HBO [US] Boardwalk Empire **Spoilers**

DjFlin

Roar wrote: »

Couldn't find a thread on this so...

I didn't entirely enjoy the first season of Boardwalk. It was OK, I guess, but it never really grabbed me and pulled me in, despite the fantastic production values and some very fine acting.

The first episode of season 2 had the same effect on me. Left me a little cold. Not much really happened, but then again I suppose they had to spend most of the time reintroducing the characters. Van Halden was funny (him punching the waiter was a real HOLY S**T kinda moment), and Richard is brilliantly creepy as always. But I don't really care about any of the characters to be honest and unless the next few episodes grab my attention I'll probably be abandoning it tbh.

Oh, and that theme song is STILL f**king atrocious. I hate it.

Stop watching it then.

Dunno what your talking about with the theme song, its perfect.

Richard Dower

Ep.2 - it think folks might say this ep. was very slow paced, ergo even boring...but i found it very engaging from a character study/development angle. The entire story of Chalky in the jail...seeing that all being played out, was excellet. Loved how Chalky had everyone in the cell on his side, yer man got some beating!

As for Nucky, well he's knows now who is out to get him, incl. his brother and Jimmy, setting the stage hopefully for some action to come. The IRA angle could be interesting as well, great to see genuine Irish actors and accents, they lads put Margaret to shame! (accent wise).

No Van Alden in this ep., while BE visually is amazing it does leave alot to be desired in terms of shall we say, entertainment....pacing and dare i say action?, but as i said last year, if yer expecting gangsters and Tommy guns you're watching the wrong show.

BE is rather slowed paced, it is character driven, history driven, you CSI types need not apply.

KerranJast

Some good plots being brought in. I doubt that reference to Margaret "not having to choose sides" was a throwaway one wrt the looming Civil War back in Ireland.

rockmongrel

Anyone else get the feeling the Irishman looking for money off Nucky was based on Eamon De Velera? Certainly bore a striking resemblance in both appearance and mannerism, although the dates of his American tour would have been a little earlier than the show is set...

Anyway, overall, very good episode. I'm liking how the season is playing out so far.

mikemac

Oh I was thinking the same about Dev and sure he did fundraising too

Quiet, dry, conservative but still fanatical in his beliefs and strong opinions, tis Dev alright

KerranJast wrote: »

I doubt that reference to Margaret "not having to choose sides" was a throwaway one wrt the looming Civil War back in Ireland.

They mentioned the burning of Cork so if it was around that time the civil war was a good bit off yet

KerranJast

mikemac wrote: »

Oh I was thinking the same about Dev and sure he did fundraising too

Quiet, dry, conservative but still fanatical in his beliefs and strong opinions, tis Dev alright

KerranJast wrote: »

I doubt that reference to Margaret "not having to choose sides" was a throwaway one wrt the looming Civil War back in Ireland.

They mentioned the burning of Cork so if it was around that time the civil war was a good bit off yet

S2 is set in 1921 afaik so little over a year away

vibe666

just out of curiosity, does anyone know if Paz De La Huerta has ever done any acting with her clothes on?

i've watched quite a lot of movies and tv shows in my time, but every time i see her on screen (which seems to be quite a lot, just recently for some reason) she's got her kit off and as much as i'm normally a fan of the female form, its actually getting boring at this stage and i'd like to see a movie without knowing as soon as a see her that she'll be getting getting naked in it at some point.

it seems like she is to nude scenes what chuck testa is to stuffed animals.

TerrorFirmer

Phenomenal first two episodes. Both were excellently paced I found, wasn't bored for as much as a solitary second. In my opinion the best TV show out there at the moment.

Richard Dower

Shiite just got real! :eek: ...excellent face off between Nucky and the boys in the restaurant!, i'll ruin you all Nucky says.......
Hopefully this is the start of a major facedown between these two groups looking for power, the Van Alden stuff and his preggo wh*re?...it'd be alot more engaging if trainwreck Paz was a better actress, but she just looks and acts drunk off her face all the time :rolleyes:

Cracking body though even when preggers, wassup with Margaret?....Peggy Rowan?, i didn't get that part...as katie said Margaret is in fact Peggy?, 12 years dead?....so what, hiding her past and changed her name?

Very interesting staredown between Owen and Richard Harrow!....they'll surely meet again, interesting though they both seemed to have mutual respect for each other, even though both showed no fear....i'm sure Owen will become Nuckys boy, same as Richard is Jimmys....that'll be interesting.

Another very solid and engaging episode, BE is always a good watch

expectationlost

so Margaret/peggy didn't hitch her ride to wrong wagon?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

what i got from the maragert/peggy thing was that she was trying to guage her families feelings towards her and the fact that they said she was dead was a pretty good indication they would have no interest in her trying to reconnect as she was dead to them.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Richard Dower wrote: »

Very interesting staredown between Owen and Richard Harrow!....they'll surely meet again, interesting though they both seemed to have mutual respect for each other, even though both showed no fear....i'm sure Owen will become Nuckys boy, same as Richard is Jimmys....that'll be interesting.

and both have an (un)healthy interest in their bosses wives.

Richard Dower

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

what i got from the maragert/peggy thing was that she was trying to guage her families feelings towards her and the fact that they said she was dead was a pretty good indication they would have no interest in her trying to reconnect as she was dead to them.

Interesting, but why did Peggy change her name to Margaret then?....think there is more to it tbh.

Cherry_Cola

I'm just speculating that this will go one of two routes:

1. I get the feeling that she'll reach out to the family at some point and when they realise she has a bit of (Nucky's) money behind her they'll hang around.

Eventually Nucky will probably resent her for it and the relationship will start to disintegrate eventually leading to her ending up with the new Northern Irish guy, thus causing a bit of friction between her and the maid who'll threaten to out her to everyone.

Who knows what she'll do then as we've already seen she can be quite cunning when she needs to be.

2. On the other hand if they don't go the family route, she may feel a bit isolated having almost neglected her heritage, this was already somewhat evident in her first meeting with the new Northern Irish guy and she knows the maid who she tried connecting with wasn't born in Ireland.

I reckon because of this she'll get closer to the NI guy and this will result in the same conclusion as above with the maid threatening to out her. I definitely think we'll see a much darker side to Margaret this season anyway.

I think the second route is more likely.

The very last scene of the episode was good too, with Margaret heading up the stairs and her shadow following closely behind. It seems to me to represent her current and former self; though I could just be reading a bit much into it.

This post ended up way more in depth than I thought it would

TerrorFirmer

Richard Dower wrote: »

Interesting, but why did Peggy change her name to Margaret then?....think there is more to it tbh.

Peggy is a nickname for Margaret.

Hippo

Mindkiller wrote: »

I know someone will probably call me out for deliberately picking one of the more negative reviews out of the bunch, but this review on AOLtv articulates exactly what I found so insipid about the first season: http://www.aoltv.com/2011/09/22/boardwalk-empire-expensive-misfire-for-hbo/

It's notable as well that there aren't as many hyperbolic reviews out this year.

Well-spotted, this review sums it up for me pretty much, and I really wanted to like the show more than I do!

Roar

I don't think the maid knowing about "peggy" will have any further bearing on anything. Nucky knows about her family in brooklyn, and getting the maid to ask about Peggy was just Margaret's way of finding out what her family thought about her - in essence her family think she's dead to them. Margaret's cold dismissal of Katie at the end was just her reasserting her authority over her staff.

Bar the scene with Nucky and the Commodore/Jimmy, this episode didn't really do anything for me. In fact up until that point it was dull. Hopefully that scene will kick start events in the next episode, but I'd have my doubts.

Block (8

Hippo wrote: »

Well-spotted, this review sums it up for me pretty much, and I really wanted to like the show more than I do!

The review is correct in the "world building" thought on the show at times it slows the show down but I think all the best tv shows are.

I've been doing a lot of catch up in the last few months and the wire, sopranos and the most recent one game of thrones are all like this.

Especially sopranos the characters are multi dimensional but at times nothing really "exciting" happened in an episode but at the end of the season you go "hmmm that was good"

This is what I'm getting from boardwalk empire.
I am hoping there's going to be a bit gun fighting especially with the (can't remember his name) Irish guy offering his services to nucky but then we have Jimmy saying he would not kill nucky and that it will be a political coup.

Anyways really enjoyed episode 3 things seem to be heating up!

Richard Dower

HBO has renewed the show for a third season!

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/10/12/boardwalk-empire-renewed-for-a-third-season-by-hbo/107055/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Tvbythenumbers+%28TVbytheNumbers%29

retalivity

late to the party here but....

van alden is gold. richard harrow was my favourite character from the show so far, but van alden so far this season has really been magnificent. the 'do you find nucky thompson fun?' line had me in stitches.

but crazyface mcgee...he needs to be in every scene. Just doing his little twitchy eye thing and looking like he'd shoot the balls off you from 3 miles away, and then come out with some croaky withering remark. fantastic

Richard Dower

!

mikemac

After the explosion the agents go past the car
There seems to be a silhouette but is the reflection of the agents or someone creeping around?

I've watched it a few times, I don't know what I am supposed to be looking at

Thanks

Richard Dower

mikemac wrote: »

After the explosion the agents go past the car
There seems to be a silhouette but is the reflection of the agents or someone creeping around?

I've watched it a few times, I don't know what I am supposed to be looking at

Thanks

Never spotted it myself...screencap?...as for the ep. - interesting stuff with Richard and Jimmy's wife, good character development for Richard and insight into the man, the commodore is a vegetable....was anyone else expecting Jimmy's mother to kill him at the end?...smother him?.....but even better, she smacked the bejesus outta him! :eek:

Good stuff as well with Chalky and his family, based on that dinner scene i think he's bang on the money!....they think they're too good for him!....as he said he's the house negro and they all think they are better then him.

If i were him i'd lay some cold truths on dem dare crackers too!, what angered me though is Margaret!!!!!!!!!! :mad::mad::mad:

Fu*king cow!...oppertunist little c*nt!, i loathe her...she's one clever gold digger, squirreling away money incase the whole Nucky sugardaddy deal goes south, i just hated her disloyality, she's just using Nucky as a meal ticket.

And i hate clever clogs of her ilk, no doubt she'll be shagging Owen soon enough. Another solid ep. - that explosion was great!, i love anything to do with Richard Harrow....such an interesting character!

Hippo

Block (8 wrote: »

The review is correct in the "world building" thought on the show at times it slows the show down but I think all the best tv shows are.

I've been doing a lot of catch up in the last few months and the wire, sopranos and the most recent one game of thrones are all like this.

Especially sopranos the characters are multi dimensional but at times nothing really "exciting" happened in an episode but at the end of the season you go "hmmm that was good"This is what I'm getting from boardwalk empire.
I am hoping there's going to be a bit gun fighting especially with the (can't remember his name) Irish guy offering his services to nucky but then we have Jimmy saying he would not kill nucky and that it will be a political coup.

Anyways really enjoyed episode 3 things seem to be heating up!

Exactly, and that's what I was hoping for here. For me, it just doesn't deliver on that.

retalivity

van asshole....hahahahaha

ive really taken a dislike to margaret. every scene with her in it now is bleh

ive a bad feeling crazyface mcgee is gonna get popped soon....probably by the irishman.

oh, and

Kiwi_knock

Enjoyed the episode this week. It is good to see more of Chalky and his interactions with his family and his community. Not looking good for Jimmy and Eli, without the Commodore they have no chance of taking control of the city.

I wonder who is going to get it on first: Margaret and Owen Sleater, Richard Harrow and Jimmy's wife, or Jimmy and his ma .

squonk

I'm enjoying this season much more I must say. I love the scenes between Richard Harrow and Jimmy's wife. It's great that they are taking the time to build that up. I must say I missed the shadow that was mentioned when the warehouse blew up too. The way I saw it, that was the bomb Eoin made setting off and the two boys just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Next week will be interesting.

I'm not sure about Margaret. How she talks down to the staff is particularly galling. she comes across as a bit of a stuck up bitch, especially as she has come from service herself. The piece at the end where she hid the $100 Nucky gave her along with the other money already in the envelope got me thinking. On the face of it it looked like she was a gold digger and squirreling away the money for when the whole Nucky thing goes south but, I'm wondering if she could also be thinking that Nucky mightn't find himself loaded forever and that she's putting some money aside just in case they fall on harder times? I thought this because last week she spoke about cutting back and Nucky seemed very unwilling to even think about that. There was also his drunken promise to the staff to give them a raise. Perhaps she knows that he's a bit flash with the cash, but that the cash isn't guaranteed so she's setting up a rainy day fund for them... or perhaps I'm just an eternal optimist and she's actually thinking that as soon as Nucky falls from grace, she's outta there!

It's also interesting that she went to Nucky's office to retrieve his ledger and is now getting him to remember all transactions. She seems to be very involved and committed to Nucky. Memorising transactions is bothering me though. Nucky obviously takes in so much money from various parties, I'm not sure how anyone could memorise all of that. I can see that ending in grief.

tommy2bad

I'm not sure about Margaret. How she talks down to the staff is particularly galling. she comes across as a bit of a stuck up bitch, especially as she has come from service herself.

I'm not seeing it like that at all, I see her adapting and getting harder as she learns more about the world and herself. S1 she was just getting the idea that their was hope of a better life. She goes from dutiful wife and temperance worker to widow to shop girl to gangsters moll. Now she realizes that her bridges are burned and their's no turning back.

Giruilla

Best show on tv by a long way right now. Whats amazing is it feels like the show still hasn't even hit its peak yet!

The Gibzilla

Another good episode. Jimmy and his mother again having a weird scene! :eek:
Eli's reaction to the commodore was great and with him out of action Nookie has the chance to regain control. The show is again sizzling up nicely and the subplots are beginning to take shape.

Tipsy McSwagger

Michael Shannon is on Soccer AM

Thargor

Kiwi_knock wrote: »

Enjoyed the episode this week. It is good to see more of Chalky and his interactions with his family and his community. Not looking good for Jimmy and Eli, without the Commodore they have no chance of taking control of the city.

Not to mention all the booze they promised to the crazy Jewish butcher when they took his cash up front went kaboom.

I smell an Agent van Alden episode coming next week with the fallout from that bomb

expectationlost

ken burns 3 part pbs docu about prohibtion would be a good watch while u wait for bwe

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

Rodgeb

Just after getting up to date on this and Season 2 is great. Van Alden and Harrow are just brilliant.

mikemac wrote: »

Oh I was thinking the same about Dev and sure he did fundraising too

Quiet, dry, conservative but still fanatical in his beliefs and strong opinions, tis Dev alright



They mentioned the burning of Cork so if it was around that time the civil war was a good bit off yet

That guy has to be based on Dev, great touch.


I think the reference to choosing sides may have come from Eoin being from the Coleraine where alot of the population would probably be loyalist??

mikemac

Great episode

Memorial Day must have kicked off a lot of emotions for Harrow
There are only two reasons you go to the woods on your own with a gun and only one of them is hunting
The hobo's were on the ball, without saying it straight out they knew the situation and passed on some advice to address it and comfort him.

And oh, that's was a nasty death near the end , shudder

Tristram

Holy ****ing ****bags.

Flashgordon197

Any views on this show? Overall I like it but it has an incredible amount of nudity! Jimmy is a terrible actor but overall the acting is quite superb . Its well plotted . Almost at the end of season one.
Was there a real nucky?

splashthecash

Flashgordon197 wrote: »

Any views on this show? Overall I like it but it has an incredible amount of nudity! Jimmy is a terrible actor but overall the acting is quite superb . Its well plotted . Almost at the end of season one.
Was there a real nucky?

Yes, there was a real Nucky Thompson aswell as other characters seen at various stages. I really enjoyed last season but wasn't overalls impressed with the 1st episode of season 2. Can't wait for Al to come into his own - id say he will be focused on much more this season

FloatingVoter

Can a man not kill himself in peace anymore. Screw prohibition, put them dogs on leads.

Flashgordon197

Its a shame RTE wont run this. I suppose Sky Atlantic prob has Mad Men as well? Next season.

Anachrony

It's not a strict biographical documentary, by any means, but Nucky Thompson is very closely based on the real life Nucky Johnson, a very interesting character. He didn't look like Steve Buscemi, but then who does? Some of the timing and dates are shifted around to make things more dramatic, but a lot of them are based on things that really happened.

tony1kenobi

Was that a halloween episode or something?

It was f*cking vicious.

ricero

jasus fecking viscous stuff this week

The Gibzilla

YES!!! Great episode, the second I saw Tim Van Patten as the director I knew it'd be a good one. Richard is a terrific character, he adds so much to the show and is one of the characters that I empathise with. He seems to be the only one who's not corrupt despite being a cold blooded killer or as he said "soldier".
We were due a dramatic episode and this one did not disappoint. It was a vicious episode but to be honest I enjoyed the gore and harshness of it.

Kiwi_knock

Well that was unexpected, but it was great to see Eli lose it. I feel his character is often ignored and it was good to see more of him in this episode. Richard Harrow's character is by far the most interesting and the development of him this season has been very good. The scene with him and Jimmy was pretty brutal, but highlights the bond those two have.

Very good episode, really highlights how strong the cast is when you consider that Van Alden and Chalky, two of the best characters, did not feature.

Mindkiller

Richard Harrow seems to be a sure fan favourite. Could we say he's BE's Omar Little?

ronnie3585

Mindkiller wrote: »

Richard Harrow seems to be a sure fan favourite. Could we say he's BE's Omar Little?

Oh indeed.

Giruilla

Flashgordon197 wrote: »

Any views on this show? Overall I like it but it has an incredible amount of nudity! Jimmy is a terrible actor but overall the acting is quite superb . Its well plotted . Almost at the end of season one.
Was there a real nucky?

what?? he's a fantastic actor I think. Love every seen with him and Harrow.

The show just keeps getting better with each episode I think.
Only critism is I think Kelly Macdonald was badly miscast as Margaret. There seems to be zero chemistry with her and Nucky and all she seems to do is frown. Her accent is awful too.

squonk

Giruilla wrote: »

what?? he's a fantastic actor I think. Love every seen with him and Harrow.

The show just keeps getting better with each episode I think.
Only critism is I think Kelly Macdonald was badly miscast as Margaret. There seems to be zero chemistry with her and Nucky and all she seems to do is frown. Her accent is awful too.

I get what you're saying about Kelly McDonald. She has always come across as a bit wooden to me but I'm wondering if that's intentional. She strikes me as a coniving kind of person so probably doesn't want to let her actions give too much away. She was fantastic in Trainspotting for instance.

I've been wondering about the lack of chemistry with herself and Nucky too. I know I struggle to see what both of them are getting out of the current arrangement. I know for Margaret, it's probably financial, although her actions seem to belie that and that she may take it more seriously than that.

Flashgordon197

Giruilla wrote: »

what?? he's a fantastic actor I think. Love every seen with him and Harrow.

The show just keeps getting better with each episode I think.
Only critism is I think Kelly Macdonald was badly miscast as Margaret. There seems to be zero chemistry with her and Nucky and all she seems to do is frown. Her accent is awful too.

Jimmy is just plain wooden.