I’ve been meaning to blogBoardwalk Empire since season-1 but life kept getting in the way. I’m going to bitch slap life and tell her to get the hell out of the way. End of semi-useless introductory paragraph.

Okey dokey, time for some random and discursive (do I make any other kind?) comments on the season-3 opener, Resolution.

Viva NYE: Showrunner/auteur Terence Winter seems to love New Year’s Eve. This is the second time he’s opened a season with a party scene replete with folks drinking Nucky’s booze and getting paid off by him.

This time there was an Egyptian theme reflecting Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb, which eventually resulted in Steve Martin’s hit tune in the ’70’s and a shitload of movies featuring dudes running around wrapped a bit too tightly for their own good if you catch my drift. Apologies for that long sentence. Please don’t diagram it. Okay? I mean it…

The reel meets the real: One of BE’s strengths has always been the interreactions between real people (Rothstein, Capone, Daugherty et al) and Winter’s creations. In this episode, we met the dapper Chicago Irish gangster/florist, Dion O’Bannon who knew how to push Scarface Al’s buttons and was eventually whacked by one of the latter’s button men. The guy they cast to play O’Bannon is a dead ringer for the real, uh, dead guy.

It looks as if former federal agent Van Weirdo may end up working for Deanie. He’s not got much of a future as a salesman, after all. He looked like Lurch on acid as he toted those grips around Chitown.

Meet Gyp Rosetti: Speaking of fictional characters, we met Gyp for the first time. He is so angry that he makes Capone look like Mr. Rogers. I kid you not. He beat a man to death for a perceived slight whilst broken down on the road to Atlantic City. He also spoke the awesome line that is the post title. It was addressed to Nucky who is a skinny Irishman played by a skinny Italian. Rosetti is also big on ethnic slurs. I think he and Rothstein are gonna be bosom buddies…

Poor Richard’s Almanac: Richard Harrell is the maimed Great War sniper who became Nucky’s late protege Jimmy Darmody’s right hand man. Part of his face was blown off so he wears a face mask/prosthetic of sorts that makes him look downright demonic.

Richard finds himself caring for his murdered friends’ kid. (Plural because both the kids’ parents were killed in the course of season-2.) He tries telling the boy about his late mother, Angela, but runs afoul of Granny Dearest, Gillian Darmody. Gillian is now curating a classy brothel in the Commodore’s mansion. Gillian is one of the great dragon ladies of all time, even though she’s played by the adorable and cute as a bug Gretchen Moll. I have a major crush on Gretchen. Gillian not so much.

Just say no to Italian ethnocentrism: One of my favorite things about BE is that it accurately depicts the ethnic mix of American gangsterdom back in the day. There was a certain point that Hollywood became fixated on the Sicilian crime gangs and turned Mafia into the sole synonym for organized crime in the pre-Coulmbian era. (No, not Christopher Columbus, the country named for him.)

Boardwalk Empire revels in the rich ethnic complexity of prohibition era thuggery. Jews, Italians, Irish and Polish crooks walk together hand in hand until, that is, they feel the need to stick an icepick in someone’s skull.

The only thing missing in this episode was is the great Chalky White, the black gangster/political boss, who is played by Michael K. Williams of Omar inThe Wire fame. I’m sure he’ll turn up next week. You cannot erase a great character like Chalky simply by banging two erasers together…

Margaret and the Aviatrix: In between busting the chops of pompous doctors and channeling the Queen of the Nile, Margaret is fixated on the exploits of aviatrix Carrie Duncan. Duncan was the first woman to fly across the US and A and serves as a proto-feminist inspiration to the increasingly independent Margaret. Is it just me or does anyone else love the word aviatrix? It rolls off the tongue: aviatrix.

Jimmy, we hardly knew ye:Resolution only briefly touches on the shocker that ended season-2, Nucky’s, uh, liquidating his quasi-son/ally/frenemy, Jimmy Darmody. It was where Nucky crossed the line from corrupt political boss to stone cold gangster. At some point, he’s going to regret his actions and it may come at the hands of Richard Harrel who killed the Manny (Horvitz) who killed Angela Darmody. Vengeance thy name is Jack Huston…