In an unintended scene of poignancy, this week’s Boardwalk Empire began with the doubly-affecting scenes of tragic aftermath. Just as the present day city struggles to clean up after devastation, so does Nucky Thompson’s Atlantic City sit in ruins and ash after a bomb spectacularly blew up the boardwalk attraction and setting for so many of the series’ high points, Babette’s Supper Club.
The intended targets of Gyp Rosetti’s rash attack were not killed – Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano got back to New York with a bit of a scratch; Nucky was thrown and suffered a concussion, but the object of his affection Billie Kent was obliterated after flashing one last brilliant and unforgettable glance back.
Nucky’s instinct was to act quickly to retaliate, but it was all he could do to see straight. Vision blurred, a ringing in his ears, a scrambling of details and inability to hear rendered the city’s reigning mobster on the ropes.
The episode, “The Milkmaid’s Lot,” has the making of being one of those great ones from “The Sopranos,” where dreams and hallucinations mix freely with just as scary reality. But Nucky didn’t have time to linger on the visions, he had to act: Plus there was the matter of his stepdaughter’s seventh birthday party.
The pony was never purchased and just as well, the Thompsons were all now stuck in a hotel suite for safety. It was almost as big and palatial as the family home, but had an awful lot of men hanging around awaiting further orders.
First there was the matter of public relations in a resort town: How to convince tourists all is well on the shore and that there isn’t a mob war waging all around them? Tell them it’s a gas leak, Nucky says.
Rosetti for his part was pulling into the fictional Tabor Heights with an army of cars and rifles, knocking its sheriff around, showing some interest in a historic station of Revolutionary War hero “Mad” Anthony Wayne, and holding an outrageous town meeting in which he tells the worried townspeople he’ll pay them $200 a piece every month to let them do their business there and be quiet, even if it means bible camp will have to be canceled.
Out in Ohio, the bootlegger George Remus was arrested by feds as part of the scheme to bring down the attorney general. It wasn’t easy: he was chased around the marble floors and exotic bird cages in a particularly slapstick scene while still referring to himself in the third person: “Remus doesn’t get arrested!”
The episode picked up the storyline of the masked Richard Harrow picking up his date for an American League dance. While he’s out, Tommy, who had been his charged wanders into “the girls’ floor” at home and is shocked to find one of his female friends being drilled by some dude. Irresponsible grandma Gillian Darmody blames the hapless harrow for this lapse. And as you might imagine, he just mumbled.
Nucky’s Irish right hand man Owen Sleater who had been spending more time with Margaret flat out asked her to go away with him. “You don’t think I would, that’s why you’re asking me,” she replied.
The title of the episode, “The Milkmaid’s Lot” is a little more obscure than, say, last week’s (“The Pony”). It appears to come from a celebrated quote by Queen Elizabeth I while she was imprisoned. Hearing a milkmaid singing outside the jail, she is said to have declared, “The milkmaid’s lot is better than mine, and her life merrier.” And at the end of the episode, as shocking as the bombing, she pulled Owen aside and indicated that after living like an imprisoned queen, she would consider such a lot, saying “We’ll go as soon as we’re able.”
The intensity of the bombing at Babette’s and the respect Nucky has in the industry means a big crowd to a hastily assembled meeting to react to Rosetti. But not a one of them are interested in joining him in revenge.
Just as in season two, Nucky found himself having to fight his fights alone.
Oddly, that’s also where Gyp Rosetti found himself. When New York boss Joe Masseria came to survey the Tabor Heights operation, he said Rosetti will need much more time before things run smoothly and all he had going for him now was the loyalty of the men working for him. If there’s retaliation for his bombing, Masseria said it’s his problem. And only some day would this ambitious lieutenant Rosetti become a general.
The hothead Rosetti knew a quicker way to such a rank: He went back to the historical display, stole the hat of Mad Anthony Wayne and assumed the role of general, in sartorial style if not substance.
The bicorne hat made him immediately look more like a stereotyped crazy person in Napoleon garb, when in fact he seemed to be declaring himself Gen. Mad Gyp Rosetti.