Jimmy’s Back, Harrow Comes Too

Boardwalk Empire Preview: Season 1, Episode 9: Belle Femme

We saw just a little bit of the preview clip, Jimmy Returns Home, last week at the end of “Hold Me in Paradise.” But here is the entire scene courtesy of HBO.

Jimmy calling Nucky a murderer? That’s pretty rich, isn’t it? Jimmy wants Nucky’s okay to have his veteran friend and sniper, Richard Harrow along. Who do we suppose Jimmy will get to help him take the D’Alessio brothers out? We love this scene more for Steve Buscemi’s expression than anything else. The whole time he’s looking at Jimmy like “are you nuts?” Or could he be thinking “This is going to be another big pain in the a$s.” Whatever he is thinking, we’re thinking that Nucky leaves too many loose ends around in his Boardwalk Empire.

Another preview scene we saw last week was Lucy Danizger telling Agent Van Alden she could use another drink. Whatever Van Alden think Lucy knows, the question still remains why a man like Nucky wouldn’t just give Lucy a roll of bills and a train ticket out of town when he took up with Margaret.

“Belle Femme” is the name of the dress shop run by Madame Jeunet who tells Margaret she has more power than she suspects in a conspiratorial manner. Initially, when Margaret got the job at the dress shop, Madame Jeunet was treating her a bit like shanty Irish. She didn’t seem to think that Margaret had the least bit of sophistication. Perhaps Madame Jeunet now thinks who better than a worldly French woman like herself to instruct Margaret in the ways of the courtesan, but will Margaret be inclined to take advice from the bourgeoisie? Margaret hasn’t exactly been oblivious to her status and has demonstrated a clear intent to find out everything she can about Nucky.

Jimmy and Nucky may be plotting the demise of the D’Alessio Brothers, but the boys named after Popes are getting the same idea about them. Lucky Luciano introduces Ignatius and Leo to Arnold Rothstein, who intimates that Nucky is both greedy and unreasonable. Leo responds that it’s nothing a “bullet in the eye won’t fix.”

We find it more than a little distracting that Edoardo Ballerini, who plays Ignacious D’Alessio, actually looks a lot more like the real Lucky Luciano than Vincent Piazza does.