Agent Van Alden now has a witness who is willing to testify that Jimmy was responsible for the truck heist in the first episode, and is visibly thrilled about this.
We also find out that the only other man at the massacre at the start of the series came to Van Alden and ratted out both Jimmy and Al Capone. Meanwhile, we discover that Angela, Jimmy's fiancée, is rather more "bohemian" than Gillian had thought and has been having an affair not with the photographer, as Jimmy suspected, but with his wife. But is she really empowering herself with this arrangement? On the upside, he's providing a future for her children, and her with the exciting lifestyle she craves. Margaret is struggling to navigate her complicated relationship with Nucky. Nucky's scars, it seems, are not just emotional. He was badly beaten and in hospital for 11 days. Later, Margaret asks him searching questions about a stolen baseball mitt, and he coldly dismisses her, "I don't want to talk about it." It turns out his father challenged him to fight the bullies who stole his mitt. But Nucky seems irritated when she coldly cuts him off during his emotional tale of how his father branded him with a poker for reaching for the bread first. Meanwhile Margaret has taken fellow concubine Annabelle's advice not to let her man reveal his emotions to her – the more he ends up seeing his own weaknesses reflected in her, the less he'll want to see her. Sometimes it's best to leave the past where it is…" Margaret Clichéd or not, this is one of the first times we've felt sorry for Nucky. "Find a better place to live," advises Nucky, handing a huge wad of bills to his friend, so often the solution to any problem. So he sets fire to it and watches it burn, perhaps purging his demons as Fleming looks on, aghast. As work on the house progresses though, memories of his father's abuse begin to flood back. Nucky has a sad, faraway look as Fleming talks about his wife's efforts to keep their baby alive. He plans to renovate his father's derelict house and give it to Fleming, a young ward boss who is raising a young family. It hardly ranks as one of the series' great surprises that Nucky didn't have an ideal childhood, and it does feel a tad unoriginal when we see him looking around the house, his face etched with a mixture of nostalgia and disgust. He seems to be the only person in Atlantic City who sees Eli as the son who made good and it seems Nucky still wants his approval. Eli wants him to move in with him as "the kids love him", which seems a spectacularly unlikely claim. Nucky spends a great deal of the episode preoccupied with family matters after his father, the vile, filthy misanthrope who we saw heckling everyone at the St Patrick's dinner, falls and breaks his leg while cursing his cats. "You may think you're king, but you're not worth a goddamn…" Nucky's father Hopefully that's not the last we will see of him. The camera artfully zooms through the bullet hole in the glass of the cafe window, into a room across the street where Richard quickly packs up his gun. We hear a gunshot, and realise Liam has been shot by marksman Harrow from a building across the street. When the story is over, Jimmy tells Liam to leave town, then gets up, pats him on the shoulder and leaves the restaurant. He then delivers This Week's Monologue – the first world war story of a wounded German soldier he shot, who fought to stay alive despite being stuck in barbed wire, even though living would be worse than dying. I'm not gonna kill you, "Jimmy tells him, Michael Corleone-style. Later, Jimmy confronts Liam, the gangster who slashed Pearl's face in a cafe.
Jack Huston's performance is captivating – Harrow is an interesting addition to the storyline of soldier turned gangster. She leads him upstairs, offering "the thanks of a grateful nation". Jimmy, who is becoming quite the criminal mastermind, has plans for Richard, and takes him back to the brothel where he lives and introduces him to Odette. "This is fine work," says the doctor, smoking a cigarette while examining Jimmy's horribly mangled leg. They meet at a veteran's hospital, where Jimmy's having his leg examined. In Chicago, Jimmy learns the whereabouts of the man who slashed Pearl's face, and helps another disfigured person, Richard Harrow, a former sniper in the war who has had half his face blown off and replaced with a mask. This week revenge and the struggle to put the past where it belongs are recurring themes for the main characters in a slightly slower-paced episode.
"Sometimes living is far worse than dying…" Jimmy Darmody
Don't read on if you haven't seen the seventh episode – and if you've seen more of the series, please be aware that other readers may not have done so … SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching Boardwalk Empire on Sky Atlantic.