Boardwalk Empire was a more low-key affair tonight. “Ging Gang Goolie” left out Gyp Rosetti and instead focused more intimately on Nucky, Margaret and Gillian. The result was a tightly focused episode with a whole lot of build-up that will hopefully culminate in a blowout like last week.
We started off with Margaret and “the children” at home, where a fire nearly destroyed their greenhouse. Margaret assumed that Teddy, her kind-of-problem child, was responsible, and went through a series of hysterics for most of the episode. This included a rather emotional (for Boardwalk, at least) scene in which she attempted to punish him but simply couldn’t bear it, but I have to admit I’m pretty bummed that Margaret was relegated to such a passive and whiny role tonight, especially since it was revealed that the real culprit was simply a vagrant. The episode hinted that the arsonist might have been Gyp Rosetti, or some sort of split-personality-Omen-demon-like figment of Teddy’s imagination, but alas, the whole affair proved to be of very little consequence. The only plotline that moved forward as a result was the re-consummation of Owen and Margaret’s relationship, which should shake things up later in the season.
Meanwhile, Nucky continued his affair with his New York actress. More interestingly, he got arrested down in DC for daring to cross Harry Dougherty, the corrupt US Attorney General, and spent a bit of the episode in jail and getting sentenced to pay a $5 fine for, among other things, graft, sedition and being an accomplice to murder. His prosecutor was none other than Esther Randolph, the same woman who got Nucky arrested for election fraud only to be undermined by her own office. The episode set up an interesting potential storyline involving Nucky and Esther bringing down Dougherty, but we’ll have to wait until next week to see where that goes.
I’m really impressed with Stephen Root, memorable as sympathetic vampire Eddie on True Blood, who employs that same sort of creepy fly-on-the-wall level of observation to his role as Gaston Bullock Means. If Means isn’t running the entire U.S. government right now, don’t be surprised if he is by the end of the season.
Meanwhile, the episode delved further into Gillian’s breakdown. Firing an employee for snorting opium with Luciano, she received from him an upbraiding to lower her standards, as being high-end in a low-class job simply doesn’t cut it anymore. At least she finally acknowledged her son Jimmy’s death, going so far as to remove his picture from her wall, only to have sex with a Jimmy look-alike to remember what it was like. Will she ever get her shit together? At this point things are looking pretty grim.
Tonight’s episode also set up a potential love interest for Richard. Trying to make an as-usual-curious comment on “the times,” a bar fight pitted a Filipino-war-survivor against a WWI-survivor. A drunken old man, the Filipino survivor lost, and Richard was nice enough to carry him to his daughter’s car. Stopping by their house the next day, Richard engaged her in some awkward small talk, and perhaps things will go further in the future.
Overall, the episode was a so-so build-up. Boardwalk generally isn’t deep enough for armchair-psychology episodes to work, nor is it engaging enough when not focusing on the mob. Hopefully things will pick up next week!