Boardwalk Empire: Two Boats and a Lifeguard

Boardwalk Empire Season Two Episode 20

Well, we were just dying to find out what happened “after the orgasm …” but conceded that Margaret and Owen’s interaction, after putting the horns on Nucky, will forever be left to the imagination. Still we watched every Margaret and Owen scene with avid interest in their duplicity and lack of conscience. Also, in this episode, we find out just how big of a nutcase Jimmy Darmody is.

“Two Boats and a Lifeguard” opens with a dream sequence. Nucky Thompson’s on an elevator. The operator mentions the Dempsey/Carpentier fight and Nucky remarks it hasn’t happened yet. He gets off the elevator and sees a bunch of people, almost like a painting, just staring at him. He sees a baseball mitt on a chair, and there’s a young boy behind his desk in his office. “Daddy eats first,” Nucky says and the boy holds up his hand, showing a wound in the palm

It would seem Nucky is his own father in the dream, or at least acting like him. The “Daddy eats first,” thing comes from “Home,” when Nucky told Margaret about reaching for a piece of bread at dinner before his father got his. He showed her the scar on his hand from his father burned him with a hot poker and reminded him that Daddy eats first. Margaret switches the subject, heeding earlier advice from Annabel, not to listen to too many confessions. Later Nucky began to tell the story of the baseball mitt and remembered her disinterest and clammed up, but she apologized and wheedled the story out of him. These traumas from his childhood are mixed up in the dream with the subconscious knowledge that Jimmy Darmody was behind the attempt on his life. The young boy in the dream gets up and shoots at him, and …

The scene switches to Nucky being checked over by Dr. Surran in his home. Nucky refers to his wound as the “stigmata.” (Well, hardly). Angrily, Nucky remonstrates the doctor for not telling him about the Commodore’s stroke and reminds the doc who butters his bread via medicinal alcohol. The conversation is cut short when Margaret comes in to ask the doctor to take a look at little Emily, who feels warm.

A clerk named Dick Halsey from Esther Randolph’s office goes to Eli’s house and serves him with a subpoena, as a courtesy. Eli is anything but courteous in return and kicks Halsey out. The commotion causes his father, Ethan, to have a heart attack.

Angela overhears an angry Jimmy on the phone with Al Capone saying Nucky is still alive. She is shocked and leaves with Tommy for the beach. Capone is cagey with Johnny Torrio over what is going on with him and Darmody. Torrio says he’s got a meeting with Remus about a shipment — Romulus couldn’t make it. The childish practical joker Capone doesn’t get that joke and asks if Romulus is Remus’ partner. Torrio just looks at him and tells Capone to leave him out of whatever is going on between him and Darmody, also advising him not to be stupid.

As Nucky prepares to leave, Margaret expresses concern. He thinks she’s afraid to be alone and generously offers to leave Owen to watch over Margaret and the kids. Trusting soul. Margaret gets a phone call. It’s EIi’s wife, June and Margaret must inform Nucky that his father has died.

Van Alden hires a Scandinavian lady named Sigrid to look after little baby Abigail. She brings up her pay and she’s getting room and board, meals and $18 a month, and that’s 7 days a week. Sigrid insists on some time to herself and big sport Van Alden gives her one Sunday a month off, provided all the baby’s meals are made in advance. Van Alden prepares to leave and Sigrid wonders if he will kiss the baby goodbye. He complies woodenly. Sigrid tells baby Abigail how much her Papa loves her and begins to sing “Trollmors Voggesang,” a Norwegian lullaby. We know a lot of people hate the dream sequences but we seriously prefer them to the lullabyes! The only other times we see Van Alden in this episode is giving Sawicki a hard time over a free lunch, not paying for it anyway, then coming home with some cash he got who knows where or how. He stashes it behind the mirror.

Rothstein meets up with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky at a horse stable, where he is is talking to his horse trainer, Max Hirsch. The two young gangsters play dumb about the Nucky shooting and claim the word is Nucky’s in a beef with his brother. “I would have thought James Darmody myself,” Rothstein observes and Luciano says “Darmody ain’t got it in him.” Rothstein asks if that pillow talk, referencing the Gillian affair. Luciano claims to be through with that and Rothstein says he smells manure … “but what can you expect when you conduct your business in a stable?”

At a meeting with Esther Randolph, Nucky is informed that the person who tried to do him in — Vito Scalercio — is connected to Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. She asks if he knows Torrio and when he denies it, she says he does. She asks him about Margaret Schroeder and Nucky says she’s asking questions she already knows the answers to. (Yeah, from Van Alden’s file.) Nucky says he is totally innocent of everything and won’t cop to any plea dealss. Randolph informs him she can be appreciative and also lets him know that he owes Agent Lathrop at least a thanks for saving his life. (Eddie never got one but Lathrop later gets a fruit basket with a note that says “Thanks, you’re a peach.”)

On the beach, Angela’s musings over what she overheard are interrupted when a girl get threatened with a summons and jail for showing her knees on the beach. Angela pretends to be “Molly Fletcher’s” cousin. Molly turns out to be Louise, a novelist from San Francisco. Angela’s got herself a new Bohemian lady friend. Louise is based upon a 1921 incident involving a novelist from Los Angeles. See “The Bee’s Knees” for more on that.

“Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.” Such is the counsel that cliche-spouting Gillian offers her baby boy. When Mickey Doyle and Manny Horvitz arrive, Gillian excuses herself and Mickey Doyle’s eyes follow Gillian’s derriere out of the room a little too long for Jimmy’s taste. Manny Horvitz lets Jimmy know what he thinks of him and he always calls him “boychik” because he’s not a man.

Later in a heart-to-heart with his wife, Jimmy tells her the truth about the attempt on Nucky’s life — he went along with it because of Gillian. Now just set aside that you might think Jimmy really is a disrespectful pup (who has grown fangs, as Nucky put it). That’s got to be about the worst reason in the world for him to agree to rub out Nucky.

Margaret attempts to console Nucky over his father’s passing, but Nucky says he’s got to pretend all day and he doesn’t want to pretend at home. Margaret is concerned that he will go to jail, and if not, she will. Nucky assures her that he will never let anything happen to her. She asks Nucky if he doesn’t think the shooting is a sign from God that he should step aside. The episode’s title rears its corny head as Nucky tells her the old joke about the drowning man who prayed to God to save him but refused to accept it when God sent two boats and a lifeguard.

At the Armory, Nucky pays a soldier to tell Randolph’s people he already left and check out the surplus munitions. The soldier laughingly tells Eddie “Who knew your Kaiser would chicken out so soon?” Eddie walks away muttering “Asshole!” Inside Nucky meets with Torrio and Rothstein and asks them what they know about the involvement of Capone, Luciano and Lansky in the attempt on his life. Rothstein offers Nucky some strategical advice. He has no move so he should wait, marshall his resources and when the opportunity presents itself, “bet it all.”

As Nucky plays a board game (“The World’s Globe Circler” or “Round the World with Nellie Bly”), Nucky appears to be deep in thought, when it comes to his turn. He asks Teddy to call him Dad, and Margaret asks her child if he would like to do that. Teddy happily complies. Nucky spins.

Nucky attends his father’s wake early thinking Eli won’t be there. Eli the Liar shows up and tells Nucky he had nothing to do with the near-hit, but Nucky points out he had nothing to do with stopping it either. Eli also tries to rewrite history, saying they wouldn’t be the men they are if Ethan hadn’t been the way he was, but Nucky’s doesn’t want to hear it. Eli gets mad and leaves. Nucky takes a last look at his father’s body and notices one boot is untied. As he leans down to fix that, the dam breaks and all his anger, grief and guilt comes out.

Nucky later drops a bombshell on Team Commodore. He’s stepping down and this news seems to be taken at face value by just about everyone but Eli, Harrow and the viewers. We know Nucky has something up his sleeve and we even feel bad for him when he tells them he has “the love of a fine woman” with Owen standing in the background. Nucky later meets with Chalky and tells him he needs to hold a strike right in the middle of tourist season.

Jimmy later celebrates his “victory” at Babette’s but gets angry when Mickey Doyle shows up with Manny Horvitz and Eli demands an audience. Jimmy gives a victory speech and tells Harrow that the victory is his, too. He can have everything he ever wished for. Harrow’s not so sure. After Eli tells Jimmy that Nucky is smarter than he is, Mickey Doyle bears the brunt of Jimmy’s rage and gets thrown over the balcony. Will we be surprised if Jimmy ends up on this season’s list of fatalities? Not particularly, and like Ethan Thompson, there probably won’t be many mourners.

The episode ends with another dream sequence. Nucky again sees people waiting to welcome him, it almost seems, amidst continuous moaning. He wakes up to see Margaret sitting in the chair holding Emily, who is even sicker than before and is really the one moaning, an ominous sign indeed.