Recap: Farewell Daddy Blues: Boardwalk Empire

What a finale for Season 4 — “Farewell Daddy Blues” dealt an awful blow to Chalky White through the actions of Richard Harrow, who also managed to get Nucky Thompson to reveal the whereabouts of the corpse of Jimmy Darmody. Agent James M. Tolliver (aka Warren Knox) finally got what he thoroughly deserved and Valentin Narcisse found himself in a jail cell, doing something that he absolutely hates seeing a Libyan do. And there was so much more…

Soy hombre de negocios cansado…

Nucky Thompson might be a tired businessman who wants to retire to Cuba with Sally Wheet but Chalky White shows up with a gun. Chalky doesn’t know that the wedding of his daughter, Maybelle, has been called off and neither does Nucky. Chalky tells Nucky he wants Narcisse but when Nucky talks to Narcisse, he claims that Chalky just wants safe passage in and out of Atlantic City to see his girl married. Narcisse is cautious. He brings up Nucky’s friendship with Chalky, but Nucky says he doesn’t have friends, he has partners. He doesn’t care who runs the Northside as long as it is run. In other words, his loyalties are for sale. That’s something Narcisse can totally dig.

There is no body

Richard Harrow testifies in court that he knew the body in Gillian Darmody’s tub wasn’t her son, Jimmy, from the get-go. Gillian’s attorney tries to discredit Harrow based on his only having one eye but Harrow counters that he fought beside Jimmy. “You don’t forget,” he says. (Well, Jimmy and Harrow did knock off a few of people together but, unlike Roger, they had their clothes on). Gillian interrupted the proceedings to point out that they don’t have a body. Ignoring instructions to shut her trap, Gillian has to be removed from the court. On the way out, she bitterly complains of being railroaded in a man’s world, while on-lookers cheer her on.

Richard goes to Nucky for help in uncovering Jimmy Darmody’s body. Nucky immediately saw a quid pro quo he could really make good use of. Darmody’s body turns up, identified by the pins in his legs. And Richard agrees to take out Valentin Narcisse in the Onyx Club during his meeting with Chalky White. But first, he sends Tommy, his wife, Julia, and her father, Paul Sagorsky, to his sister, Emma, in Wisconsin. Paul Sagorsky refers to Hugh as Harrow’s brother-in-law so we assume that he married Emma. Hugh was just Emma’s brother-in-law when we met him.

A daughter for a daughter

Chalky and Narcisse trade barbs in the Onyx Club. Chalky has correctly assumed that claiming to know where Daughter Maitland is will give him some power over Narcisse, but what he doesn’t know is that his daughter, Maybelle, has fallen into Narcisse’s clutches.  As Richard Harrow lines up a shot of Narcisse from the upstairs room, Maybelle approaches the table and steps in front of Richard’s sight in the split second after he fires at Narcisse. Initial shock turns to pandemonium very quickly. Chalky cannot believe he is seeing his daughter dying on the nightclub table right before his eyes.  Richard Harrow is so shocked he shows himself and is shot in the stomach by one of Narcisse’s men. He manages to get out of the club and get to the beach under the boardwalk. Chalky is dragged out by his Havre de Grace crew, while the Feds bust in and arrest Narcisse and his men.

This is your mess… drown in it

Eli Thompson still feels he has no choice but to go through with the betrayal of his brother Nucky, with Agent James Tolliver (posing as Agent Knox) holding a jail sentence for his son, Willie, over his head. But the rage is simmering below the surface. Nucky has already figured out the meeting Eli set up was a trap. He has one last order of business to take care of before heading off to the land of rum and maracas and that is to take out his very own Benedict Arnold, the brother who betrayed him yet again. Nucky is about to do that when Willie busts in. Eli confesses in front of his son that he was strong-armed by Agent Knox who would have sent Will to jail. Eli expresses his deep hurt over Willie going to Nucky to fix it. Nucky tells Eli it’s his mess and Willie walks out.

Successfully bringing down Nucky Thompson and establishing an interstate organized crime conspiracy was so important to Agent Knox that it is more than he can take when no one shows up to the meeting he was planning on taping. Did you hear them reciting The Song of Hiawatha when testing out the equipment? —

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

Knox gets so excited at being duped that Agent Selby wants to take his weapon away but ultimately fears the result. When Eli shows up at his house looking for Will, Knox is there and Eli’s wife, June, wants to know what is going on. She is ordered upstairs and while she tries to calm her frightened and crying children, Eli and Knox get into a life and death struggle. Knox loses.

The exile does not choose his Babylon.

The episode ends up with just about everyone in some kind of exile except Nucky Thompson, the one person who wanted to leave, and Sally Wheet, who is still stuck in Tampa. June Thompson and her children are sent to Brigantine. Eli is sent to Cicero, where he is picked up by another exile, Nelson Van Alden (now working for the Capone boys as George Mueller). Valentin Narcisse is offered a get out of jail free card by J. Edgar Hoover in return for spying on Marcus Garvey, founder of the United Negro Improvement Association. Garvey may be a hero, Hoover points out, but Narcisse is just a peddler and a pimp. Gillian Darmody sits in a jail cell listening to a bleak prognosis from her attorney. Chalky White is back in Havre de Grace, his life irrevocably destroyed. Richard Harrow has gone home, but not to Wisconsin.

Daughter Maitland, looking forlornly miserable, is singing the “Farewell Daddy Blues” in a juke joint that is a far cry from her usual tony gigs. Did you notice that while she sang “after all I’ve done, you mistreated me anyhow,” Sally Wheet was shown. When she sang “Since my man left me,” Chalky was shown. Huh? We thought she left Chalky.

What did we leave out

The attempt on Johnny Torrio’s life that causes him to turn over control of his rackets to Al Capone. Like Dean O’Banion’s death, this event was moved up. It really happened on January 24, 1925, and the perpetrators were Hymie Weiss, Bugs Moran and Vincent “Schemer” Drucci, the three men Torrio mentioned when Al Capone asked who Torrio thought tried to kill him in “Havre de Grace.” Torrio was shot in the groin, legs, lungs and stomach. Bugs Moran ran out of ammunition before he could finish the job with a bullet to Torrio’s head.

Quotes from Farewell Daddy Blues

The montage at the end showed Margaret Thompson and her children being moved into their new fancy digs, courtesy of Arnold Rothstein as payment for Margaret spying on her boss at the brokerage firm on Wall Street. We’ll have to wait until Season 5 to see how that works out for “Mrs. Rohan,” but we’re willing to predict “not well.” In the Boardwalk Empire, there is always a price to pay.