Steve Buscemi as Atlantic City boss Nucky Thompson is the best thing in the show. I've liked that actor since he played Mr. Pink in RESERVOIR DOGS. ("Let 'em learn to type!") I also like the depiction of gangster politics: the show could use a bit more of the Al Capone character. Some of the dialogue is enjoyable. ("He's an easily bamboozled character.") And some of the soundtrack's period songs appeal to me, like "Look for the Silver Lining."
But I could live without Jimmy the punk's uncomfortably intimate relationship with his mother. And Van Alden the fed is an annoying prick. Lucy the sexpot was fun in the first season, but in the second they made her pregnant and miserable. I've always found that "two boats and a lifeguard" joke stupid, and in this show's context it seemed anachronistic.
But I could live without Jimmy the punk's uncomfortably intimate relationship with his mother. And Van Alden the fed is an annoying prick. Lucy the sexpot was fun in the first season, but in the second they made her pregnant and miserable. I've always found that "two boats and a lifeguard" joke stupid, and in this show's context it seemed anachronistic.
Really, the 1920s was a pretty depressing time, notwithstanding all that "jazz age" nostalgia. (The despair of the '30s and the horror of the '40s created a prism that made it look good in comparison.) The moralists enacting prohibition is just the start. It was the age of Warren Harding--the worst president in US history and also the most popular--stock speculation frenzy, and the Ku Klux Klan revival. And it was also a time when a lot of lamentable long-term trends got their real start: Madison Avenue manipulation, smoking, pro sports mass culture, love of big cars, women being obsessed with thinness.
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