The penultimate episode of this brilliant second season of Boardwalk Empire is entitled "Under God's Power She Flourishes." It's a reference to the official motto of Princeton, and speaking of "nourishing mothers," we finally get the full picture on Jimmy's particularly icky relationship with Gillian. Which is a whole lot
worse than we'd all feared. Fueled by Lucky's heroin samples, Jimmy mourns the murdered Angela, and in his sickly reverie, returns to his boyhood memories. The Princeton flashbacks are pretty amazing displays of Michael Pitt's virtuosity as an actor, as well as an interesting study in costume contrast. The young Jimmy not only shows his youth and innocence through awkward collars and dopey flops of mouse-brown hair. There is a kind of sweetness there — an optimism that has never been part of the Jimmy we know, and by the end of this harrowing episode, the reasons are abundantly clear.
Poignantly, we see Jimmy studying Webster, the dark, 17th-century author whose intricate, tragic plays hinge on insanity, dark passions, and evil. During a visit from his mother (in which she meets the young Angela for the first time), her drunken flirtations provoke...
Dramatic turns (and spoilers) after the jump.
No comments:
Post a Comment