An ascendant Gyp Rosetti seems to have Nucky on the ropes.
Finally, we’ve reached the beginning of the end. Until last week’s shocking climax, Boardwalk Empire had slowed to a snail’s pace, letting the tale of Gyp Rossetti and Nucky Thompson’s war fall by the wayside in favor of stories about star-crossed lovers and death certificate fraud.
And now we get episode nine of season three, “The Milkmaid’s Lot,” in which the battle lines are drawn, quite literally. The problem is that these lines aren’t linear — nothing is black and white and everyone (Gyp aside) is at their absolute worst.
I can’t say I’m surprised — anyone who’s been watching Boardwalk Empire from the start knows that every season has to have a moment where the protagonists hit absolute rock bottom. It’s just the nature of the program: Sometimes we get humorous anachronisms, sometimes we get cheeky violence from characters that borders on caricature and sometimes we get pitch-black drama of the oppressively depressive variety.
The best analogue to this episode is season two’s penultimate feature “Under God’s Power She Flourishes,” which followed Jimmy Darmody on a heroin-fueled flashback to the focal moment of his incestuous relationship with his mother Gillian. Later, he murders his father in cold blood.
Beautiful as it was — it was one of the series’ best episodes — the whole affair was an extremely unpleasant, gloomy piece of television gold.
“The Milkmaid’s Lot” treads similar, though not equally as effective ground, telling the story of two men marshalling their forces. Who’s good and bad, however, is purely subjective.
Although the title is a strained reference to a famous quote supposedly uttered by Queen Elizabeth I in centuries past — meant to parallel Margaret, the unhappy queen of Nucky’s empire — the true center of this episode is Nucky himself.
Whereas we see Gyp’s power only growing since proving to his boss Joe Masseria that he is a worthwhile gangster, Nucky is on the downfall.
Again, I’ll bring us back to last week’s cataclysmic moment, the bombing of Babette’s and the death of Billie Kent. This singular moment has destroyed Nucky — on the surface he’s battered and shaken, most notably by a concussion that has stolen his great power of wisdom and analytical thinking.
Now holed up with Margaret, the kids and numerous bodyguards in his tower fortress (aka the Ritz), we witness scene after scene of a Nucky who is otherwise alien to us.
Throughout the episode, Nucky is plagued by a memory loss, confused speech, wild mood swings and the lot. He’s fighting it, however, refusing to simply rest. As a he trudges forward, he makes one mistake after another, from botching his step-daughter Emily’s downsized birthday party to speaking with Margaret as though she were Billie.
Each of these scenes is packed with cringe-inducing moments, as Nucky comes across like an old man with dementia and a mean streak. Everyone is trying to play down his obvious post-explosion mental deficits and be nice to him, but it only makes each situation worse.
Underpinning all of this is the death of Billie, which has finally dredged up the same kind of guilt Nucky felt earlier in the season for killing Jimmy. The only difference now is that Billie’s death is not something he can run away from — she was just a bystander (remember that Nucky loves the helpless) who Nucky is directly responsible for the death of.
Between the unsettling cinematography and brilliantly off-kilter dialogue, the episode sets a mood of inescapable dread for Nucky.
With destroyed body, mind and moral compass, Nucky still attempts to salvage some sense of self-dignity by bringing together all his peers, from Arnold Rothstein to Waxy Gordon, to ask them to join him in a war against Gyp and Joe.
Nucky attempts to reconcile with his business partners and enemies, only to be shot down by Meyer Lansky and Arnold, who explain that business with Nucky is just more trouble than it’s worth.
As Nucky had described to Margaret just moments before this meeting, he is as good as dead if these men refuse to stand by him.
Now that they’ve all backed off, it seems like things can’t get any worse for Nucky.
Margaret, meanwhile, is finding the walls closing in on her as well. Everything she has in the world, besides two children and Gyp’s ratty dog, was given to her by Nucky. Nucky tells her that there’s no walking away — if he falls, everything tumbles down.
At this point, it seems clear that Margaret is completely out of love for Nucky, but lacks any other place to go. Being forced to stay in the Ritz only makes matters worse — surrounded by armed guards and waiting to die with a man she hates, Margaret has no reason to stay beyond the fear of Nucky hunting her down and the duty she feels to keep him alive.
Owen Sleater is the only thing keeping her together — the pair’s affair has gone to the next level and in this episode, Owen offers Margaret a way out of Nucky’s life.
Apparently, the young soldier is only staying in the bootlegging game a bit longer, until he has an amount of money he deems enough to start a new life. Owen asks Margaret to leave with him, to run away and never come back. Once again, they have a few believably tender scenes together.
One scene even has a bit of fancy dialogue that sums up the entire series in nutshell, with Margaret asking Owen why their entire lives are drowned in bottles of swill they have no interest in drinking, to which Owen tells her that he’s only in it for the money and only for as long as the money is good.
Their logical understanding of their lifestyle makes their love even more palpable, and Margaret’s agreement to leave town with Owen when the time is right is perhaps the most surprising plot twist on the episode, adding yet another layer of deceit to Nucky’s plate.
The whole concept of Elizabeth I’s quote about “The Milkmaid’s Lot” is that being the Queen is an awful duty and that the milkmaid’s worries are so miniscule as to lead to a better life. In that sense, Margaret sees within Owen an escape from the heavy crown of a bootlegger queen.
All of this, mind you, is pervaded by a sense of irrationality — in my approximation, Margaret’s affair is temporary and sexual, although she seems to have convinced herself that it is something more, if only because she isn’t getting what she needs from Nucky.
We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled, but we can pretty much assume that none of this will turn out well for anyone in the long run.
Meanwhile, Gyp Rossetti’s camp is going through a whole different set of changes. Gyp rolls back into Tabor Heights with a veritable army of gangsters and in one swift moment buys the entire town. (He literally gives all the residents $200 monthly bonuses.)
Last week, I had lost the sense that Gyp is a threat to Nucky, even with the bombing a the end of the episode. “The Milkmaid’s Lot,” however, proves that all this was more or less intentional.
After buying the town, Gyp is standing on the beach with Joe, watching his booze come off the water under cover of night. Joe finds a smooth ocean stone and makes an analogy about how it takes many years to perfect your gangster game, the rock turning over thousands of years from jagged to smooth.
For Joe, Gyp is the kind of gangster that has the potential to grow and evolve, learning from everything that happens to him. This scene, of course, is meant to give us a reason as to why Gyp has started to become a different kind of person in the last few episodes.
It doesn’t entirely pay off, however, as it seems a bit strained to have to tell the audience directly that Gyp is acting with a little more grace because stories have to tell character arcs. It’s a great idea to show Gyp the hot-head evolve into something more sinister and calculating, but we haven’t seen enough of him in the last few episodes to really feel the change in character is earned.
Gyp is still a fantastic character, and he’s still far brasher than the other gangsters — especially when he calls Nucky and reads Billie’s obituary — but it would have been nice if he had more of a presence in previous weeks.
All that being said, he still chews scenery whenever he’s on screen and it’s great fun watching him become a better gangster, even if it’s occasionally hard to relate to him.
The final scene is almost laughably contrived, with Gyp putting on the three-point hat of a long dead American Naval admiral that once marshaled in Tabor Heights, but it does act as a ham-fisted signal of the war on the horizon.
Will Nucky ever regain his composure? Will Gyp crush Atlantic City? Will Owen fight for Nucky or run with Margaret?
With just three episodes left this season, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
Tidbits:
–Once again, we got a drawn out subplot about Richard Harrow and his girlfriend Julia. Richard goes on a date with her, and while he’s away, Tommy witnesses one of the girls having sex at the brothel. Gillian gets mad at Richard, Richard is proud of himself for getting a smooch from Julia, and the whole thing feels like filler. That is, it feels like filler unless it is the beginnings of Richard’s falling out with Gillian. I will admit, though, the scene where Richard teaches Julia to dance is pretty funny.
–We got one short scene keeping us updated on the whole Harry Daugherty situation, and it was pretty hilarious, featuring George Remus running through his house (filled with exotic animals and the like) away from federal agents. He’s captured, and we see Esther Randolph put her plan into action.
–No one died, so…
–This season’s body count, so far: 30
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