There’s a big hullabaloo surrounding heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey, who has taken Nucky up on his offer to train in Atlantic City before his big upcoming fight. When Dempsey takes a break from the press attention, Nucky greets him and requests he do a promotions stint at Babette’s that week. Always eager to rub elbows with some big wigs and loose ladies, the boxer agrees. A reporter approaches them for one last question, though it’s directed toward Nucky, not Dempsey. He futilely inquires into Nucky’s suspicious dealings with Attorney General Daugherty, which Nucky easily rebuffs.
Van Alden arrives home to his Cradle of Sin to find a bedraggled Lucy sitting in the kitchen. She tells him the baby has been crying all day and presses him for closure of their financial arrangement. He admits his wife is MIA after finding the news that his lovechild was intended for her less than satisfactory, and Lucy is livid when he tells her that not only does he not have a home for the baby, but neither does he have the $3000 he promised her for going through with it all in that fashion. The fine print of the “financial arrangement” between Lucy and Van Alden had been unclear until last week’s episode, where it was revealed that Van Alden was keeping Lucy pregnant and imprisoned so that he could give the baby to his barren wife. But after the powerful birth experience whereby Lucy delivered her baby completely alone, I half-expected something to turn for her where she would become insanely attached to her daughter and refuse to give her up. Of course, demanding another woman’s baby against her will wouldn’t be in line with Rose’s good nature, and it would certainly make things too easy for Van Alden, a character whose evolution we honestly care more about than Lucy’s.
At the Commodore’s lavish castle, Jimmy is conducting a meeting with the major players who plan to overthrow the current bootlegging kings: Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, Al Capone (I’ve actually kinda missed him!), Mickey Doyle (he’s an idiot, but he makes the booze), Richard Harrow, and Eli Thompson, who’s always eager to ride the coattails of the next most powerful guy (maybe if he changed out of his cop outfit and put on a suit once in a while he’d be taken more seriously?). Jimmy is outlining how easy it will be to control it all with everyone in his pocket, the way Nucky has done. When asked about Nucky's fate, Jimmy says he’ll go to jail. Eli, who hates his brother even more since the last time he came to him for help he left with a shotgun pointed at his head, interrupts Al and Lucky’s bickering with the strong suggestion that they just kill him. A hush falls over the room, and Jimmy looks sick at the notion. He beseeches Eli to discuss it with him later, but he insists they talk about it with everyone and just get the decision made. Overwhelmed with the men’s fast reasons for why it’s such a good idea, Jimmy looks like he’s going to throw up. Despite the fact that he’s really the one at the head of the proverbial table, he succumbs to the group’s pressure to have his former father-like mentor whacked.
Van Alden arrives at work to find his office has been overtaken by the Assistant US Attorney Esther Randolph, who is the new “serious” prosecutor assigned to Nucky’s federal case. Serious indeed. A far cry from the amateur Charles Thorogood, Randolph has set up a no-nonsense shop (at Van Alden's desk) out of which she will operate to bring the corrupt Nucky down for election-rigging and prostitute-slinging. Nucky was not pleased to hear that Daugherty was replacing the cover prosecutor to begin with, and he is just plain pissed when his lawyer informs him of Esther Randolph’s impressive credentials and undesirable intentions. Without a solid grasp on the severe situation, he realizes his carefully-woven life may begin to unravel.
Margaret takes a trip to Brooklyn to finally visit the alienated family at which she’s hinted ambiguously
throughout this season. She arrives at their modest apartment, well-dressed but dubious, to be awkwardly received by her three cheerful younger sisters and more rigid older brother, Eamon, with whom there is clearly tension.Over family dinner, Margaret (“our 'Peg of old'”) pleasantly reacquaints herself with her estranged siblings. When Eamon coarsely presses her for detailsof how she lives her obviously privileged lifestyle with no husband but a dead one, her sisters step in and defend her right to whatever it is that she’s got. Instead of shrinking in the sun, she offers financial help to her poor, hardworking family, but Eamon makes it clear that he’s not interested in her charity.Eddie interrupts Nucky’s meeting with his lawyer to announce Lucy’s presence, as well as that of her new baby. Nucky immediately asserts that they haven’t seen each other since their breakup the previous spring, which is a welcome comic relief to Lucy’s incessant sourpuss. But she assures him she is only there for money, under the pretense that she needs it for the baby. When asked about the whereabouts of the father, she informs him that it is the very prohibition agent who has been after him for a year. Nucky summons Van Alden with the intention of making a deal: his money problems go away in exchange for inside information on his new prosecutor. I must say I’m happy to get a glimpse of the old Nucky after witnessing this sad, weakened and angry Nuck over the last six episodes. He really shines when holding a shady upper hand over someone. When he casually mentions he gave Lucy money, Van Alden becomes upset.
After dinner Margaret and Eamon get a chance to speak alone. During this intimate conversation we learn what is likely the source of her brother’s coldness: the fact that Margaret became pregnant as an unwed teenager and chose escaping to America over being sent to an abusive convent. Not only did she forsake her life and family, but she funded the trip by stealing from her parents money that was meant instead for Eamon’s voyage. When she tries to pay him back, he expresses no interest in helping her to unburden her own conscience. Presumably to avoid awkward questions, he snatches the cash off the table only as their youngest sister walks in the door.
Van Alden returns home in haste, looking for Lucy whom he suspects has fled. He is momentarily hopeful that she is the woman he hears in the bedroom singing the baby to sleep, but he instead finds a neighbor who reports that Lucy just went out for formula. Van Alden gets that she will not be returning. If he didn’t get it though, the title page of the play Lucy wanted to act in pinned to a dirty diaper left rotating on the phonograph pretty much seals the deal.
Left holding the baby bag, later that day Van Alden cradles his daughter as he makes a first attempt at naming her. Aww, we suspect he might kind of like the little bug. Later he shows up at work requesting a word with Ms. Randolph, to whom he immediately divulges the existence of his illegitimate daughter. He explains that he tells her this because he wants to prove that he is, if nothing else, an honest man. He then makes a curious move by bestowing upon her the gift of his very extensive and incriminating file on Nucky. At a time when Van Alden clearly needs all the support Nucky is offering, we wonder if this gesture is simply a means of getting into her good graces so that he may be an effective double agent, or does he really intend to assert his goodness by sticking it to all-that-represents-bad Nucky once and for all?
Margaret’s sisters are thrilled by her wealth and this mysterious man who provides for her, but Margaret is shaken when the youngest, Eilish, lays out an eerily accurate picture of the man’s depth of power and also tragic past. Her sisters insist that her passion for reading colors her imagination so. Recognizing an opportunity for connection, the next morning Margaret returns to her family’s neighborhood where she meets little Eilish in the street and gives her a book. Just as she’s musing over what fun it would be for the girl to come visit her in Atlantic City, Eamon approaches. He returns her dirty money and makes it clear that any other gifts or offers would be unwelcome. She wants to have Eilish come stay with her, to make her life better, but Eamon offers up a little slut-shaming, unconvinced that “making her life better” in the way Margaret has done for herself would be anything he or their sisters would be interested in. She blames him for abandoning her through cowardice at a pivotal time when she needed her brother most, but whatever guilt he feels over that is trumped by what he sees as her selfish actions. He sends her away. She cries in the car.
Owen Sleater, meanwhile, is not in the driver’s seat of Nucky’s car where he should be but instead at a seedy bar where he recognizes an old acquaintance from back home. With no back story for this particular encounter, methinks he has intentionally sought out this man, but the truth of it is unclear. It’s hard even to say just what’s going on in the conversation Owen initiates--there’s a lot of Irish name-dropping compounded with the two heavy accents--but it’s apparent when Owen follows him into the bathroom and brandishes a strangling wire that they’re no longer old buddies. Some old IRA business, no doubt. The actual act of strangling the guy is sloppy and lasts a full minute and a half, which is enough camera time to make even me break a sweat. That poor unlucky Irishman. Quick note: sloppy whacking or not, Owen’s adeptness with a soup spoon as accessory to murder is novel!
That night at the promotional function at Babette’s, as Jack Dempsey delivers a droll speech and Nucky makes eyes with a pretty girl across the room, Jimmy smoothly swoops into the picture. He approaches Nucky with a single cryptic message: “It doesn’t make a difference if you’re right or wrong. You just have to make a decision.” As he departs, a nameless man emerges and shoots Nucky (gasp!), but he only hits the hand that Nucky instinctively puts up to shield his more vital parts. We see Jimmy exit and flinch as someone assures the crowd that Nucky’s alive. Jimmy already didn’t want to go through with this, but now he’s probably wishing he'd made sure the hit man had actually been a good one. Nucky is definitely not stupid enough to think that that obscure kiss of death he delivered just before the shot was coincidence.
Notes: For once Gillian requests that her son look away while she changes? Their relationship has gotten increasingly creepy lately, but at the same time Jimmy is visibly distancing himself from her powerful, yet subtle, influence.
Gillian and Lucky Luciano are totally still doin’ it.
Owen and Margaret had better be really smart about their dangerous liaison. As his hand heals Nucky’s probably going to have some down time with which to compile a really good hit list, and it’s likely neither of them would like to find themselves on it.
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