It's eight months after last season ended, and Nucky doing his best to stay out of the spotlight, by working out of Chalky White's new club (Babbette's renovated into The Onyx Club) and living in a hotel far from the boardwalk (far from everything, in fact). He brokers peace with Arnold Rothstein and Joe Masseria (Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano are splits now — acrimoniously — but working for the big guys, respectively). Nucky assures the other gangsters that all he wants is peace, sealing it with a handbag full of cash, although Rothstein in particular seems skeptical, and contemplated the possibility that Nucky planned to kill him. Nucky's commitment to laying low is strong enough that when he learns a new bed partner secretly sought him out in the hopes that he can do for her career what he did for Billie's, he gives her the heave-ho (through Eddie, who has recovered). He even seems to be contemplating retirement.
But that doesn't mean trouble's not going to find him (and thank god, really, because I'm not sure if a dozen episodes could be sustained by Nucky Hangs Out At The Onyx All Day). It's not Nucky's fault, though; a booking agent's wife comes on to Dunn Purnsley, using the old-fashioned slip-a-pornographic-doodle-into-a-man's-pocket routine. Dunn's happy to oblige, not so excited when her husband shows up in the room while he's mid-coitus. And he's even less happy when it turns out to be orchestrated by both of them, because they each get turned out by her having boisterous sex with black men. Dunn takes exception in the form of viciously stabbing the booking agent to death —which really complicates things for Chalky and Nucky — but the wife makes herself scarce and still hasn't turned up by the end of the episode, despite efforts to find her.
Other troubles that will surely find their way to Nucky's doorstep: Gillian is addicted to drugs and prostituting herself, using the potential sale of her house as a cover, and suing to get her grandson back from the Sagorskys. She perks up when Ron Livingston shows up as a potential buyer but likely renter, while he works to help expand the Piggly-Wiggly chain.
Al Capone, now with two brothers busting his balls, is chafing under Johnny Torrio, and annoyed when a young newspaper writer spells his name wrong. Agent Sawicki has a new partner, one who presents himself as a nervous greenhorn but who intentionally lets Stan get killed by a bootlegger's booby trap (and then takes the bootlegger out himself). Eli's son Willie isn't happy at college and wants in on his father's business. Nucky urges Willie to be patient, since he's got plans for the accounting education his nephew is getting.
Oh, and Richard Harrow is murdering his way across the country to get back home to his sister Emma, who appears happy to see him. But that might as well be its own show right now.
Nowhere to be found, yet — Margaret and Van Alden. And with Jeffrey Wright featuring so prominently in teasers, I was surprised when he hadn't turned up by the end of the episode.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He's up all night to get Nucky. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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There's some new names in the opening credits, some of which I knew were going to be there (Jeffrey Wright) and others I didn’t (Ron Livingston). As I get older, I start to understand why old people have a hard time remembering the names of actors. It’s not just difficulty adding new names every year to your internal IMDb, but keeping track of the ones that are in there and maybe falling into disuse. Because I saw "Ron Livingston" and, I swear to God, thought of Ron Perlman. And then I thought of Ron Eldard, for crying out loud. And it took me a few minutes to remember just who Ron Livingston is.
The Season 4 premiere episode begins with a fade up on a dilapidated gas station/diner in the middle of the night. The only two customers at the counter needing to rouse the sleepy ol’ bartender who want him to change the radio station channel to something that’s playing a little more of the hip new sounds of whatever was hip and new in 1924. But that’s the only station they get here in what turns out to be — after a drawn-out, drawling conversation — Warsaw, Indiana. It apparently has the second-longest contiguous brick wall in the world, and don’t think the local chamber of commerce wasn’t flooded with calls Monday morning to find out if that were still true or if it ever was.
The old bartender doesn’t seem to get that one of the two men — who are traveling together — is only pretending to be interested (the other guy can’t even be bothered), but he can’t help but notice the gun he’s got under his coat as he reaches for his wallet to pay the check.
Outside in the swirling snow, his buddy upbraids him for putting down a “sawbuck” on a two-dollar tab, but the first guy crows about the easy money they’ve made. “I thought we were laying low,” says Cheap Tip. The car won’t start, and Cheap Tip — apparently the junior in the partnership — gets out to look under the hood. Sawbuck waits in the car and yells for him to “jiggle the plugs or something,” but when there’s no response to his suggestion within like, five seconds, he gets out of the car and finds his partner lying awkwardly on the wheel well, with his throat slashed.
He’s even more surprised to find himself staring down the barrel of Richard Harrow’s gun, but it’s not an emotion that he’s going to have to feel for very long before departing this world via bullet to the head. Harrows pats down Sawbuck’s jacket and pulls out an envelope with an Old Mission Title Insurance stamp in the return address corner, and melts away into the night. Richard Harrow: 1920s Ninja!
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