Boardwalk Empire: "Battle of the Century" Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...

Man, when you become a parent it immediately becomes very difficult to watch scenes in movies and TV shows where kids are in agony, and I probably should have known last week that something terrible was about to befall Emily. Kids don't just get random fevers on shows taking place in the 1920's. "Battle of the Century" was a wrenching, often difficult to watch, episode that saw the Thompson/Schroeder household come down with a nasty case of polio.

Boardwalk is a great series, but it's not always that subtle. And so I can only wonder what Margaret will think of, or make of, this plague upon her house of sin. The shot of the burning doll, as all of Emily's things had to get incinerated, was a bit obvious, but still very powerful nonetheless. I'm still a bit confused about how Margaret feels about her new life with Nucky. It's been sort of a combination of relief/guilt/stress mixed with a little selfishness. But one thing we do know about her is that she loves her children. And man, it sure sucked to get bad family news back then if you were out of the country. Poor Nucky was over in Ireland when he got the telegram and will still be weeks before he makes it back to Jersey.

Again, like the way Capone felt that his son's deafness was brought on by his flagrant sinning, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to look at Emily's paralysis (and the fact that she'll most likely be wheelchair bound from now on) as sort of a familial sacrifice that Margaret has to pay for accepting her new life with a top-billed criminal. And as we saw over in Ireland this week, Nucky is an opportunist. Not so much a killer as he is a man who will gladly profit from the misery and woes of others. If he knew about the IRA's plan to murder John McGarrigle, he probably wouldn't have fully objected, but you could still feel his disapproval as he sat in the car with Owen. It certainly would never have been something he ordered himself as Nucky usually attempts to be friends with his enemies first. Of course, McGarrigle was fairly fickle and one could plainly see that he was no stranger to acting selfish and/or talking out of both sides of his mouth.

The Irish setting was a nice change of pace for this series and Nucky's plan to arm the IRA in exchange for their whiskey was a damn fine idea. I'll of course leave the details of how they plan on transporting a thousand Tommy guns over the Atlantic, and likewise with the 10,000 cases of whiskey, but they made it clear very quickly that Nucky's "resignation" and stepping away from the public eye to be with his family was just shadow play. Again, this lie diabolically coincides with Emily's affliction.

One person who still hasn't quite gotten what's coming to him is Jimmy, who continues to reign as the King of Atlantic City, under the backdrop of the famous Dempsey-Carpentier fight in Jersey City. I still have no idea why Jimmy would rather kill Manny than pay back the five grand. Especially when he is ponying up sixty grand to George Remus. Still, I guess without Jimmy's confounding pride we wouldn't have gotten that great MEAT CLEAVER TO THE SKULL! Man, never attack a butcher in a butcher's shop, right? Now I just want Manny to carve everyone up and serve them at Passover Seder. Everyone except Harrow of course, who more and more seems like he might be the one to betray Jimmy someday. If only because he's so insecure and has feelings for Angie.

A nice surprise in this episode was Chalky's plan to get all the black busboys and bellhops to strike. He obviously knows that he can't tell anyone what to do, even though he might have convinced Nucky that he has that kind of pull. So seeing that Dunn Purnsley, the thug that got in Chalky's face in the jail cell (and got beat down for his troubles) is now working as a rabble-rouser was a welcome twist. He was too great a character to just leave to that one episode.



Matt Fowler is an Editor of IGN.com. Follow IGN on Twitter, and follow Fowler's dark, twisted journeys on Twitter. Warning: NO NUDITY AT ALL!

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