Boardwalk Empire Recap: “The Pony”

The following recap contains spoilers

by Veronique Medrano:

Boardwalk Empire Recap: “The Pony”
Original Air Date (HBO): Sunday November 4, 2012
Season 2 Episode 7

My reaction to this week’s episode:

Just a friendly reminder: This recap covers the characters you should pay attention to, and while other recaps give you the rundown of the episode from start to finish, I want to cut the fluff and take you to the milky caramel center. So before we enter let me remind everyone, just so ya won’t forget, that the following recap contains spoilers (i.e: info about the episode that you may not want to know before watching).

This week’s episode had me completely MIND-BLOWN! It exploded every neuron in my brain, and regenerated it back into a symphony of beauty that made every mean thing I ever regurgitated get re-digested.  I will say I hated every filler episode it took to get to this point, but damn did it make this whole episode feel ten times sweeter. (sigh) Characters of the week have to be the female leads: Gillian Darmody, Billie Kent, and Margaret Schroeder (Thompson).

Let us start with the weirdness from last week, that is resolved at the start of the episode. Gillian Darmody; drowned, drugged, and had sex with last episode, all the while promulgating the illusion that this ‘stranger’ was her son Jimmy.  This was all a ruse, Gillian wasn’t going crazy (yeah right), what she was really doing is setting up the man to take the place of her ‘dead son’ so that she could transfer the lease of the “health spa” to her name. After a public announcement of Jimmy’s death, Nucky pays Gillian a visit to offer his condolences.

The two play a beautiful match of verbal tennis with Gillian spouting her story about Jimmy returning from “one of his excursions” with a substance abuse problem, and Nucky making veiled comments on the of her story when suddenly Gillian tosses a drink in Nucky’s face. She finally addresses the elephant in the room:  Nucky’s involvement in killing her son Jimmy. Nucky, grins angrily and retorts to Gillian that she exists in this town (business and all) because he allows her to. This riles Gillian into a tizzy, and she manages to get information from Lucky that  he, Lucky and Rothstein are meeting for dinner at Babbette’s that evening. When Gyp comes to the brothel later that evening, Gillian makes it clear (at least to the viewer) that what she is about to share with Gyp is revenge over the death of her son and shares the aforementioned information of Nucky & Rothstein’s whereabouts that evening. Gillian has officially made her bed, and it is clear that whatever fate Gyp Rosetti faces she will reap the consequences ten times worse, but I guess you can’t keep a determined woman down.

While I have expressed liberally my distaste for Margaret (Schroeder) Thompson’s story line this season, it seems that there are certain lights in the midst of her character plot line. The title reference for this week’s episode is the actual pony Margaret is planning to give her daughter as a birthday gift. As she goes out with Owen to inspect the ponies, we see Margaret exerting her independence to choose who she sleeps with, what she devotes herself too, and furthermore what she learns. It is apparent that her one-night stand with Owen will turn into a common and at the end of the episode she asks for a diaphragm for her and her student, but it is also a sign of her taken control of her body.

Finally let us hit on the lady of the evening, the lovely Billie Kent. Here is one simple word to start us off: BOOM!

While it may seem odd, I only appreciate Billie in the moments leading up to her death because her true purpose was to give Nucky a false sense of security and caused him more problems in his business than Lucy 1.0, Billie Kent (Lucy 2.0) suffered the same fate as her predecessor, which is to disappear from Nucky’s life.  Nucky throughout this show doesn’t seem to have luck with the ladies. The truly endearing thing about Billie this episode is her determination to be independent during an era where female independence was not positively looked upon.

We got to see a day in the life of Billie Kent. She goes to a screen test for a film and does brilliantly, drinks later in the evening to her success, and when Nucky drops by she has a frank conversation regarding their future together. Billie explains to Nucky for the umpteenth time that he reminds her of her father, and her independence is all her own and no one will dictate her life or pamper her. It was time for Billie to die.

All in all this week’s episode is building up to a war: Gangster against Gangster.  Cast your bets for who’s next in the death chain for the rest of the season.