Boardwalk Empire Recap: Year of the Pig

Margaret walks off and joins Dr. Landau, the doctor who gave her the tour of the hospital. He and his wife are in festive moods so Margaret sees an opening to reiterate the suggestion to improve prenatal care. Landau takes it as well as you’d expect a pompous, imperious, up his own ass jerk to, first “casually” wondering which doctor made the suggestion (Margaret lies to protect Mason) then smarming to Nucky that he’s going to need another drink since Margaret’s “lecturing” him on how the hospital was complicit in the woman’s miscarriage. Dick. Now the doctor keeps haranguing Margaret until she’s good and embarrassed and Nucky finally supports her.

That’s three men in the course of a few minutes who’ve all treated Margaret to varying degrees of disrespect. Men really sucked in the 1920s.

Sorry ‘bout it.

But Nucky doesn’t have time to deal with Margaret’s ish, he’s got palms to grease for the New Year and has Eddie, in intrepid explorer garb, escort in two “Egyptians” (Nucky’s an equal opportunity exploiter) with a trunk full of “King Tut’s treasure.” The greedy horde descends tentatively at first until one woman says they’re real diamonds and they all get pushier and grabbier. All the gangsters, including Lucky and Gyp, find this unseemly, because they have no self awareness.

Down at the Artemis Club, Gillian joins Richard at the bar and boy howdy, do they look like a good time:

She wants to get one last good scare into him so she casually asks if he likes living there. Richard grunts a yes and avoids eye contact (Good boy, Richard.) so she politely asks him not to fill Tommy’s head with stories (about Angela) from the past because it fucks up her plan to completely control the boy and mold him into the man Jimmy never could be is too painful for him. Richard grunts another agreement because he may be a sniper but she scares the bejeebies out of him. Having gotten her way, Gillian asks if he’s going out and Richard says he is. To meet a friend. Who in the what how? He has no friends. Gillian doesn’t give a shit, though, because he’s already given her what she wanted.

Some servers try to go down to the servant’s kitchen at the Thompson house but an unidentified goon of Rosetti’s threatens them to stay upstairs. Arnold and Remus have a creep off and it’s a draw. Arnold wins on style but Remus wins on substance. Nucky comes down and tries to chit chat|but after a rather deft piece of breezy anti-Semitism from Rosetti, he’s down to brass tacks. He needs 500 cases of rum….

Nucky’s simplifying his operation as a precaution to protect himself and his political allies, so he’ll only be selling to Rothstein who will, in turn, be the supplier. Rosetti is none too pleased and starts building a brilliantly bigoted head of steam, calling Rothstein a “kike midget who creeps around like a dentist with ether,” and that second half is accurate and amusing enough to get a smile out of Arnold. Lucky tries to intervene because someone insulted Rothstein but Rosetti tells “Short pants” to sit in the corner. And then there’s Nucky: