Cuanto Recap: Boardwalk Empire

In the fourth episode of Season 5 of Boardwalk Empire (Cuanto – 9/28/2014), Margaret tells Nucky about “their problem”. Lucky Luciano pays a visit to Chicago and thinks Van Alden is undercover.

On the East Coast and in Cuba
Nucky arises to find Margaret giving Archimedes English lessons. He is informed he can’t take a flight to Havana due to bad weather. Nucky wants to know if something happened to Teddy or Emily and Margaret gives him the scoop on them, (Teddy graduates from industrial school next month. Emily won an essay contest). Then Margaret reveals the real reason for her visit. At first he thinks she slept with Arnold Rothstein.

Sally Wheet calls and Nucky explains that he’s rained in and can’t get to Havana. Sally mentions some trouble — the army is out in Oriente Province, but Nucky says he will wire the money she needs and she can use her best judgment on how to proceed.

Returning to Margaret, he finds her laughing and flirting with Joe Kennedy. Nucky is not amused. Kennedy says he has decided to pass on the business deal because “scotch and rum don’t really mix.” He offers Margaret a ride back to New York in his private car where he had fresh oysters on hand. Kennedy finds out he just offered an aphrodisiac to Nucky’s “missus”.

Sally Wheet goes to the bank to collect the money Nucky wired from a banker who would rather wax poetic than get down to business. She uneasily watches him talk to some soldiers then gets more bad vibes when she brings the money to Maxime Ronis – a lot of packing up going on, but he says his wife is going to Paris for the summer. She says she is going to use his phone for a long distance call, “but you can afford it”. She leaves a message for Nucky with Mickey who gaily flirts, quoting Fireside poet John Greenleaf Whittier: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.” Sally hangs up and watches trunks being moved from Ronis’ place.

Nucky takes Margaret to lunch at Chef Vola’s where she claims he never got any of the money from Rothstein’s account. It was all Mr. Bennett’s doing. While she turns on the Irish charm full force, he admires her for raising the kids on her own, holding down a job and shaking down Arnold Rothstein. Margaret overindulges in the wine while Nucky comes up with a solution: she can offer Carolyn Rothstein 25 cents on the dollar. Nucky doesn’t exactly respond passionately to the impulsive kiss and embrace Margaret bestows upon him, nor does she end up spending the night with him. He has Sean get her a room at the Blenheim with a cab to the train station in the morning.

On her way home, Sally is stopped by a Cuban soldiers for violating curfew. She attempts to bribe her way out of it (Cuanto?). That doesn’t go so well and it gets worse when she offers them all the free drinks they want at her bar and says she met with Maxime Ronis. He is not on their list of lovables because he only pays a peso a day to men who cut sugar cane until their hands bleed. Sally tries to bluff her way out of it, heading to her car, but is grabbed by two men. She snatches a pistola from one and aims it at them. One of them (the idiot) shoots her in the chest.

Déjà vu In Chicago
Al Capone is just having a time showing newsreels of his Public Enemy No. 1 exploits to his visitor from New York, Lucky Luciano, who looks bored as hell. The newsreel shows the deaths of anyone “foolish enough to stand in his way”: Dean O’Banion, Hymie Weiss and the Bugs Moran gang. Luciano calls him the Italian Wallace Beery and Capone singles one guy out for laughing. Everybody else who did now denies it. Al says Luciano is jealous, calling him “Little Orphan Lucky” just as Nelson Van Alden walks in and Lucky gets that déjà vu feeling.

Later, while making his syndicate pitch, it comes to Lucky where he’s seen Van Alden — at Gillian’s. Van Alden aka George Mueller is hauled in and interrogated and winds up on his knees with a gun in his mouth. When Luciano tells Capone to let him talk, Van Alden manages to save his ass by pointing out that Capone is pretty much taking orders from Luciano in his own house. Capone turns to Lucky and says “You can rule with fear or you can rule with love” and tells him to remember that if he ever gets to be in charge. The real undercover, Treasury Agent Mike De Angelo follows Van Alden out in hall and admires his nerve: “You’ve got a pair.” Van Alden thinks he crapped his pants.

Later De Angelo searches through wanted posters and doesn’t give up until he finds Van Alden. How can he use that information without putting his own butt in danger?

Capone sends Lucky off in a friendly enough manner, but he is really pissed and takes it out on the poor guy who laughed at the Wallace Beery joke and makes the mistake of bringing himself to Capone’s attention by calling Luciano a jerk. Viewers are the ones getting déjà vu when he goes all Gyp Rosetti on the guy.

The Flashback Sequences
After sweeping up at the Corner Store Hotel, young Nucky inspects his surroundings but the Commodore wants to see him. Sweeping aside some photos of young girls, Kaestner shows the lad his future plans for Atlantic City and then cruelly fires him, taunting “Are you going to cry?” At home Nucky finds Young Eli burning ants on the porch. Their father locked them out for some afternoon delight but Nucky won’t let Eli peek in the window.

After a little tussle, Nucky sneaks Eli into the Corner Hotel, steals a key and shows him an indoor toilet and how the other half lives. Sheriff Lindsay catches them and Eli thinks they’re being kidnapped but he just takes them to dinner at his own home with his wife and two children, Ned and Ruth. Nucky is overwhelmed at being in the midst of a happy prosperous home to the point of tears.

The Sheriff takes them home and Nucky asks him if he can put his father in jail for hurting his mother. Lindsay allows that he can but Ethan will only get out. Nucky suggests murdering Ethan, like they did to Mr. Beckert, but the Sheriff says that was entirely different. They are going to tell Ethan the boys were working for the Sheriff and if he doesn’t like it, he will be interfering with the law and calls Nucky, “Deputy Sheriff Thompson”.

Random Observation: Nucky had greenish hazel eyes when he was a child. He grew up to have blue eyes.