“You see, boy? The real money’s in bootlegging, not in your childish vandalism.” – Homer Simpson
“Oh, so many wasted nights.” – Bart Simpson
Note: This will make more sense if you’ve seen Boardwalk Empire than if you haven’t.
On Monday, Salon’s television critic Matt Zoller Seitz put up a column criticizing last week’s episode of the HBO Prohibition series Boardwalk Empire. He reported that a lot of fans of the show thought it “maybe even the greatest episode ever”. But according to him, the violence in “Gimcrack & Bunkum” was exaggerated and needless, and it left too many of its female characters on the shelf. Referring to the episode’s two murders, he writes:
Both these assaults were shocking, not because they came out of nowhere, but because they cheerfully confirmed the show’s allegiance to the worst impulses of Martin Scorsese and “The Sopranos” — the tendency to spotlight pissing-contest behavior between macho guys in the most gruesome terms imaginable.
[…]
Sure, you can defend these moments as expressing the themes of their respective stories, but you really, really, really have to stretch to do it. Mostly they’re like a lot of the violence on “Boardwalk:” wild and nasty for the sake of being wild and nasty. They’re the handsomely produced, scripted cable equivalent of bum fights on YouTube.
What was he expecting? Scorsese likes to tell stories about gangsters, and gangsters are both inventively violent and prone to pissing contests. But that’s not the case in “Gimcrack & Bunkum” specifically, where both murders are the indirect result of the old boss having suffered a stroke and left a power vacuum. Neither was (as the saying goes) strictly business, but hurt gangster feelings and pithy displays of macho weren’t the prime motivations for either. Just as drug prohibition does today, alcohol prohibition spilled a lot of blood, and Boardwalk Empire would be sterile, dry and hokey without some of it hitting the floor from time to time.
Now, for the female characters:
It was nice to see Margaret being given something to do; in most episodes she’s a lovely doormat — a kept woman who’s mainly there to grin and bear her husband’s cavorting, and penny-pinch her household staff; it’s a far cry from the radiant moral compass established (all too briefly) in early episodes of season one.
[…]
Gillian was likewise relegated to secondary status in this episode; she was presented mainly as a slinky adjunct to her son as he did his Irish-American Michael Corleone routine, consolidating power that he never imagined he’d acquire.
The above passages miss two of the core concepts of Boardwalk Empire, namely that no one gets anywhere by being scrupulously honest, and that the 1920s were a pretty lousy time to be a woman. After all, the show introduced Nucky Thompson, its bootlegging, prostitute running main character, by having him address the Women’s Temperance League.
Early Season 1 Margaret was poor and moral, but she decided that Nucky was a decent enough guy that she didn’t mind trading in the former at the expense of some of the latter. Part of the pleasure of Boardwalk Empire is watching characters like her make little compromises with themselves, some of which work well for them, and some of which they later come to regret. Even the rigidly moral Van Alden finds himself with plenty to be penitent about after spending some time around the decidedly freewheeling atmosphere of Atlantic City.
In a larger sense, complaining that the women aren’t given much to do on Boardwalk Empire is like complaining that the women aren’t given much to do on Mad Men, to which it bears more than a few similarities. Both shows have a lot of female characters, but both shows are constrained in what they can have those characters do by the period in which they are set. Complaining that Gillian has to act through Jimmy is akin to complaining that Peggy Olson often has to act through Don Draper. The 1960s and the 1920s, respectively fifty and ninety(!) years ago, had rigid gender roles that make even the robust ones that have survived into our time seem week by comparison.
Gillian may often have to act the “slinky adjunct” to her son, but that’s because none of the men with whom her son deals would take her the least bit seriously. Similarly, Margaret can only be a “radiant moral compass” for so long because she wouldn’t exactly make for a compelling television character if all she did was cluck her tongue, mind her children, and attend temperance meetings. Those meetings likely got dull quickly for more than a few of the women who attended them in real life, just as the raucous good times provided by women like Gillian were probably often boring for the ladies who feigned fun professionally.
Seitz is a fan of the show, and he was a lot keener on the previous week’s episode “What Does the Bee Do?”, which he commends for not falling into the traps he identifies in “Gimcrack & Bunkum”. It’s got black boss Chalky White feeling caught between his boss, his family, and his constituents; it’s got Gillian slapping the shit out of the Commodore for a hurt more than two decades old; and it’s got maimed Great War vet Richard sinking even deeper into depression after recalling how his injuries made him uncaring towards his sister, the only person he had ever loved. Seitz’s comparison concludes:
I raved about last week’s episode to a friend right after it aired, and he replied, “It was all right, but nothing happened.” I’m starting to think that when fans of a dark cable series complain that “Nothing happened” in an episode, what they really mean is, “There was no violence, and the women talked too much.”
I don’t mean to overly pick on this, if for no other reason than Seitz is pulling that classic columnist trick of “My friends said X, but I think Y”. (Who knows how many dedicated Boardwalk Empire fans actually thought “Gimcrack & Bunkum” was the best episode ever?) But what I think Seitz is mistaking, either in general or just because he doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until the completion of the season to write a column about it, is variation in the quality of the episodes for variation in the content of the episodes.
Boardwalk Empire tells a very wide story over the course of a twelve episode season, and by necessity that means that certain characters get little or no screen time in any given episode. (The only real exception to this is Steve Buscemi, but, of course, he is the one in the opening credits.) It also means that some episodes are going to see a lot of blood spilled, while others will mostly involve political machinations, subtle dialogue, character development, and other euphemisms for talking. But that’s the point of a show like Boardwalk Empire. You don’t know what you’re getting in each episode, you just know its going to be well written, thoroughly thought out, and finely shot. Different fans with different tastes (Seitz and his nameless friend, for example) may come for different parts, but since both of them are happy at least some of the time, I’d say the show is doing its job.
If Boardwalk Empire didn’t have a healthy dose of violence, it wouldn’t make sense; and if it didn’t have any realistic female characters, it would be incomplete and dull. But if each episode had a murder or every week some woman overcame something, then it would be no different than the countless boring and predictable procedural dramas on television. What makes Boardwalk Empire great is the way all those things come together, and can do so at any time, in any episode.
Note: This will make more sense if you’ve seen Boardwalk Empire than if you haven’t.
On Monday, Salon’s television critic Matt Zoller Seitz put up a column criticizing last week’s episode of the HBO Prohibition series Boardwalk Empire. He reported that a lot of fans of the show thought it “maybe even the greatest episode ever”. But according to him, the violence in “Gimcrack & Bunkum” was exaggerated and needless, and it left too many of its female characters on the shelf. Referring to the episode’s two murders, he writes:
What was he expecting? Scorsese likes to tell stories about gangsters, and gangsters are both inventively violent and prone to pissing contests. But that’s not the case in “Gimcrack & Bunkum” specifically, where both murders are the indirect result of the old boss having suffered a stroke and left a power vacuum. Neither was (as the saying goes) strictly business, but hurt gangster feelings and pithy displays of macho weren’t the prime motivations for either. Just as drug prohibition does today, alcohol prohibition spilled a lot of blood, and Boardwalk Empire would be sterile, dry and hokey without some of it hitting the floor from time to time.
Now, for the female characters:
The above passages miss two of the core concepts of Boardwalk Empire, namely that no one gets anywhere by being scrupulously honest, and that the 1920s were a pretty lousy time to be a woman. After all, the show introduced Nucky Thompson, its bootlegging, prostitute running main character, by having him address the Women’s Temperance League.
Early Season 1 Margaret was poor and moral, but she decided that Nucky was a decent enough guy that she didn’t mind trading in the former at the expense of some of the latter. Part of the pleasure of Boardwalk Empire is watching characters like her make little compromises with themselves, some of which work well for them, and some of which they later come to regret. Even the rigidly moral Van Alden finds himself with plenty to be penitent about after spending some time around the decidedly freewheeling atmosphere of Atlantic City.
In a larger sense, complaining that the women aren’t given much to do on Boardwalk Empire is like complaining that the women aren’t given much to do on Mad Men, to which it bears more than a few similarities. Both shows have a lot of female characters, but both shows are constrained in what they can have those characters do by the period in which they are set. Complaining that Gillian has to act through Jimmy is akin to complaining that Peggy Olson often has to act through Don Draper. The 1960s and the 1920s, respectively fifty and ninety(!) years ago, had rigid gender roles that make even the robust ones that have survived into our time seem week by comparison.
Gillian may often have to act the “slinky adjunct” to her son, but that’s because none of the men with whom her son deals would take her the least bit seriously. Similarly, Margaret can only be a “radiant moral compass” for so long because she wouldn’t exactly make for a compelling television character if all she did was cluck her tongue, mind her children, and attend temperance meetings. Those meetings likely got dull quickly for more than a few of the women who attended them in real life, just as the raucous good times provided by women like Gillian were probably often boring for the ladies who feigned fun professionally.
Seitz is a fan of the show, and he was a lot keener on the previous week’s episode “What Does the Bee Do?”, which he commends for not falling into the traps he identifies in “Gimcrack & Bunkum”. It’s got black boss Chalky White feeling caught between his boss, his family, and his constituents; it’s got Gillian slapping the shit out of the Commodore for a hurt more than two decades old; and it’s got maimed Great War vet Richard sinking even deeper into depression after recalling how his injuries made him uncaring towards his sister, the only person he had ever loved. Seitz’s comparison concludes:
I don’t mean to overly pick on this, if for no other reason than Seitz is pulling that classic columnist trick of “My friends said X, but I think Y”. (Who knows how many dedicated Boardwalk Empire fans actually thought “Gimcrack & Bunkum” was the best episode ever?) But what I think Seitz is mistaking, either in general or just because he doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until the completion of the season to write a column about it, is variation in the quality of the episodes for variation in the content of the episodes.
Boardwalk Empire tells a very wide story over the course of a twelve episode season, and by necessity that means that certain characters get little or no screen time in any given episode. (The only real exception to this is Steve Buscemi, but, of course, he is the one in the opening credits.) It also means that some episodes are going to see a lot of blood spilled, while others will mostly involve political machinations, subtle dialogue, character development, and other euphemisms for talking. But that’s the point of a show like Boardwalk Empire. You don’t know what you’re getting in each episode, you just know its going to be well written, thoroughly thought out, and finely shot. Different fans with different tastes (Seitz and his nameless friend, for example) may come for different parts, but since both of them are happy at least some of the time, I’d say the show is doing its job.
If Boardwalk Empire didn’t have a healthy dose of violence, it wouldn’t make sense; and if it didn’t have any realistic female characters, it would be incomplete and dull. But if each episode had a murder or every week some woman overcame something, then it would be no different than the countless boring and predictable procedural dramas on television. What makes Boardwalk Empire great is the way all those things come together, and can do so at any time, in any episode.