him. I think there's him. I think there's still at this point in time.
After season two. Even though he's had Jimmy Wack or whacked in himself. There's still an opportunity for Nucky. I think the Commodore is pretty scary.
Oh, man. There's a lot of contenders in this game. I mean, Ross seems to get called. I'll have to say, but.
Although, I think the correct answer is Ross Dean. If there's a right or wrong. If there's a right or wrong. But I mean, I really like it.
One, I will say that maybe it hasn't come out quite yet. Although, I think it's there. Because he's almost, this is almost counterintuitive. But he's almost a robot.
I'll say Richard Harrow. Yeah, oh. No, scariest. Where are you to get on his bad side?
They're revving for that to overflow. He's focused. Right. And he's broken.
But I think he has a moral compass. So you'd have to be an asshole. I think when we go down that path of there are no redeeming characters in this whole pipeline. He might be the one.
But you touch on something here. He's just so broken. He does have a moral compass, but he is also completely willing to do whatever it takes to rectify the situation because of that moral compass, even resorting to killing. Yeah.
He's a trained killer. He's a gun for hire. He's a train killer. He's a gun for hire.
Yeah, I mean, that's his oh, I mean he was a sharp shooter in the war, right? That season for that. Yeah, we see that center stage, right? All right, quick recap of season two.
I only just Throw out a couple idea or a couple characters that we can we didn't talk about them, but For that play a significant role. We didn't talk about a ton. We talked about them all for really Owens later as the driver One thing I liked in watching the DVD commentary in this is my comment name is the insight I get from the directors and stuff He he comes over as a mysterious figure and then you see him take take down and find track and kill a Ira Ira trader. Yeah, it's way former Durotsum in the bathroom.
Yeah, and I think that was a choice of the Actor or the director for the the method of a mission because he wanted him to feel it He wanted him to know I'm killing you not a bullet knife but a slow painful agonizing death of a grat wire on your neck It's a wire with a couple handles that you can put a lot of force on someone's neck You got it over behind your neck and you pull it twice and in the scene he's got his hand in there even to stop it But it's a wire and he's very and right before he dies he cuts his fingers off You see his three or four fingers fall off your anger and he falls his face first into the urinal Lot of anger in that scene right wonderful one little thing he does I think this is a real thing, but it's it looked awesome on film when he goes because they eat the falls into a bar And then the guy the Irish guy the trader goes to the bathroom and then Owen goes in the bad bathroom guys the urinal Oh, and closes the door has a spoon put jams it in the door and puts the spoon head on the Doorknob that's some sort of a stop whether works. I don't know but it looked like something he had done like a common way to jam Yeah, it's like a very This is not Johnny A couple of characters we talked about many or bits I think I wish that guy had a bigger role is maybe it's the actor I think I was amazing with his with his butcher. I absolutely everything that guys ever done has been just Epicly crazy, you know, he's a guy with a lot of not a lot of range, but the character he plays is a good point phenomenal and on She may be just an afterthought but the character of Sigred as the Norwegian nanny. Yeah, yeah kind of a cool character She's the only one who sort of stood up to van Alden ever and she really steers him in a lot of ways Like she's telling him get out there and do what you need to do.
She gets him out selling the items Oh Strengths In different ways Right the one we didn't talk about is I cannot keep anyone's drapes. I'm too old. It's my memory is gone George Remus. Yeah, the character The one thing I liked and it kind of set him up as a doofus is that he would speak about himself in third person And it's not subtle, but I love it because it's so obvious like this guy's and he didn't even get the whole thing He's going down hard.
I thought that was good. All right season three. We're gonna open with basically a dripper's Eddie and Bobby Sorry for the abrupt end of the show for the first few episodes where we recap each season We recorded them all in one sitting and needed to break up the discussion into consumable bite-sized pieces centered around each season Thank you for listening to the boardwalk breakdown podcast and follow us on Twitter at boardwalk break future episodes of this podcast We'll focus on a single episode of boardwalk