Margaret and Nucky: Need or True Love?

We know the question on many viewers’ minds is “Will Nucky marry Margaret?” We don’t know the answer for certain, but at this point, we would say, if Margaret has anything to do with the outcome … she sure is one crafty colleen. So we have decided to devote one post to the nuances of the relationship between Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald) and Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi).

In Ourselves Alone (S2, E2), Margaret finds out from the servants that Nucky has been arrested. Does she fall apart and wring her hands and says “Oh, what will become of us now?” Indeed not! She takes command of the situation and tells the help what to dress the kids in and how they have to take the rug out and beat it before tonight’s dinner guests show up. Then she borrows a coat off one of the maids, sticks a pillow in it and goes down to Nucky’s office where the Deputy Attorney General and his crew are rifling through everything, much to Nucky’s manservant’s distress.

Margaret pretends to be a pregnant damsel in distress to gain access to the “facilities.” She spirits Nucky’s ledger and cash stash out of the office.

Later when they are alone and Nucky feels up to talking, Margaret takes charge of the conversation and quizzes him on who is against him. She makes him admit out loud that his brother Eli is one of the traitors. When Nucky tells her about the missing ledger and money, she goes to a locked desk drawer, opens it with a key and produces the missing items. She asks Nucky if he agrees that the ledger must be burned and all future transactions committed to memory. He does so she tosses the ledger in the fireplace.

In 21, the season opener, Nucky wasn’t the least bit concerned with Margaret and her pissy attitude about him staying out all night. In Season 1, Nucky showed his contempt for Margaret’s sanctimonious pretensions of morality, while at the same time douching with Lysol every time they had sex “like any whore.”

After they broke up, Nucky said spending time with Margaret and the kids was the happiest he had been, but it sometimes seems that his real interest is to relive his own childhood vicariously through Margaret’s son, Teddy. When Teddy gets in trouble in school, Nucky says his own father would have beaten him again just for getting beaten with the ruler. When he finds out that Teddy was playing with matches, he gives the boy a half-hearted talking to and some money to go to the Sweet Shoppe.

Obviously, Nucky is relieved that Margaret got the ledger out of the office. He was looking pretty upset about that. Margaret may be the only trustworthy ally he has at this point, but how much will he trust her with? We’re already hearing those echoes from The Sopranos: “a wife can’t testify against her husband.”

What do you think of Margaret’s transition? In the beginning of Season 1, Margaret started out as the pregnant wife of an abusive bakery worker. The last beating she got from her husband, Hans, caused a miscarriage. One thing you can say, she certainly never suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s as cool as a cucumber.