No. 10 Boardwalk Empire Season 2 Part 1 Eps. 1-6 (2011) 39 of 100

 

Season two kicks off with episode recaps at the start of each outing, which can be helpful given the number of characters has ballooned. This season the main new character is Daredevil himself Charlie Cox, who at first is a bodyguard of an IRA fundraiser and who then hangs around as a kind of houseman for Nucky, who gets to sleep with Katy the maid. Mrs Schroeder has an eye for his diddle-de-dee charms too, but if memory serves that doesn’t end well.

A few months have passed for Shannon’s agent Van Arlen who now runs a double life as a married prohibition officer and as ‘George Mueller’ who rents a run down apartment with his pregnant girlfriend. He wrestles with his religion and the hesitation we saw last season is quickly lost as he starts pinching impounded cash to keep paying the mother of his soon to be born child, who also happens to be Nucky’s ex-girlfriend.

The series itself rumbles on well but there is a bit of repetition as the various gangster factions vie for supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan are active too and there are some pretty near the knuckle scenes with them and Chalky White’s black followers. There is a great scene where Chalky is in jail and a bigger man picks a fight – too bad for him that Chalky knows everyone else in the jail!

Shannon only appears in 4 of the six episodes and his character does tread water somewhat in this opening raft. We don’t get to see him at all in episodes 2 and 5 and his action is pretty low key when he does get some screen time. He does do well however with this limited exposure and there is a fun episode where his straight laced wife comes to visit. She is immediately horrified by the tawdry offerings of Atlantic City and is aghast when offered booze in an upmarket restaurant.

We are led to think that Van Arlen is turning a blind eye to the boozy goings on but we are relived when he sets up a raid before pudding. His wife is most impressed and Van Arlen gets his best night since he was married as a reward – lights off, of course. He does however pocket the impounded cash for his own use and his fellow agents start to lose respect for him ‘Van Asshole’ scrawled on the toilet wall being one clue.

Two agents take it upon themselves to raid a still and get blown up for their trouble. Van Arlen worries that the burnt and dying officer’s fevered words may land him in it and his guilty conscience makes him nearly confess. Luckily the ‘I knew what you did’ remarks for the grilled G-Man related to a childhood incident and not our man’s till dipping, but you get the sense the net is closing in on his well intentioned but nefarious deeds.

As the first half of the season ends, Van Arlen’s home alone girlfriend gives birth to a baby daughter. He’s happy at first but when he returns with the doctor, his wife has turned up. We learn he planned to give the baby to his barren wife but she’s less than impressed with the offer and storms out. Not a good place to leave the fed-up Fed!

This first half of the season was OK but I think it lost some of the momentum gained from the first. There was some good character development for half-faced hitman Richard Harrow but the politics and Nucky’s legal problems got a bit dull. A lot of the sex had been replaced with violence with a scalping and a face smashing with a wrench a poor substitute for the lovely ladies. Still, plenty of them too.

I’m hoping for some of the long running legal and political threads to be resolved soon so we can get back to the good old fashioned depravity!

When is Shannon-On? - 05.57 (Episode 1)

Outcome? As a new Dad with an angry wife and feverish girlfriend

Programme 4/5

Shannon Stars 4/5