Boardwalk Empire Recap: Season 2 Episode 11 …quot; Under God’s Power She Flourishes
The news of his wife’s death and his trip to Princeton have Jimmy flashing back to when he first met Angela. He recalls waking up with her after an illicit night in his dorm room and his roommate helping to smuggle Angela out of the building.
Nucky meets with Fallon who tells him that Randolph is betting big on the capital case of Hans Schroeder’s death. “Just so you know, I’m innocent,” says Nucky. “I wouldn’t have taken this case if you weren’t,” smirks Fallon. They discuss Van Alden taking the stand and Nucky asks if he’s a bigamist. “He’s an adulterer, with a child by your former mistress,” clarifies Fallon, before hilariously waving that away. Nucky notices the butler, Harlan, lingering and asks him to leave. Harlan hesitates and then, at Fallon’s prompting, tells them about Van Alden’s fervent baptismal display during their church retreat.
Van Alden is enjoying a quiet morning with Sigrid, who asks him a little bit about his family. Shockingly, Van Alden isn’t close with his mom and dad. They were followers of some doomsday soothsayer and Papa Van Alden sold the family farm in anticipation of the rapture. They lived in a tent for a year and Papa never got over the disappointment. Van Alden’s ongoing existences was more than his dad could bear, which I imagine made the holidays pretty tense. Sigrid assures him that he is a good man.
Emily is getting fitted for her braces. Margaret and the doctor ease her to her feet, but she can’t stand for more than a nanosecond. The doctor tells Margaret that Emily needs to develop strength in her arms and torso and that they need to prevent her from going back to crawling. Father Brennan assures Margaret that the Lord will give her strength, then tells her this parable about a man who was able to visit hell and heaven. In hell, the damned sat around a table piled high with food and moaned in agonizing hunger because their spoons were too long to feed themselves. In heaven, the ascended sat at the same kind of table with the same kind of spoons, but were full because they fed each other. He tells Margaret that her donation is going toward a new church building and, hey, maybe a new roof for that building will get Emily on her feet!
The coroner is taking Angela’s body away and Gillian is being questioned by a cop. She’s annoyed that Eli wasn’t sent as she requested and bluntly states the facts: Angela was being intimate with another woman, probably not for the first time, and an intruder broke in and killed them. The cop starts to ask Harrow some questions but Gillian interrupts and explains that Harrow is a simpleton that Jimmy simply takes pity on. The cop leaves and Harrow tells Gillian that he couldn’t reach Jimmy. Gillian mutters that he needs to come home before people get the wrong idea. Harrow quietly walks to the bedroom and stares and the congealed blood on the floor. He dips his fingers into the blood and his lip trembles. Awww…
Back in Jimmy’s Princeton days, he’s reading some Webster in his English class. They discuss Jacobean society through Webster’s eyes, in which everything is corrupt and all of the women are whores. His professor is impressed when Jimmy grasps the meaning of the passage, that the protagonist’s mother taught him useless things and he can’t get rich. Jimmy teases a classmate who has enlisted in the army and they scold him for not being patriotic. The professor asks him to stay behind and reminds him that he won’t get anywhere in life treating the type of people that his classmates are that way. The professor, revealing his own working class roots, tells Jimmy that people like them need to be clever and don’t have a life already set up for him like his classmates do.
Doyle, Lucky, Al, and Lansky are discussing their successful booze sales. They joke about Jimmy killing Angela, until Doyle tells them that Manya was responsible. They decide to sell Jimmy’s share and split the profits, but only giving Doyle 5%. He protests, but they remind him that Rothstein has a life insurance policy on him.
Margaret is trying to explain the heaven and hell parable to Nucky, who thinks it’s dumb. Like, why didn’t the people in hell just hold their spoons further down on the handle. This was my question, as well. Margaret is frustrated that Nucky doesn’t seem to believe in any higher power. Nucky clarifies that he just doesn’t believe in divine retribution.
Eli gets a visit from his lawyer in jail. Eli claims that Halloran wanted him gone and that this is all a set up by him. The lawyer explains that if Eli is willing to testify that Nucky ordered Schroeder’s death, Randolph might not argue for the electric chair.
Jimmy recalls a visit that his mother paid him at Princeton. As they settle into a hotel for the weekend, she tells him that her latest boyfriend has dumped her because, as it turns out, he’s married. She’s brought booze and she and Jimmy have a glass. She tells him that on the way there, she thought about how she can’t ever get too sad because no matter what she has him.
Randolph and her clerks are discussing Margaret and ask Van Alden about his impression of her. He insists that he thought nothing of her (you know, besides wanting to bang her and rubbing one out to her immigration picture). He then resolutely signs the divorce petition that Rose sent him.
Jimmy is at a Princeton mixer and is pleased that Angela was able to attend. He introduces her to Gillian, who says, “We’re going to kiss!” Angela’s slightly puzzled by Gillian: her youth, her beauty, her boldness. Jimmy and Angela stand apart from the rest of the guests and Jimmy’s socially anxious roommate attaches himself to them. Jimmy spots Gillian flirting with his English professor and gets this look on his face like he smells a really bad fart. Angela breaks up the moment by breaking the news to Jimmy that she’s pregnant. Jimmy is a little stunned but then babbles, “We’ll get a place. It’ll be swell!” Confidence! Joy!
Margaret goes to Nucky’s study after the kids are in bed. He explains that Eli is going to testify against him to save himself and that his testimony might be enough to put Nucky in the chair. He starts to explain how he’ll be transferring his assets to her and Margaret gets all irritated by his pragmatism.
Angela finds Jimmy outside, having a Oh-My-God-My-Girlfriend-Is-Pregnant drink. They see Gillian stumbling out of an alcove, her dress a little torn, the English professor stumbling behind her. She tells Jimmy that she thought they were just flirting. Jimmy confronts his professor who is stunned to find out that Gillian is his mother. “Your life is pretty Jacobean all by itself,” he says. Jimmy punches him. The professor tells him to walk away now and they’ll pretend this didn’t happen. “It is happening,” snarls Jimmy, and then proceeds to pound the hell out of the professor’s face.
Van Alden goes to see Doyle, who asks him to sit because he doesn’t like the way Van Alden looms. Doyle explains that he’s getting screwed over in the liquor sale and suggests that the feds intervene for half of the money in return. Van Alden would get about $150,000, which is better than the envelopes he’s getting (from Nucky?). Van Alden deadpans, “I’d prefer not to,” in his best Bartleby the Scrivener voice. He orders Doyle to never contact him again.
Jimmy is carrying a drunk Gillian back to the hotel. She asks Jimmy how badly he hurt the professor. “Enough to get me expelled,” he says. Gillian assures him that Nucky will fix it. He asks Gillian why she came there and she mumbles that it’s because she’s just the loneliest person on earth. “Do you love that skinny girl?” she asks. “I don’t know. No. I don’t know,” babbles Jimmy. He goes about trying to put Gillian to bed, helping her remove her shoes and dress. She collapses into bed pulling Jimmy with her. She tells him how she used to curl up with him when he was little. Then things take a turn for the Sophoclean when Jimmy starts to pull away but Gillian grabs him to her, forcing him to have sex with her. “There’s nothing wrong with any of it,” she hisses. When Jimmy wakes up in the morning, Gillian is gone. He stares out the window at the ROTC students marching and thinks, “Well, I could gouge my eyes out or I could join the Army.” He chooses the latter and during his intake lists Angela as his next of kin. The officer notices how unnerved Jimmy is and asks him why he’s enlisting. Jimmy fibs that he’s eager to stick a bayonet in the Kaiser’s guts because he lost a brother on the Lusitania, borrowing a story from his more somber classmates.
Margaret is tinkering with Emily’s braces in the kitchen. Owen comes downstairs and she explains that the braces are chafing Emily’s legs in one spot. Owen inspects them and starts working on a rough grommet. “Do you think about me? Because I think about you,” he asks. Margaret tells him to stop and that she’ll pray for him. Katy, overhearing this, rushes from the doorway.
Jimmy, back in present time, and in what looks like the same hotel where he and his mom had their unholy union, is on the phone with Gillian. She’s telling him to return and show the world that he has nothing to hide. But Jimmy is in the middle of an epic bender seasoned by the packet of heroin that Lucky gave him.
Van Alden goes to work and is startled to see Fallon there with the deacon of the church that witnessed his drowning of his partner. When they show him his deceased partner’s shoes, Randolph’s associate goes to arrest Van Alden. But Van Alden struggles and manages to shoot him, then takes off.
Nucky is surprised to find Margaret drinking when he comes home. She shows him the subpoena that she received and he tells her to ignore it. She’s surprised at this new confidence and Nucky tells her that Van Alden turned out not to be a credible witness. Margaret gets all worked up about how they began in sin and will end in it unless they change. She believes she’s culpable for all of her sins, her stealing, deceiving, and cheating. Nucky prods her for clarification. She stole from her family, her employers, and Nucky. She deceived anyone who thought she was good. And cheated on…well, Margaret’s not quite ready to fess up to that and redirects the conversation to the fact that she lives with the man who had the father of her children murdered. Nucky is furious when Margaret says she’s going to testify and says that he won’t permit her to sacrifice him. “If you don’t think I’m as good as my word, you don’t know me at all,” he says, reminding her that he gave her everything.
Jimmy is back in town and Gillian is discussing funeral plans for Angela. She tells him that for now she told Tommy that Angela went away for a few days to paint, but might end up telling him that she moved to Paris. “A month from now he won’t even remember her,” she says. Jimmy, enraged, starts to strangle Gillian and screams, “I’ll remember!” The Commodore stabs Jimmy in the back with one of his spears. Jimmy spins around and the Commodore pins him by the throat, but Jimmy manages to stab him. Gillian, horrified, screams, “Then finish it, goddamn you! Finish it!” Jimmy stabs the Commodore once more before collapsing. He wakes up some time later in a haze. His wound is bandaged and he sees Harrow cleaning up the Commodore’s body. Harrow sees him and draws the curtains. He wakes up again, the audible memory of Angela’s voice telling him that she has to leave. He looks into the next room and sees that Harrow has removed all evidence of the the murder. Gillian brings Tommy to see Jimmy. He whimpers that he had a bad dream. “Me, too,” says Jimmy. “But everything is going to be fine.” Tommy asks where his mama is and Gillian answers, “I’m here, baby.” She assures Jimmy that he didn’t mean to do what he did and they need never mention it again. “It’s all going to be better now. I hope you’re able to see that,” she says, carrying Tommy upstairs. “One day soon he won’t be a little boy anymore. It happens just like that,” she says. “I’ll put him to bed and I’ll be upstairs.”