HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is one of the most sprawling and involved shows on TV, with a cast the size of an extra large beer barrel (or at least equal to The Wire). So this season, the show’s fourth, we’ll be breaking down the eight most bloody and boozy moments from every episode, including last night’s “Marriage and Hunting.”
This episode was twenty-four kinds of awesome, so please excuse me if most of these write-ups could be quickly summed up with: !!!!!!!! We begin with a peek inside the happy Mueller household, where this guy, he’s trying to get some pipes working round here *points at dick* while the old bag and the baby compete in a whining contest. George leaves in a huff, never to return again (figuratively, at least).
“Why would I let you do that?” “Because he thinks I’m a coward.” “Ain’t ya?” “Ask Frank.” And with those two lines, we’ve got our 1920s Walter White. The man known as Mueller is sick of being a push over, a freak who freaks no one out, and throughout the course of “Marriage and Hunting,” he becomes proactive, whether by…
…murdering the three stooges, including the Man with the Iron Face who should have known better…
…arranging O’Banion’s murder after giving a “I used to believe in God, now I don’t believe in anything” speech…
…and making it rain on his wife before having passionate sex with her. Yes. Van Alden has been freed from his internal tortures and many of his external torturers, and he’s on a path. Not one of salvation — he doesn’t believe in God, remember? — but it’s leading somewhere, somewhere where he takes money from dead men, walks over fly-ridden corpses, and MY NAME IS NELSON VAN ALDEN. NOW WE F*CK (is what he should have said. Still great, though).
Meanwhile, Chalky vs. Narcisse intensified. And with good reason: for her indiscretions with his enemy, Narcisse lays his heads on Daughter, leaving her face purple and battered. When Chalky learns what happens, he stomps down to the club, only to find a confident Narcisse sharing a table with an angry Nucky, at a performance where black people are meant to be laughed and screamed at, not be seen as actual humans. Narcisse has no time for what he shouldn’t be doing and where he shouldn’t be seen, though, or in his words, “Where I come from, there are no such thing as n*ggers.” I’d be on Team Narcisse for comments like that…if he hadn’t punched a woman. More bodies are going to drop — the only question is whether Chalky or Narcisse, or both, will join Dunn in the ground.
Other important things happened in this episode — Roy acting all shady like, gambling addict Arnold Rothstein, Eli getting info from Nucky, MICKEY DOYLE’S WORTH HALF A MILLION BUCKS — but none of those scenes had a very buxom Patricia Arquette in a nightgown holding a gun in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
Oh yeah: RICHARD GOT MARRIED AND CAME OUT OF RETIREMENT. That is the most !!!!!!!! of !!!!!!!!s.
