Notwithstanding, creep Bill Maher, I love HBO. Its famous tag line, "It's not TV it's HBO" is never more apparent than the greatly anticipated return tonight of the multiple Emmy winner, Boardwalk Empire, Season Two.
In case you missed the 13 episodes of Season 1 of BE last year, you can catch up quickly by ordering live streaming on video feed. For tonight on HBO, resumes the multiple compelling and complex story lines of BE. For those of you who don't have HBO, get it. This HBO show along with so many other brilliantly conceived and acted shows are worth the added fees and your time on the couch. It's the purest and edgiest form of entertainment that TV has to offer.
BE is set in the 1920's Prohibition era in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a corrupt city official treasurer, Enock "Nucky" Thompson played by Steve Buscemi, the "funny looking guy" who met his fate in the wood chipper in the 1996 Coen movie classic, Fargo, is the main character (he's the one on the right in the bottom picture above). Charming. Powerful. Dapper. Corrupt. Lovable. Duplicitous. Damaged. Ruthless. Violent. Smart. Conniving. Rich. Amoral. Sounds like one of the many incarcerated governors from the state of Illinois. Nucky is the show...for now. The man on the left in the same picture, Jimmy Darmody, the limp legged psychopath, Nucky's "laundry man", may prove to be Nucky's worst nightmare in Season 2.
Surrounding Nucky and his iron hand stranglehold on all things happening in Atlantic City, is a multi-layered drama unlike anything ever conceived on film...oops, excuse me, much like another HBO classic, The Sopranos. No suprise there, the creator of BE, Terence Winter, also was the creator of The Sopranos . His talented fingerprints are evident everywhere in BE. The casting. The language. The script. The faux yet authentic-looking sets (see above top picture, set constructed in Brooklyn). The violence. The sex. The music. The costumes, The muted tones. The intrigue. The visuality. The abject sinfulness. The historical realness. It's all there and its all captivating, raw, entertaining, intelligent and addictive.
So give your football tired eyes a time out and strap yourself in and watch something very special tonight and every Sunday night for the next 13 weeks. But, quickly change the channel back to football after the show because you never know when Bill Maher's ghastly presence will pop on the screen and ruin everything and make you ill.
In fact, tonight we're having a BE party at the house. Among others, I'm playing Federal Agent, Nelson Van Alden. My son is playing bootlegger, Chalky White. I'm sure Johnny Torrio, Margaret Shroeder, Arnold Rothstein and Mr. Harrell will show up in some form or another.
Enjoy the show.
Postscript: If the country could survive the turbulent out of control roaring twenties, surely, we can survive what's befallen us now.
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