Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Episode 2 Recap: Spaghetti and Coffee

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Everyone’s playing for keeps this season on Boardwalk Empire. A battle of wills is taking shape as Nucky, Rothstein and Rosetti vie for control of the liquor market on the eastern seaboard.

Ignoring, briefly, the loose cannon that is Gyp Rosetti, Nucky takes a short trip to Manhattan, ostensibly to take care of some business with Rothstein and pay off DA Harry Daugherty. In reality, however, he is falling a little too hard and a little too fast for Billie, and this trip is nothing if not an excuse to spend more time with her.

As Nucky goes slightly off the rails, Billie’s emotional limitations are becoming heartbreakingly apparent. One almost pities the cold-hearted gangster as he eavesdrops on surreptitious phone calls and watches anxiously as she flirts with her other consorts. The end of the episode finds Nucky pleading with Billie to be with him and him alone. Even as she placates him momentarily, allowing the phone to ring away, it’s apparent that she’ll never be able to agree in the long term.

His head noticeably not in the game, Nucky’s distractions are wearing Rothstein thin. As they embark on their new partnership, Nucky’s logistical oversight drops sharply off, allowing the normally tightly-run-operation to be sloppily managed by Mickey Doyle. It won’t be long until Rothstein’s patience runs out, and the interrupted liquor delivery is sure to shorten his fuse.

Nucky’s out of his element in New York. Unused to abiding by other people’s rules, Nucky hovers not at the top of the food chain but somewhere in the middle.  A broken radiator at Billie’s requires him to do manual labor (whereas a snap of the fingers would bring Eddie running back in AC). Later, subjected to the eccentricities of Gaston Means, he is instructed to leave his $40,000 payment to the DA in a fishbowl, not even shown the respect of a face-to-face business transaction.

Accustomed to having his associates bend over backwards to accommodate his whims, Nucky is both intrigued and demeaned by Gaston, but continues the interaction with a modicum of wry complicity.

Having found a new crusade, Margaret goes head to head with the lead OBGYN at St. Theresa. Her agenda to educate female patients will be an uphill battle against the dogma of the Catholic hospital. She’ll also find no easy pupils in the women it serves—her heartbreaking interaction with a woman who lost a child (her ninth, and fourth loss) shows how deeply systemic the ignorance is. Calling for reform, Margaret wins over the aloof doctor and the beginnings of a partnership are formed.

Of course, not all alliances are so easily built, and trust, once broken, takes more than time to mend.

Liberated after nearly 2 years behind bars, an emaciated Eli discovers a new world order – both at home and in Nucky’s organization. Owen Sleater and Mickey Doyle are now Nucky’s  right-hand men, and Nucky doesn’t even observe the event of Eli’s release.

At home, Eli’s oldest son Will has become the man of the house, and they both struggle to realign to the newness of the other’s presence:  Eli to an adult son, Will to a decimated father.

In a bold opening gambit, Rosetti takes over the last petrol station between Atlantic City and New York. Effectively creating an embargo on Nucky’s booze channel to Rothstein, Rosetti demonstrates his intent to play nothing but hardball.

We get a deeper glimpse into the life of Chalky White as he weighs his daughter’s marriage proposal. Like any young woman, Maybelle wants an exciting suitor – someone like her father. Chalky, however, wants her to have a different life. It’s the American Dream – to give your children a better future  than you had. Marrying a doctoral-candidate will take her away from the jazz hall gangster life Chalky lives, but Maybelle doesn’t want to lead a quiet life. She craves the thrill.

Chalky, in a cold, tough-love move straight of the Omar Little playbook, seems to arrange for his daughter to witness one of his patrons being beaten nearly to death.

Chalky and Nucky are cut from the same cloth. As Nucky continues to futilely pursue a home and family life with a girl even less likely to provide it than the volatile Lucy, Chalky attempts to coerce his headstrong daughter into making a safe decision. Both men are blind to the natures of the women they love and it can only come back to bite them later.

With everyone on the eastern seaboard of New Jersey battling for booze, love or power, only one alpha dog can become the leader of the pack. Despite preferring to bestow his attentions on Billie, Nucky can’t afford to disregard Gyp Rosetti much longer – and now that the new day will dawn with no liquor delivery to New York, Rosetti’s sure to have caught the gangster’s eye.