'You'd Be Surprised' - Boardwalk Empire, Season Three

Boardwalk Empire

Season Three

Episode Five

'You'd Be Surprised' - 6.0

I sincerely wish he was singing 'Nathan' by Azealia Banks right now. Chalky and Purnsley would loooove that. 

Other than the an explosive massacre towards its conclusion, 'You'd Be Surprised' was largely an uneventful and dragging affair, featuring Nucky dealing with his romantic relationships, Margaret setting up her health clinic and Gillian facing money problems at the whore house. As usual though, the less action packed moments are still held together by the typical acting standard and the impeccable aesthetics of Boardwalk Empire.

Gyp Rosetti is getting stranger and stranger with every passing episode, though I'm not quite sure that he needed to be THIS bizarre, appearing in the first scene violently masturbating while a woman strangles him with a belt. Erotic asphyxiation is kind of different I guess, but it feels like the show's tacked it on to make Rosetti more perverse and unlikeable, even though he's just pretty awesome. Ok, I was admittedly a bit phased by this sudden foible, but on the whole it has little effect on the character itself, rather it points a finger at the integrity of the writers. Was this just to shock us? Probably. 

Rothstein and Nucky are at odds over the massacre that saw out 'Blue Bell Boy', as once again it has left Rothstein devoid of the liquor that he was promised. It's a bit unfortunate for Nucky, who has lost a whole convoy of men, trucks and alcohol, but now his biggest contributor is threatening to pull the plug. Michael Stuhlbarg and Steve Buscemi actually looked to be having a hilariously fun time digging into each other's characters, with the two kingpins pretty much regressing to childish name calling and yelling, while Owen Sleater and Lucky Luciano wait awkwardly in the adjacent room. We don't hear much of what goes on, but we know it doesn't sound good, even if it almost amusingly over-the-top.

Back at home, things aren't much better for Nucky when Margaret comes across him and his new girl, Billie, while they are out dress shopping at Madame Jeunet's. Margaret had been handing out flyers for her women's health clinic which has been somewhat floundering now that it's started, and she had come to Jeunet to ask her to give out the flyers from the store, only for the French woman to try and shoo her out in the most polite - but least subtle - way possible. It's all in vain though, because Nucky comes strolling out holding a prospective garment for Billie, who then follows him into Margaret's view wearing only her - quite unrevealing - underwear. I'd expected Nucky's current wife to say some brilliant quip that she's so known for making, but in the end she just offered her husband's new girl one of her flyers and implies she'll be too busy committing adultery to attend. A bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me.

Over in Van Alden land, he's receiving cryptic communications from that prohi who let him off last week. In a scene as unintentionally farcical as Rothstein and Nucky's shouting match, the agent arrives in his home, causing both of the Muellers to worry that the jig is up. Nelson forces Sigrid to leave the room as he prepares to face the music, only for the agent to merely chastise him for selling a faulty iron a few weeks prior, explaining exactly how the two had met before. A second later, Sigrid rams him over the head a few times, much to Van Alden's shock and to our amusement. Nelson and Sigrid then decide the only way out is to finish the job, with the poor guy being suffocated by Nelson's handkerchief while Sigrid dutifully holds his legs down. Next thing we know, Van Alden's gone back to the florist who offered him a gangster job, for help disposing of the body. Was it me, or was this whole thing oddly comical? I mean, it's Van Alden, who was always too disturbingly bizarre to be taken without a grain of salt, but he and his wife barely batted an eyelid while suffocating that man. Weird? Just a little.

I honestly didn't care about Gillian's financial problems at her new brothel, so at first I was curious as to why exactly we had to go into them so much. Turns out that Mrs. Darmody seems to legitimately believe that her son has simply run off somewhere, and she writes him at one point to beg him to return to her. It is a really quite depressing moment, and a testament to the often under-used Gretchen Mol, who's only appeared in three of the five episodes so far. 

Let's be honest here; did anyone understand what the hell was going on with that tribunal thing? I got that 'Melon' was the secretary for the bureau of Internal Revenue, but what were they talking about? Somehow Harry Daugherty got mentioned, a name I'm sure I've heard before but can't quite place, and his name set off alarm bells for Gaston Means, aka the crazy guy who hid from the people he was collecting money from. Means reports to some guy I've definitely seen before, but I don't really think who he is matters. Rather, the fact that Means gives him some useful advice; making a high-profile arrest is the only way out of facing the committee under suspicion of corruption; will surely be important later. Who will get arrested?

In the night's most who-gives-a-fuck storyline, Margaret warns Nucky that Billie Kent doesn't need 'rescuing', and is therefore not the type of girl he'll stay with. He deflects this, but it becomes apparent throughout the episode that he's trying to help her anyway, as her stage show is failing pretty badly. Nucky believes it is because of a badly cast male lead in the show, titled 'The Naughty Virgin' in a humorously awful attempt at subtlety - and knowingly so. Anyway, he tries to convince Eddie Cantor to take the role, finally giving Stephen DeRosa a chance to stretch out the marvelous adaption of the famous performer, and do something other than sing and joke. Cantor can't take the job due to contractual obligations to another show, but Nucky sends in Chalky White and Mr. Dunn Purnsley to his home to catch a show, providing the most wonderfully awkward spectacle I've ever seen, as Cantor attempts to satisfy the two men with one of his trademark songs only to have them stare blankly at him in complete silence. Once again, it was just that slightest bit funny, which is maybe the theme tonight. In the end, Cantor gives up and tells the two that he'll do Billie's show. He doesn't take it with glee however, and when he prepares to take the stage with her he turns to her and asks her if she's aware of Lucy Danziger, which of course she isn't. In a line as cruel as the one I wish Margaret made earlier, he warns her that 'the next one won't know a thing about you either'.

The best scene of the night belonged to Gyp Rosetti, who is rudely interrupted while enjoying another oxygen-depraved (ha! see what I did there?) tryst when that annoying kid who works for Meyer Lansky bursts in and takes out a whole bunch of his men, before breaking into the bedroom and taking a few shots at Gyp himself. Gyp's a nice guy though, so he uses his trick to block the shots, killing her while he struggles to undo the belt from the bed before grabbing his gun and returning fire. He's too late though, and the shooter escapes while he walks through the carnage entirely - and I mean entirely - naked, with all of himself on display. Very brave, Bobbie Cannavale, full nudity isn't particularly common on television, especially while completely coated in blood and surrounded by dead bodies.

The scene after shows that Nucky and Rothstein had handled their tiff, and that he'd organised the shooting in an attempt to take out Gyp Rosetti - duh. Anyway, at least we know these two aren't at odds so much anymore, I don't mind Rothstein.

So, other than that penultimate montage of fetishist sex and a four-fatality-filled-shoot-out, the whole episode was a little dull. The strange additions of awkward humour either flew over my head or completely threw me off, so I'd have to ask that they not pull that creepy weird shit again, because I was slowly considering backing away from the television. Luckily the episode ended before it got that far, but maybe not next time. Boardwalk Empire isn't the place for hilarity, it's supposed to be more like an epic prohibition-drama. There isn't that much room for comedy, especially farcical or just awkward situations. They're just... a bit much. Other than the violent or the bizarre, the majority of 'You'd Be Surprised' was just uninteresting. I'm not sure why we had so much build-up to Van Alden having to kill the prohi, he could have just showed up at his house. Likewise, why did Nucky have to try and reason with Cantor first? Couldn't he have just sent Chalky and Purnsley over in the first place? Also, why was Gillian's short, pointedly sentimental storyline split up the way it was, it could have been only one scene. 

I guess in the end, 'You'd be Surprised' did what the title said it would, and I was at the very least bewildered by the shooting at Tabor Heights, but there was so much dead weight just hanging around - in character and scene senses - that I just want this season to pick things up and get into it, which it surely will now that Rosetti should be on the warpath.