Michael "Omar" Kenneth "Little" Williams, Steve Buscemi, and ehhhhh Michael Pitt in Martin Scorsese's BOARDWALK EMPIRE

the double church scene was great

<3'd dunn purnsley, kinda wish he was re-occurring somehow

http://fikklefame.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Chianese-Muttonchops-192x120.jpg

this past episode was my favorite of the series so far, definitely off to an excellent start. agreed about dunn purnsely

it's been good so far. feel like they're just keeping shannon around for comedy now though, should have saved him and paz having a baby for the spin-off.

this show's gettin good. william forsythe as a chummy yiddish butcher!

I'll take some quality time with Harrow over major developments. Throw a head smashing and a scalping in and I'm sold.

This season has been pretty incredible imo, much improved over last year.

yea lots to like in this ep, v compelling

I'll take some quality time with Harrow

Loved those scenes

I just keep reading how this show is pointless, not just from M Seitz:

http://www.salon.com/topic/boardwalk_empire/

Interesting that Tim van Patten directed the episode. Whenever his name turned up on the credits of a Sopranos episode, it was a sign that there would be some substantial violence.

it's fine and better than the first season but it is a bit formulaic - some character stuff, some gore, some tits, some brutal gore

he's of the blond '70s TV van Pattens?

Indeed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Van_Patten

Seitz pretty otm there, especially that last week's episode was probably the best the series has produced. I think the violence is pretty lolzy but really I'm watching the show for amusement and Richard Harrow, who has turned out to be a pretty compelling character.

There's a lot of great stuff in BE, and I don't ever find it boring, but it never grabbed me enough to really rue the descent of Margaret (though her and Nucky's courtship was probably the best thing about the first season imo). The show lacks a point, or a larger theme, which is probably why it will never be amazing. Still, watch it after The Walking Dead and it's grade-A brilliant.

I only just watched episode 2 of this season but it seems like there is a plot this time around, so that's something.

seen up to end of episode 3 i think, prob shouldn't be reading in case of spoilers, but anyway

Think that series 2 has taken off brilliantly, last few episodes of series one were a bit of a mess.

Seitz pretty otm there, especially that last week's episode was probably the best the series has produced.

uhhhh, did you read it? He called it pointlessly violent.

is that necessarily a value judgement

i mean, other things that were pointlessly violent- gangsters, bootleggers, the irish

from a dramatic standpoint, he argues

dramatisation of violent events doesn't require them to be softened. He's only arguing from personal preference there, not critical detachment

uhhhh, did you read it? He called it pointlessly violent.

By last week's I mean the episode that aired last week, "What Does the Bee Do?". That's the one he says is one of the best episodes of TV of the year full stop. And it might be.

A show about Prohibition is 'pointlessly violent'?

A show about dougyboys coming home from the Great War to Prohibition, I could ask.

The dramatization of 'pointlessly' violent events can/should have a dramatic point. In theory.

They have a point, but a.) sometimes that point isn't that great and b.) they are excessive in their execution

It might be a lazy comparison because two of the writers from the Sopranos created them, but it seems like Mad Men inherited the adherence to larger thematic interests, the deep characterisation, and the more elegantly executed standalone episodes while Boardwalk got all the double-crossing plot machinations and the more base, violent streak.

Seitz seems as annoyed with the fans as much as the show itself. The mob stuff made The Sopranos a big crossover hit, but the viewership dropped (and those mob genre fans - i.e. the average male viewer) tuned out when it started with the episode-long dream sequences or Tony in a coma.

Boardwalk is in an odd position in that it wants to appeal to that mainstream fan base so it's reluctant to really wade into deeper territory, but it also has too many pretensions towards 'prestige' and 'legitimacy' to embrace the schlocky violent thrills that say, Spartacus could do. Of course, Game of Thrones is probably more violent than Boardwalk, and it is also a better show so what are ya gonna do.

boardwalk can't even seem to decide what to make of some of its own lead characters from one episode to the next, tbh, so asking for overarching themes might be a reach

that's otm. it's too obsessed with plot and has way too many characters to move around the board because of it.

i do think they appear to have spotted and worked on that so far this season, tbf.

First season really seemed to suffer from a sense of 'we're making this up as we go along', even if they weren't.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lto6q7IowP1qzyle2o1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1319731142&Signature=ufVBPe71L%2F4cbI2Photlg%2FEnBo8%3D

I'd also take issue with Seitz' claim that the man mentioning his time fighting native americans only serves the purpose of allowing a scalping to take place later on. That scene and that relationship is as much about generational disrespect as anything else. The man talks about massacring indians with glee, as though it was the manly thing to do, and all these kids today coming back traumatized from laying in the and killing white folk just wasn't legitimate. I don't think it was very elegantly done, but it wasn't done just for the violence.

Seitz may also be missing the fact that one of the commonly tossed about modern takes on Prohibition is as a kind of latter-day Know-nothing nativist response to all these Catholics and Jews and foreigners living in cities, a kind of reassertion of WASP dominance.

I still think that WWI plus liquor-or-no-liquor plus corruption leads precisely to violence.

The show lacks a point, or a larger theme, which is probably why it will never be amazing. Still, watch it after The Walking Dead and it's grade-A brilliant.

― encarta it (Gukbe), Wednesday, October 26, 2011 12:47 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, i agree with this. it's not really pushing the envelope thematically - though sometimes it gives you glimpses of the kind of show it COULD be - but it's coming into its own as really good entertainment.

tim van patten is probably the best 'in-house' HBO director

just caught up on this, holy hell, gruesome stuff. agree with most of what's been said, plotwise i have no idea what's going on with nucky anymore but there's enough characters around to entertain me. nice little pine barrens touch on the last ep too.

^^ "Pine Barrens" jumped to mind for me too!

Love that Eddie Cantor is a character on this show, going on about Ida and the girls. It's spooky.

boring episode

wasn't boring, was just a comedown after the insane-o previous ep

can someone explain to me where the women are hiding their long hair when it is "up", I have no idea how that works at all

YES! I was trying to get my wife to explain to me where all of Katie's hair went when she's in uniform.

i'm enjoying season 2 a lot.

I did not want to be reminded of Esther Rantzen every 10 minutes in this episode
(nor did I want to see those fingers)

ugh, those fingers, yea

ugh... the sound they made!

fell asleep during this episode.

Haha, yeah, the sound of those fingers was the first time this show has ever actually made me flinch. I'm still loving this season, even though I thought the ending was a bit rushed and anticlimactic. I mean, you'd think it would have unfolded a little more interestingly, considering how many storylines were tied up in it (trying my hardest to avoid spoilers here).