'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Inventing the mob story

One of the things that's really working for me on "Boardwalk Empire" is the fact that the show is so fearless about showing people in their most private of moments. Aside from a couple of big mob moments in Sunday night's episode, "Family Limitation" spent most of its time showing us these people in small meetings between two or three of them. We got to see them around the dinner table with family or in the arms of their lovers post-coitus. I think a lot of the viewers who decry the show for being too slow-moving or too predictable are lamenting this very fact: The show isn't constant twists and turns and mob violence. I think there may have been an expectation from some corners that the show was going to be big and bloody and absolutely unpredictable, but Terence Winter has always been a mob-movie classicist.

His episodes of "The Sopranos" were always among that show's most intriguingly off-kilter. Certainly David Chase was the primary creative force behind that series, but many of the episodes that featured the biggest mob moments were written by Winter. He had a fondness for portraying classic moments you've seen a million times before in a mob movie and placing them in a slightly new context. Think of the elimination of an FBI informant in Season 5's "Long Term Parking" or the increasingly disastrous attempts to wipe up a big mess in Season 3's "Pine Barrens." Winter loves the basic template of the mob movie -– a template we're all familiar with -– but he also loves to take it apart and see what makes it tick. "Family Limitation" isn't the best episode of the series so far, but it's the one that best focuses on this particular skill of Winter's. (This episode's script is credited to Howard Korder, yet since Winter is the David Chase of this series, he'll get much of the credit for the series' general direction.)

'Boardwalk Empire' recap: All together now

One of the bigger issues "Boardwalk Empire" skeptics have had with the show is that there are something like six or seven storylines in any given episode, but they're not really tied together by anything other than the historical fact of Prohibition and, well, that they're all on the same show. For me, this has been sort of a plus. I assume all involved will slowly tug these strands of the storyline together in a way that pays off handsomely in the last three or four episodes. But then I watched similarly structured shows — like "Deadwood" and "The Wire" — first-run rather than on DVD, so I remember the early frustration viewers had with that storytelling model as well. And yet even I have wondered whether the story has one or two too many elements.

I wouldn't say that my concerns have been wholly alleviated by "Nights in Ballygran," the show's fifth episode, but it went a long way toward beginning the process of knitting these people together. Sure, it's still not immediately clear what Arnold Rothstein has to do with anything outside of being a charismatic villain (whom we drop in on this week in a "Here's what's up with Rothstein" scene that doesn't have an immediate reason to exist other than that fact), and Jimmy's sojourn to Chicago feels like a completely different series — a good one, just not the same one that Nucky and pals are in back in Atlantic City. But in Atlantic City, the show has found a way to tie together such disparate characters and story strands as Margaret Schroeder, the Temperance League, Van Alden and Nucky's scheming. Better, it's found a way to tie those items together physically and not just through thematics: It's done so through Margaret herself.

'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Who's real and who's fakin' it.

The fourth episode of “Boardwalk Empire” – possibly the young show’s best episode yet – reveals that the series is something completely unexpected: It’s a love story. Sure, the trappings of a gangster tale are all present, and the overriding narrative is about how Nucky Thompson consolidates his power and becomes the top crime lord in Atlantic City. But the soul of the series is an essentially romantic one. This is a story about a man and a woman who have no real reason to run into each other but then find a kind of intoxicating fascination in each other. Nucky and Margaret aren’t one of the all-time TV couples just yet, but in this episode, they fall in love right up there with the rest of them. They’ve been dancing around each other for this whole season, but now is the point where they finally begin to realize what has them in its grips.

The centerpiece of the episode is Nucky’s birthday party, where Margaret shows up to help Lucy into a more appropriate dress after she pops out of a cake, scantily clad. The presence of the two in the same room leads to a series of small scenes where Margaret challenges the senator and Nucky on their position on women’s suffrage (offering up the suggestion that the temperance movement is a kind of payback from women for not having the right to vote), then dances around with Nucky in a way that causes passers-by to gaze on in affection. The chemistry between Steve Buscemi and Kelly MacDonald has been obvious throughout the season so far, but here, it finally ignites into something that could end up carrying the whole series. When Nucky looks at Lucy popping out of the cake, he’s looking just past her, toward Margaret, up on the balcony. There’s the girl he’s with; there’s the girl he wants. It’s an old, old story, but “Boardwalk Empire” makes it seem charming.

'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Making a mark

The wolves are already closing in on "Boardwalk Empire," and it's only the third episode. Nucky Thompson and Jimmy Darmody's scheming in the pilot continues to reveal the loose ends that will be their undoing and both men — but particularly Jimmy — are backed into even tighter corners. The sign of a confident TV show in the early going is when the series feels safe in blowing up the storyline and doing stuff that would usually be done closer to a season finale. In this episode, it's that survivor of the shipment hijacking in the pilot, who stumbled out of the woods at the end of the last episode. As the episode begins, it seems like Nucky and his brother will take care of this unfortunately living witness, but complications, as they do, ensue, and much of the episode spins out from there.

For one thing, I love that this episode reminds us of just how long it would take to smother someone with a pillow. When Eli tries to take out the witness by shooing the doctors out of the room and hoping the witness' roommate will stay asleep, it's a darkly funny sequence. What he's doing is terrible, but he obviously didn't consider that killing a man via pillow suffocation takes a lot of time and tends to be noisy. Soon enough, the man, though injured, is struggling, and Eli is trying to make it out as if he's interrogating the man while the roommate asks if everything's OK. And then Nelson Van Alden is striding down the hallway, and Eli loses any chance he has at eliminating the witness, because Van Alden is going to take the guy and drive him up to New York. On the way, of course, the guy continues to ail, so Van Alden pulls over at a dentist (proving that dentistry is at least one thing that is immensely preferable now when compared to the 1920s) and gets what he can out of him by plunging his hand deep into the gaping stomach wound. The message is clear: Nucky and Eli know what they have to do, but they're often unable to get it done. Van Alden, though ostensibly on the side of "good," is relentless.

'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Putting the pieces in place

The title of the second episode of "Boardwalk Empire," "The Ivory Tower," comes from a novel of the same name by Henry James, which Margaret reads in her hospital bed. The book, unfinished due to James' death but highly praised by critics nonetheless, is a blatant and brutal attack on the wealthy people in the earliest parts of the 20th century who were more interested in accumulating wealth and less interested in helping the others around them. This offended James, and the book is rather scathing toward this sort of behavior. It's not as widely read as James' greatest novels nowadays, largely because it's unfinished, but it contains some of the author's best writing and some of his most politically pointed prose.

It's prescient, then, that "The Ivory Tower" turns up in this episode (and provides its name) because this episode -- like many second episodes before it -- is all about taking a step back and a deep breath before plunging ahead into what's to come. But in the process of taking that step back, the show's producers take a second to reveal more thoroughly just how corrupt Nucky Thompson and everyone in his orbit are and just how much they've worked to put Atlantic City under their total control. There's a montage early in the episode in which Agent Van Alden explains to his boss how everybody in Atlantic City issues payments to Nucky, and it's the sort of thing every mob movie does, but it's useful. Without it, it was hard to know just how far Nucky's influence extended in the pilot. Now, with it, we have a pretty good idea that he's the most important man in the City of Atlantic (as he'd have it), but he's so far below the radar that only Van Alden is terribly interested in bringing him down.

The second episode of any series is a chance to deepen the characters established in the pilot and to pull up some of the supporting players and say more about who they are too. In a pilot, we in the audience accept on faith that all of these characters are going somewhere and that the producers and creator know where they want to take them. But over the next few episodes, we wait to see if that faith will be rewarded. In a show with a huge cast, like "Boardwalk Empire," we have to accept that it will likely take the bulk of the first season to really get to know everybody in the cast. The best way to surmise if a show is going to paint all of its characters with a fine brush is if it gives its main characters some depth in the first couple of episodes. In the pilot, we got a good look at Nucky, Jimmy and Margaret. Now, in Episode 2, we get a better sense of Van Alden and Rothstein, the two men who would dare to depose Nucky, one through legal means and the other through making him choke on a cue ball. (OK, that seems unlikely for how Rothstein will take out Nucky,  but it's certainly in his bag of tricks.)

More booze! More guns! 'Boardwalk Empire' renewed for a second season

Raise a glass of moonshine for HBO. "Boardwalk Empire," the network's acclaimed Prohibition drama that chronicles Atlantic City's golden age, has just been renewed for a second season. On Sunday, the show's premiere averaged 4.8 million viewers, marking it the largest debut for an HBO series since the 2004 premiere of "Deadwood," which followed a "Sopranos" lead-in. (It's also a jump from HBO's most recent hit, "True Blood," which only averaged 1.4 million viewers during its 2007 premiere.)

Directed by producer Martin Scorsese and "Sopranos" scribe Terence Winter, "Boardwalk Empire" has already been dubbed the "next Sopranos" by multiple critics. "The expectations obviously make me a little nervous," Michael Lombardo, president of HBO's programming group, told us earlier this month. "I do believe the show will absolutely deliver on those expectations, but at the same time, would I have liked to have this show surprise everybody? Yes."

And no one was more pleasantly surprised than Lombardo. "All the ingredients aligned for this one, from Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson's initial pitch, to Martin Scorsese's enormous contributions as director and executive producer, to the genius of Terry Winter and the expertise of Tim Van Patten, to a stellar cast led by Steve Buscemi," he said in a statement released by HBO. "The response from the media and our viewers has been nothing short of amazing."

-- Melissa Maerz

Photo: Paz de la Huerta in "Boardwalk Empire." Credit: Abbot Genser.

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'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Meet Nucky Thompson

'Boardwalk Empire' review

Ratings roundup: ABC, CBS and NBC can crow a little, but Fox's 'Lone Star' flames out

The broadcast networks officially kicked off the fall television season, and although NBC, ABC and CBS can all find something to crow about, there won't be a lot of smiles at Fox.

While all eyes were focused on the new shows launching, including CBS' remake of "Hawaii Five-0" and NBC's big-budget drama "The Event," it was ABC's old reliable "Dancing with the Stars," which this season has contestants ranging from "Brady Bunch" mom Florence Henderson and ex-NFL great Kurt Warner to "Jersey Shore" sensation Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, that dominated the night. ABC averaged 17.7 million viewers, good enough for first place, and it also was on top in the 18-49 demographic that advertisers covet, followed by CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW.

Overall, about 47.4 million people tuned in to watch the premieres of five new television shows and new episodes of nine other series, according to Nielsen. That's a drop of about 5 million viewers or almost 10% from the first official night of last year's television season.

But the decrease in viewers can pretty much be squarely put on Fox, which saw its medical drama "House" return to relatively flat numbers compared with last season in the 8 p.m. hour and "Lone Star," the network's critically praised drama about a Texas con man, flame out at 9 p.m.. About 10.5 million people watched Monday's night's "House" and then more than 50% of them bailed out on "Lone Star," which averaged about 4 million viewers. Last year, a two-hour episode of "House" averaged over 17 million viewers.

Fox knew it would have hard sell with "Lone Star," and it was facing off against particularly tough competition from CBS -- which had a season premiere of its hit comedy  "Two and a Half Men" followed by "Mike & Molly," a new romantic comedy -- and NBC, which was launching the heavily hyped "The Event."

"Lone Star," which stars James Wolk, David Keith and Jon Voight, received mostly favorable reviews, and there will no doubt be second guessing within the industry over whether Fox might have been better off premiering the show a few weeks into the season, after some of the competition had already launched their shows. However, Fox is challenged somewhat in its fall scheduling strategies because it carries postseason baseball in October, which eats up a chunk of nights. The network will scrutinize Nielsen's numbers on digital video recordings of the show in hopes that there is an audience that was curious about "Lone Star" but wanted to watch it on their schedule.

CBS' big event for Monday night was its new take on "Hawaii Five-0." The show, which replaced "CSI Miami" in the 10 p.m. slot, averaged 13.8 million viewers, making it the most watched new show for the night. The performance was only 3% off from what David Caruso and his gang did last year in their season premiere. "Mike & Molly" also got off to decent start, with 12.3 million viewers. Although that was a drop of 15% from its lead-in of "Two and a Half Men," it was only 5% off from what "The Big Bang Theory" averaged in its season premiere in the same 9:30 p.m. slot a year ago. This season, CBS has moved "The Big Bang Theory" to Thursday night.

NBC, which is trying to recover from last year's disaster of a television season, can take some encouragement from the performance of "The Event." The program, a serial about a plot that affects everyone in the country and outer space, stars Jason Ritter and Blair Underwood and is NBC's big bet for the fall. It averaged 11.2 million viewers, which is not a spectacular number given the show's cost, but is much better than what the network did last year in the same time period. More important, the audience for "The Event" grew in the second half-hour, which is a good sign. The real test, though, for a big-budget premiere like "The Event" is how many people stick around after the second episode, which won't have the same special effects.

Another factor in Monday night's numbers will be the performance of "Monday Night Football," which featured a nail-biter between the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints, that went down to the final play when the Saints kicked a winning field goal. UPDATED: Indeed, about 15.1 million people watched the game on ESPN, making it the second most-watched show of the night after "Dancing with the Stars."

HBO, which on Sunday night premiered its expensive new series, "Boardwalk Empire," about Atlantic City corruption in the age of Prohibition, said it was renewing the show for a second season. The premiere averaged 4.8 million viewers in the Sunday 9 p.m. hour. It was HBO's best series premiere since "Deadwood," which had the benefit of a "Sopranos" lead-in when it made its debut in 2004.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: A scene from CBS' "Hawaii Five-O." Credit: Mario Perez /CBS

'Boardwalk Empire' recap: Meet Nucky Thompson

Late in the pilot of "Boardwalk Empire," Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) peers into a fortune teller's shop, watching her read someone's palm. The camera frames him through the glass front door, the writing on the door standing out in front of his face, asking if he knows what his future holds. The question, of course, is directed at much at the audience as it is at Nucky himself (who barely even notices it). We in the audience, however, have just met this guy and are hopefully asking ourselves that very question. (Nucky is loosely based on historical figure Nucky Johnson, but his name's been changed to give showrunners greater latitude to play around with the actual figure's history and prevent stray Googlers from spoiling themselves.)

The irony, though, is that we have a much better idea of what the future holds for Nucky and his fellow Atlantic City wharf rats than we would have in a normal pilot. Even if we don't know specifically what will happen to these particular characters, we know that women will, indeed, get the right to vote, the prohibition of alcohol will end in just over a decade after a tidal wave of illegal booze and blood, and the young man named Al Capone will become one of the most famous gangsters of the era. Yet, we don't know everything. We don't know where Nucky or Jimmy or Margaret will be when this series ends. The greatest pleasure of the wave of period pieces sweeping TV in recent years comes from contrasting what we know of history with what we don't know about the characters. We have an idea of what's coming to slap them hard across the face, but we don't necessarily know how they'll react to it. That creates a tension, a sort of struggle against the sweep of history that can't be resolved until the series ends.

'Boardwalk Empire' executive producer Terence Winter talks going back to the '20s

 Before joining the writing staff of "The Sopranos," Terence Winter had worked on such illustrious classics as "The New Adventures of Flipper," "Sister, Sister" and "The Cosby Mysteries." As soon as Winter joined "The Sopranos" in its second season, however, he proved to be one of the best writers other than creator David Chase at capturing the malaise-ridden mob world of that series. He's responsible for some of the series' best scripts, including "Pine Barrens," "The Second Coming" and "Long Term Parking," for which he won the Emmy Award for best writing in a drama series. (He later won another writing Emmy for the Season 6 episode "Members Only.") 

Now, Winter is returning to the world of the mob, albeit not a mob that's at the end of the line, like in "The Sopranos." In "Boardwalk Empire," the best new show of the fall, Winter, who's executive producer and show runner on the series, examines the rise of organized crime in Atlantic City, N.J., in the Prohibition era. The series boasts a pilot directed by Martin Scorsese, a veritable all-star cast of acclaimed character actors and lots and lots of promotion for its first episode (airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO). Winter talked with Show Tracker about working with Scorsese, casting Steve Buscemi as a mob boss and what lessons from "The Sopranos" helped him in writing "Boardwalk Empire."