“It doesn’t make a difference if you’re right or wrong. You just have to make a decision.” (Jimmy)

This week’s episode proved it’s easier to criticize than to be in charge. Every character who tried to control their destiny found themselves hindered by others. It’s the week of the little man on Boardwalk Empire.

Let’s start with the biggest of the bunch: Jimmy. He wants to be a big guy, the young fish want to take over from the older guys, but they lack the patience and the well-manneredness being feared needs. It’s not about killing people, it’s about killing the right people. Nucky knows that the most obvious way is not always the best; Jimmy doesn’t. Then again, though, the idea – killing Nucky – wasn’t really his to begin with. Shockingly enough, it came from Eli. But once it was said, the dice was cast and Jimmy had to be the big guy and nod his head in approval. This mirrors a scene from season one, where Jimmy, when given the identity of the Delassio brothers by Nucky, asked what he had to do with them. He just wanted Nucky to say it – the make the tough decision. And now Jimmy finds himself in Nucky’s place. Pretty slick.

It was nice seeing Van Alden and Nucky stand face to face once more. When the series started, it felt like they would be antagonists, but the further along we got, the more they strayed from one another. Now the question remains: is Van Alden conning Nucky or the state attorney’s assistant? What a nice season one-style vibe: we can’t read Van Alden, we have no clue what he’s going to do. At any rate, we’ll hopefully see more of them together.

Another big player was Margaret; I’m very to finally understand her again. Because she was only marginally involved with everything going on, I sort of lost track of her. I was even beginning to think she had a secret identity or something. Fittingly for this episode, she had no more connection with the world she used to be part of, and she can never belong to that world again.

Thoughts and things

• Twenties-award of the week? I’ll just say the boxing midget because there was nothing else, really.
• I liked the scene with Jimmy and the other young gangsters. It was such a nice set-up and it felt almost as exciting as the scene from the first episode that had the old ones united.

In all…

A nice, in-between episode with a lot of throwbacks to older episodes. Sometimes, TV series take a little time-out to show everyone how far they’ve come. Boardwalk Empire never throws an episode at you without any plot development in it, but the focus was obviously elsewhere.