When Daughter Maitland tells Chalky how Dr. Narcisse saved her after a man strangled her prostitute mother to death, it makes it seem like there are some redeeming qualities to the man. That all gets turned upside-down, though, when we learn that Narcisse himself was the murderer, and that makes his relationship with Maitland easily the most dysfunctional and disturbing of all the show’s relationships since Jimmy Darmody got too dead to diddle his mom.
Meanwhile, they’ve done a lot with a little in regards to Agent Knox’s subplot this episode. After seeming skeptical about Knox’s notions of a nationwide criminal conspiracy, newly-appointed head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover turns around and claims those very notions as his own. Knox is understandably not too happy with this betrayal, and says as much to a confidante later in the episode.
That confidante? One Gaston Means, a man who very much has played both sides of the law when it has been profitable to him. What that means for Nucky Thompson is entirely up in the air at this point. Will Agent Knox turn against the FBI or use Gaston to double-down on his efforts to prove himself by taking down Nucky’s organization? It will be interesting to find out.
Last but not least among this week’s plot threads is that of Al Capone’s. He’s still reeling from the death of his brother Frank and itching for revenge. Good news for us: he gets the go-ahead to get that revenge after a deal between Johnny Torrio and Dean O’Banion ends in a police raid. “Actually, there is one last thing I’d like you to do,” Torrio tells Capone. “Kill that Irish fuck.” Not since Capone turned up toward the end of last season to “talk about who dies” has there been such promise for a good old fashioned bloodbath.
Capone, like many character’s on the show, is a man whose sense of morality transcends the law. It’s fitting then, that the historical event that occurs in the background of this episode is the “child killing” by the infamous brothers Leopold and Loeb. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb believed themselves to be the living embodiments of Friedrich Nietzche’s “Übermensch,” a man so evolved past normal men as to be beyond conventional ideas of good and evil. This theme was explored in the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, which was inspired by the story of Leopold and Loeb. It was, unfortunately, also explored by the Nazis as justification for many of their atrocities.
It is the notion of being beyond good and evil, the idea that one’s actions are justified no matter how atrocious they may seem solely because the victims of those actions are somehow lesser, that is at the heart of much of the suffering in Boardwalk Empire. Whether it’s the men and women dying from the heroin that Dr. Narcisse is peddling, or the boy who was framed for the poisoning committed by Willie Thompson, or the police officer shot in the head by Al Capone in this episode’s opening scene, there is an endless parade of victims whose lives were either ruined or ended entirely because someone thought that they simply did not matter as much. What remains to be seen in the back half of the season is how the perpetrators of these acts will get their comeuppance.
What do you think is in store in the episodes to come? Let us know in the comments below.
