Jimmy hasn’t been in control in Atlantic City all that long, and already his empire is starting to crumble around him. Nucky’s new source of Irish whiskey (cleverly imported past the Coast Guard as “Irish Oats”) is undercutting Jimmy’s supply of crappy, watered down medicinal alcohol. Worse yet, black workers are still on strike, grinding the city’s tourism business to a halt, and Jimmy can’t seem to come up with the right number of enticements to convince Chalky to end it (the breaking point in negotiations? Jimmy won’t deliver to Chalky the three klan members who shot up his bottling line).
Oh, and I almost forgot. Manny Horovitz just took out Jimmy’s wife and her lesbian lover as revenge for the failed assassination attempt. Manny was clearly gunning for Jimmy, but since he wasn’t the one in the shower, he decided to do the next best thing and finish off Angela. Goodbye to you, Angela. I hardly knew you, and it seemed like you hardly knew yourself.
I knew Manny was going to be a handful and this retaliation certainly proves it. Jimmy’s rather pathetic attempt to buy off Manny with several thousand dollars worth of watered down booze probably made Manny even more angry than the assassination attempt; he doesn’t take disrespect lightly. Jimmy should have known this, so I still find it kind of mind boggling that he has been so dismissive of the Philadelphia gangster. Jimmy’s arrogance cost Angela her life. Now we probably get to see Jimmy go crazy from grief, and hopefully try to exact bloody revenge on Manny at the same time. There are two episodes left, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how Jimmy responds to the new crisis. Could this lead to a renewed alliance between Jimmy and Nucky? There are only two episodes left until the end of the season, and still a lot of threads to tie up. Will Margaret’s guilt over Emily’s polio push her away from Nucky? Could Ester Randolph, who has been frighteningly competent so far and is really building a strong case against Nucky, call in Margaret to testify against Nucky at his trial? Randolph also knows that Eli has something to do with Schroeder’s disappearance; if she can tie him to murder, I could easily see her trying to cut a deal with Eli to testify against his brother. They don’t like each other much anymore, so it seems like a distinct possibility.
As I said above, two more episodes to go, and still a lot of things to wrap up. I’m most interested in Jimmy’s reaction to Angela’s death; he’s out on the road in Princeton right now, so how long is it going to take before he finds out? Will he go right after Manny? Princeton’s not that far away from Philly…
John is a TV blogger for Raked and an Entertainment and Sports contributor here at The TMR Zoo. You can follow him on Twitter at @raked_jc
