What did I say last week B? Killing boring characters is BORING. OK, this one came after Jimmy kind of reconnected with Angela for a second so it came as kind of a shock, but really: we don’t care about her! We want to see Jimmy be a bad ass, not a desperate housewife of Atlantic City. And we know Horvitz’s a beast, so at least give us a maniac kill. How can this be the same man shaking an already pitiful Doyle and then sneaking into the Darmodys’ house after dark? As if that wasn’t uncharacteristic enough, that same man is ready to shoot Jimmy in the nude as he comes out of the shower? That’s just stupid. Anyway, Angela’s dead.

But the whiskey’s here! Fresh off the boat, fine Irish whiskey is being distributed by Owen Sleater straight from the Old Girl’s tit. That’s a big stick in the spokes of Jimmy’s operation, because their hooch is just hooch. Meanwhile, Torrio and Rothstein are keeping watch on Capone and Lucky/Lansky, and they’re not exactly putting up big numbers. However, Meyer Lansky is happy to report that heroin consumers on their test panels are “very enthusiastic.” I hope this heroin plot is going to play out at some point or another because they’ve been milking that one but I can only assume that Jimmy’s going to turn into an addict sooner than later – he’s got some shit to deal with. At the end of the episode we see him entering Princeton, where he enrolled before he enlisted for the Army; I can see him single-handedly keeping the local frats afloat – and maybe keep heroin out of AC by floating it to college students. It wasn’t that long ago that everything seemed to be going his way…

Because the strike’s here! And that’s probably Jimmy’s toughest challenge: a political one. He has no experience at it whatsoever, and I loved to see him call in a meeting with Chalky (and Dunn Purnsley, capo status!) in order to try and solve it. Stuntin’ like his daddy. Chalky wants revenge though, and Jimmy is not ready to deliver, so nothing comes of it for now. Eli on the other hand had a solution that was exactly what you could expect from him: “50 guys with billy clubs,” the ante of which he managed to up by a few goonery points as two of the men had a specific mission to put a beating on his babyfaced deputy. The latter is paying for Esther Randolph’s masterplan to put Nucky in jail but how cunning is this plan! Because it also involves a mock trial with Nelson Van Alden taking the witness stand and giving Randolph’s men enough intel to arrest Eli later that day. Eli is given the choice to tell on Nucky, or go to jail for murdering Margaret’s old old man. Superduh? Van Alden is being petitioned for divorce (whilst listening to his nanny’s sexy stories of trying to breastfeed her little brother when she was 7 years old) so he quite clearly had better things to do.

On the other hand, we have Nucky who has successfully caused some trouble for his enemies but is in no way out of the red. He actually fires his old-timey blunt lawyer in exchange for Rothstein’s young and charming (?) legal counsel. Not sure how he will hold up to Randolph’s smarts, but he got Rothstein out of the Black Sox scandal, so Nuck figures he’s probably worth a try. On that trip to New York, he decided to bring Margaret’s son Teddy so put some weight off of her shoulders. I thought he was doing a pretty good job but that Teddy is a tough cookie – then again, he saw his first father beating him and his mom, and he saw his second father burn his father’s house to the ground. Yeah Nuck, he totally remembers that time you did that.

Margaret is all in shambles because of Emily who is recovering from polio but might remain paralyzed from the waist down, and as Teddy is begging for attention (by pretending to be paralyzed from the waist down) she slaps him in the face big time. She turn to Reverend Brennan, who puts just enough salt on her wounds so that he Catholic guilt would kick in. Praying isn’t enough, Margaret, you need “act of devotion”! So she packs her bling and rain money and off she goes to visit the father for a donation (interrupting him mid-sip); then they can pray for real. And the results are in: Emily will be paralyzed anyway, but Nucky will do his best to help her out when she get home.

There is a nice four-way mirror going on: Margaret’s greasing the paw of the priest to help her daughter’s cause and Eli’s beating the shit out of his deputy to help his own cause (both for naught) versus Nucky and Jimmy opting to talk their way out of their respective situations – with results forthcoming. Sure, they’re both broke right now. BUT! As the doctor points out to Margaret, and as Rothstein points out to Nucky, and as Chalkie points out to Jimmy, and as Manny points out to Doyle, and as God points out to Margaret, and as Randolph points out to Eli, money is not everything. And as Ty Cobb (the “Georgia Peach”) showed to America: you don’t have to be a good guy to be the MVP. The preview montage for the next couple of episodes looks full of excitement. I guess this one was the calm before the storm.

- Gnou