agree w/ michaelson and others. i mean, take the scene where harrow kills two guys on the stairs. the stairs go around the room, so the guys on the stairs can see harrow well before they have to shoot him straight on. it's not a bad scene, but it's cartoonish - like something out of yojimbo.

i like it - set up the conflict for next season while solving this one. capone still will have issues in chicago. nucky's at war with new york. so that's all good.

i didn't particularly like the scene with margaret and nucky, which i almost took to be a dream given how it was shot and how nucky talked and the whole thing. boardwalk empire does this to me a lot and i know they've used dreams before, but if the intent of that scene was not to make me think it could be a dream, hoo boy did they blow it.

my DVR cut out right after nucky crushed the flower - I assume the episode ended with some ridiculous crane and/or pan of the boardwalk, then some olde tyme music over the credits, yes?

Owen came back and slit Nucky's throat.

"IT WAS A GOOD ONE!"

Some good stuff in here:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/boardwalk+empire

This poster is reasonable.

This is an example of quite a few posters who aren't thinking things through with an open mind, and who are too dismissive. I'm not saying that everything would have happened in real life exactly as it did in the show - that would of course be unreasonable, because this is a television show. But the plotting and course of action portrayed is far more realistic than posters such as this guy have been claiming.

Let's think things through here and pretend we're outside the mansion with Harrow right before the attack.

If Harrow had been watching the mansion before attacking it, which he certainly did, then he just saw dozens of Masseria's men leaving. And he certainly picked up on the confusion. He likely saw that the front door, which had previously been guarded by Masseria's men, was now left unguarded. Gyp's men clearly had no idea what had just happened (in other words they were all confused as to why Masseria's men were bailing), so it makes sense that none of Gyp's men would be guarding the door if a group of Masseria's men had been previously stationed at the door. That's simple "If A, then B" logic, and it's not a stretch whatsoever. So with dozens of Masseria's men loading up into their cars, Harrow sees an opening. Hey, great chance to walk straight in! But apparently that kind of simple scenario is lost on the nit posters in this thread who don't understand how Harrow could just "waltz in" / "stroll in" because they need to have it shown to them with 15 minutes of exposition, an instruction manual, and army-approved battle tactics.

So not only was the sudden departure of Masseria's men great opportunity for Harrow to enter, but Harrow now can easily see that the number of men left in the mansion is going to be a much smaller group that he can ambush and punish. After all, Harrow was living in the house as of just a couple of days prior and knew exactly how many men were stationed there.

That Harrow domination/killing rampage scene overall really wasn't that unrealistic. Sure, maybe some of the guys coming down the stairs would have been able to see Harrow and get a better shot at him, and I'm sure there were some trivial details anyone could find fault with, but the posters claiming that Harrow's sudden entrance and subsequent ambush were unrealistic are way off.

why are there so many posts of people not understanding the nucky/mellon situation?

Remember in the episode after the bombing AR walked out of nucky's call for war against gyp and masseria and nucky told him he would regret it? Nucky is making AR pay for not backing him now by baiting AR to run the distillery (nucky even uses the phrase 'big bait big fish' or something similar in the last episode and he obviously told doyle to make the call to AR)

Mellon gave nucky control of the distillery and wanted to indict reemus and doherty as the high profile fall guys in the government's actions against bootlegging and i am sure he wouldn't mind another high profile indictment in the form of AR. Once AR is also out of the way Nucky returns as the supreme leader of bootlegging ldo

yeah i agree that Chalky did not want them in the club because he was trying to shield them, I was confused as to which scene you were referring to. In any case, Chalky not only agreed to allow them to be together, but actually forced his daughter to be with him, after he realized that the guy was a doctor and would be useful.

I thought this was a well done episode, but the previous one was vastly superior. Like others, I thought Richard's scene was extremely anti-climatic and just seemed to be there in place to appease all the Harrow fan boys. I mean after a while, all the violence seems to lose it's impact and fails to be impressive. The scene where Nucky was offering Margaret money was pretty bad (does he expect her to take the money? and be like 'omg ty Nucky i luv u so much'), but i really liked the end of him throwing the carnation away.

Not exactly. Nucky told AR that he "would not forget this", rather than the more threatening "you will regret this".
Mellon doesn't even know who AR is, he had to be told by Means who he was. If AR was high profile then surely Mellon would have already heard of him.

When Masseria arrives they are out of wine they say. If they are all drunk and unprepared thats a whole other level of stupidity I won't get into... they're a war.

To begin with, there should be no "Harrow bursting through the door."

Once again, they're at war, have someone guarding the door. Lock the door, do something.

Once he's inside, he stands in the center of the room... where everyone can clearly see it's one man... and starts shooting people with his pistol. The gangsters should figure it out by now. Also saying they are untrained goes against a lot of the scenes we have already seen.

Finally, as I already mentioned, the stairs scene is beyond bad. Harrow rounds every corner with his gun down, then the villain gets a shot off in a narrow space which misses, Harrow aims and hits. Then we're shown that there are no corners to round because the entire stairs is visible from any part of the stairs. Also if he really were rounding corners, he should have his gun aimed where he is expecting to shoot, not down near his stomach where he needs to take time to aim after. The gangsters also aren't missing those shots in such a close space.

Completely unrealistic, there's no "whale" mentality here. The scene is cool and all, but it's not realistic and completely fan service.

what do you think "would not forget this" means? just an old memory to keep for the sake of memories? it implies a) he will refuse to help AR in his time of need and b) look for ways to screw him over

Mellon didn't know AR's name but that doesn't mean he wasn't told that there is another big fish who can be taken down. Not remembering a name is like forgetting a small detail of a big plan you were very recently made privy to.

richard just had massive run good brah

On watching this episode again, it deserved to be made into at least a 2 hour special. There's way too much happens to be jammed into 1 hour.

I guess I'll nit this a little bit because I'm bored and the season is over. I agree with the above poster that it's not unreasonable that a trained soldier with the element of surprise and intimate knowledge of the building would have a huge advantage over a bunch of poorly-trained, demoralized, possibly drunk mobsters mostly concerned about saving their own skin. SEALs, Delta Force, and even your local SWAT team all train for similar operations.

My nit is that Richard was a soldier, he killed people in the war, but at no point, at least as far as we know, did he have training or experience in close-quarters combat. He was a sniper, and apparently a good one. But he wasn't assaulting trenches and pillboxes and blowing away every kraut who got in his way, he was lying motionless until he saw an opportunity to shoot someone from X00 yards away. His skills are infiltration, patience and accuracy and this just isn't the skillset to go one-man army on a group of guys in a confined space. Someone like Jimmy would probably be much more suited for it.

Mellon is not in on the plan. Nucky reports, via Means that another bootlegger has been running the 'still illegally when he arrived. For their deal to work out, this other bootlegger needs to be taken care of. Also, AR is most certainly a high profile case. His rigging of the world series is essentially an open secret. Nucky is manipulating everyone. Mellon wants the 'still back up, and from his view this is but a minor inconvenience, he may not even know about the AC war.. it is just way below his pay grade. AR thinks he's hit the jackpot, not only by getting the still, but the ego strokage he gets by having made the wise and prudent decision is part of the bait-- even for AR, he seemed especially smug. And the woman who wears pants gets a massive high profile case in manning AR after he publicly dodged conviction on the world series scandal.

I think the reason for the odd Gillian heroin thing was that 1) the writers wanted Richard to go on a sick rampage and save Tommy and 2) Gillian had to be back for season 4. It's hard to imagine a scenario where Gillian gives up Tommy without Richard shooting her so, boom, she gets knocked out by heroin and their paths never cross.

Dude, so much of this has been covered itt. Really, all that is left is the staircase, and everyone concedes that it was a bit unrealistic.
Meh, this is a fair point of contention, but not a slam dunk. A sniper's job is as you describe it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it always goes down that way. Also, should something go wrong, a sniper would more likely be forced to go it alone. And on top of that a sniper is a specialized training which is in addition to the military training a grunt such as Jimmy would have received. And lastly we have seen time and again that Harrow has that killer instinct. He's not some thug muscle. He isn't just a body with a gun and a willingness to kill. He has a combat oriented mind which allows him to take advantage of disorientation, panic, and the element of surprise.

Oh, and get off his nuts.. Nucky pulled a crazy elaborate angle shot, but Richard literally angle [head]shot that guy, like a boss.

People saying harrow has the element of surprise is starting to tilt me.

He walks in through the front door of a house which is currently at war. Where is the element of surprise exactly?

I agree with the ar mellon scene but the last part should not have been included in this episode. The show should have waited until ar has the still up and running before mellon informs the da. Even then i think it would be difficult to tie it back to ar but it makes more sense that way. I think it was included this season purely for cliffhanger purposes.

Richard starts capping people while Masseria's cars are pulling away. Gyp's guys haven't had time to regroup and definitely aren't expecting to get hit right away. Sounds pretty surprising to me. Gyp looks out the window, sees the cars leaving, runs downstairs, asks WTF is going on, then boom headshot.

If anything the commotion would be drawing people out to the common rooms where they would respond more quickly.

The biggest surprise from this surprise attack would be that it was only one person.

gyp running seems a bit out of character as well i think. Its still a fun scene but completely fan service and isnt the least bit realistic.

Bunch of nits itt jfc

Killing people on the boardwalk in broad daylight and getting away with it, perfectly okay. A hardened badass soldier armed to the teeth taking out a bunch of panicked drunk womanizers, OMG NO WAI. Let's get some more CSI analysts for the ballistics though please.


Gyp was already attacked once by Mya's (sp?) cousin or whoever that kid was. Him bailing in the middle of a war after Masseria's men bounced is completely believable.

I thought he was Lil' Kim's cousin.

*Meyer

Shows establish logic for what is and is not possible in their world. Someone not getting arrested for something is an off-screen problem - with Van Alden gone and Eli out of the police department, that's not really somewhere we've had access to. Still, we realize that in crime shows in general, police catch people when it's convenient to the plot.

However, one man taking on that many other men - I recognize that Gyp's men are probably untrained and terrible, but still - it was one guy against ten or eleven. I see why people are calling it fan service.

WhoAmI, WWI was all about close quarters combat. Even as a sniper, Richard had to have gone over the top numerous times (and clearly did it successfully)

Not sure about ac in specific but in other cities that was a fairly common occurence.