Boardwalk
Empire impresario Terry Winter put the pedal to the medal with last week’s
entry, A Man, A Plan. Whereas the previous episode meandered in a concussive daze, episode-10 was
chock-full-O-payoffs and, not surprisingly, revenge.

Boxing
Day: Nucky’s war against Gyp Rosetti and Joe Masseria isn’t going
well. Not only does he lack allies, but Charlie Lucky and Meyer Lansky sold him
out to Masseria with tragic consequences for Margaret and IRA Man Owen. The
former had formally decided to run off with the latter but bootlegger
fratricide got in the way of their escape.

Owen,
of course, was deputized to whack Masseria. Unfortunately for the savvy and
experienced hit man, they saw him coming and the poor bastard was delivered to
the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton in a crate hence the title of the post. Making
matters worse, Margaret was there for the delivery and flipped out. I think
even the usually clueless Nuckster may add 1 and 1 up and get 2 instead of 11.
Okay enough arithmetic, I don’t want to exhaust any Gopers who may be reading
this…

Chalky’s
Brief Return: Chalky asks Nucky for his blessing to open a classy joint to
replace the one that Gyp blew up. Nucky refuses because a colored dude owning a
joint on the boardwalk just wasn’t done. (Nowadays, they’ll let anyone into AC,
i.e. malakatude hall of famer Donald Trump and his fright wig hair.) Chalky was
seething when he left the Ritz. The Nuckster made a huge mistake: he needs all
the friends he can get since he’s dealing with the relentlessly ruthless
Italians. They don’t play nice as you can see from this picture:

That’s
Gyp Rosetti dispatching his second banana’s loquacious cousin Franco. The
Gypster specializes in creative mayhem. Nucky oughta take note that when you’re
around the Gypsy, STFU.

Fork
You, Van Weirdo: Corrupt former Agent Van Weirdo dabbles in some direct
Aquavit sales to a Norwegian saloonkeeper. Unfortunately, the Outfit is
supposed to be that guy’s sole booze supplier,so Van Weirdo is abducted and
taken to meet Scarface Al. Alphonse, of course, recognizes him as O’Banion’s
gunsel for hire and takes umbrage:

The
fork ends up in Van Weirdo’s cheek but Capone is merciful, by his standards,and doesn’t stick it in the big galoot’s eyeball. The latter is free to go on
being awkward, weird and creepy after being told to fork off…

Gaston’s
Ways and Means: Real life super con-man Gaston Means shopped his services
around a lot in this episode. Everything he does seems to cost $40K. Remind me
never to hire Gaston to cat sit: Della is a notorious cheapskate.

The
high point of the flowery speaking Gaston’s appearance was when he dropped in
on Harry Daugherty’s suicidal bag man Jess Smith. And I mean literally
suicidal: Jess blows his own brains out before Gaston can do so. What really
happened to the real Jess Smith is one of the great mysteries of the Harding
scandals. Smith left a journal behind, which Gore Vidal used in his novel Hollywood
to great effect. The master was always convinced that Jess was murdered,
probably at the behest of the uber corrupt Attorney General. Daugherty made
John Mitchell look like a piker but didn’t have a mouthy drunken wife to help
cement his legend. Trust me, Harry was da man.

Btw,
I got all tingly when I saw that Stephen Root was cast as Means. He’s long been
one of my favorite character actors. Now I need to figure out how to work in
some Bill Dauterive jokes…

Under
The Boardwalk: Love has found the sweetly shy and scarred for life sniper
Richard Harrow. He nearly kills Julia’s DLOAF (Drunken lout of a father) after
the dipso dipshit called him a “sideshow freak” but Julia separates
her boys and spends the night with our Richard (where else?) under the
boardwalk, down by the sea: