Boardwalk Empire: A Dangerous Maid Recap

Boardwalk Empire Season Two Episode 15

This particular post is devoted to Nucky and other male conflicts.
Margaret and Lucy have their own posts.

Nucky’s troubles are multiplying. If the liquor supply dries up, so will the gambling income. And the Commodore is trying to make that happen with a call to the Coast Guard, after striking out with the skipper of the ship that helps bring the booze in.

Al Capone comes to visit and informs Nucky that Chicago will be obtaining their booze elsewhere. Nucky thinks Torrio has made this move because of his arrest, but Capone really doesn’t know anything about it and eventually admits they have new suppliers. Capone offers Nucky a thick envelope to ease the blow, but Nucky is insulted and won’t take it and also indicates his displeasure at having to deal with a messenger boy. As Capone is leaving,, Nucky asks how they are handling the competition out there. “We’re killing ’em,” Capone grins and heads over to Darmody’s house.

He’s singing in Italian to Tommy when Jimmy and Harrow arrive, but jumps up to greet Jimmy with a “friendly” punch in the stomach. As Jimmy lets Capone in on their takeover plans, Al wonders why they are trying to get Nucky sent to jail. “Just have Frankenstein [indicating Harrow] here drill a hole in his noggin,’ Al proposes. We see two sides of Capone, as he watches wistfully when Jimmy helps Tommy tie his shoe, but when Harrow asks him how Odette is (the prostitute who introduced him to the joys of sex in S1E7 “Home”), the future Public Enemy No. 1 contemptuously says “she’s a whore, that’s how she is.”

Nucky calls up Harry Daugherty, who is now the attorney general, to remind him that he and Warren Harding owe him a favor for his help with the Nan Britton situation. Daugherty tells Nucky that he can’t get involved on the state level but invites him to visit the White House. Nucky throws the phone on the floor.

Owen Sleater, advance man for Irish Nationalist, John McGarrigle and now part-time bartender at the casino, shows up, offering his services as muscle. He tells Nucky that he is good at getting people to stop doing whatever it is you don’t want them to do. The next time you see Sleater, he’s ably interfering with an attempt by Team Commodore to supply liquor to the casino. He comes close to getting shot by Richard Harrow, but quickly pulling his own weapon, they’re in this weird stand-off. And Sleater succeeds in his mission. Team Commodore is evidently not ready to shed blood yet.

In New York, Rothstein is filling in Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky on how much they owe Joe Masseria for running a card game on turf that is “considered” Masseria’s. “Not considered,” Masseria chimes in, “It is mine.” They are furious. Masseria tells Luciano in Italian that he shouldn’t be dealing with “Christ killers.” He offers to make Lucky rich. “With your other hand in my pocket,” Lucky retorts.

The Seed of Doubt

Both Jimmy’s mother and Nucky manage to plant the seed of doubt in Jimmy Darmody’s mind over whether he is backing the right horse. Gillian gives Jimmy a manicure before a dinner with the Commodore and the Governor and Jimmy reminds his momma that she used to call the Commodore “the Letch. She laughingly says she didn’t but Jimmy had to look it up, because he didn’t know what it meant. (The link goes to the 1913 Webster’s dictionary Jimmy may have used with synonyms such as “degenerate, deviant, deviate, lech, lecher, pervert, satyr.”) Jimmy asks her what happened to change that and she claims she learned forgiveness. “It is a virtue, you know.” Jimmy says by that logic he should forgive Nucky. His wife, Angela, wants to know what for, but Jimmy indicates she’s not welcome in the conversation while Gillian shoots her one of her famous evil mother-in-law smiles. Jimmy also wishes he could be a barber like Al Capone’s father, so Jimmy is probably also realizing that even if Team Commodore prevails, it will just be the beginning. If not Team Nucky, someone else will stage a takeover on them.

Later when Nucky blows his stack at Babette’s over the lobster thermidor he couldn’t get Margaret, he adds to the warning of how devious the Commodore is by telling Jimmy: “I keep my promises, James,” and he adds a new one: “I will ruin you, all of you.” He also points out that in the 13-year-old Gillian Caper, he was pretty much acting on the Letch’s order. “He never even asked her name. He just pointed to the one he wanted.” Jimmy jumps up enraged … but at some point, he will realize he’s enraged at the wrong person,, won’t he?

Eli encountered his own problems in this episode, with his wife leaving the chore of changing his father’s clothes to him. Well? She has 8 kids to look after, you know. Ethan Thompson is really confused. He thinks Eli is Nucky!

Besides trying to deal with an unhappy Lucy, Van Alden is getting some info from Mickey Doyle (a.k.a Mr. Cusick ) on speakeasies, who has the most annoying laugh. Expect to hear it again in Episode 16 “What Does the Bee Do?,” and we will see more of Chalky, who was getting bailed out in “A Dangerous Maid.”