Boardwalk Empire 3
Matt Seinberg

If you like gratuitous violence with the occasional glimpse of bare breasts, then you must be a fan of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” which opened up its third season on Sunday 16 September 2012 with the first of 12 new episodes.

If you remember final episode of last season, Nucky Thompson brutally shot his former protégé Jimmy Darmody in the head for his betrayal. Jimmy tried to take over Nucky’s bootlegging operation with some of his unsavory friends, and paid dearly with his life.

Even before Jimmy was shot, Manny Horvitz shot his wife, Angela, and her female lover in cold blood. Manny was looking for Jimmy, who had earlier sent an assassin to kill him. Manny was shot in the shoulder, killing his attacker with a meat cleaver to the head.

Being someone who enjoys seeing that really bad guys gets what’s coming to him, Nucky wanted Manny to kill someone who tried to rob his warehouse full of liquor. Just as Manny was leaving his house, former US Army marksman, Richard Harrow, shoots him in the head. There was no reason given for that killing. I’m guessing Richard did as revenge for Manny killing Angela, whom he was in love with.

The big character introduction for this season is Gyp Rosetti, played by Bobby Cannavele. Here’s a guy who doesn’t take a joke very well, as evidenced by his first scene. He beats and kills a man who joked about him not knowing what 3-in-1 oil is, after he stopped to help him with a flat tire. To add insult to killing, Gyp then takes the man’s dog named, Regina. When we see Gyp later at Nucky’s New Year’s Eve Party, he has the dog which he has renamed Scruffy.

The season is set for a confrontation between Nucky and Gyp, who doesn’t like the fact that Nucky is only selling his bootleg liquor to Arnold Rothstein, the main New York City mobster, and no one else. Rothstein had set Thompson up with his lawyer, who got a mistrial in last season’s election fixing trial and this one-buyer of bootleg was set.

We also get to see that Nucky hasn’t changed his ways, even after he marries Margaret Schroeder.  Instead of staying home with Margaret after their New Year’s Eve party, he goes to see his current mistress. The mistress had teamed with Eddie Cantor as the entertainment at the New Year’s Eve party hosted by Nucky and his wife.

Has Nucky changed his ways? He now claims to be philanthropist? Doubtful; whereas, he may no longer get his hands as dirty, after he killed Jimmy Darmody, in the finale of season two, Irish immigrant, Owen Slater, will continue to handle more of Nucky’s dirty work.

I think it would be interesting to see Slater and Harrow go at it. Who makes it out alive? Slater would be defending Nucky and Harrow would be avenging Jimmy’s death. This is one story to watch, closely.

Then, of course, there is all the drama with the three children, Emily and Teddy Schroeder as well as Tommy Darmody, who lives with his maternal grandmother and is overseen, in way, by Harrow. Emily was stricken with polio in season two and the mean streak shown by his late father Hans Schroeder is starting to appear in young Teddy.

As for Tommy, he has lost his parents and his grandmother, Gillian, who insists that he call her “mommy.” Remember how close Gillian and Jimmy were: she seduced Jimmy while visiting him at university.

I think this season will be the strongest, so far, because the audience is now familiar with the premise of the show and its main characters. By the end of this season, while Nucky will still be standing, albeit not as strong as he once was, he will have beaten Gyp Rosetti.

Stay tuned and get the popcorn ready on Sunday nights. “Boardwalk Empire” is back and it’s must see TV. Just don’t let the kids watch it or, maybe, that should be, let the kids see, but not the parents.