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In this third episode of Season Three, the plot thickens and characters are moving themselves into position for some crazy conflicts to come. Eddie Kessler was back in full and funny force this week—which is nice since we hadn’t seen much of him thus far. A few characters were unexpectedly pro-active this week. I almost thought we were going to get through the entire episode without any extreme violence. But that’s just not gonna happen while Gyp Rosetti is around.

The gold star for assertiveness would have to go to Margaret Thompson (Or Margaret Schroeder-Thompson if you prefer). Margaret strong-arms the bishop’s man into getting her and Enoch a private audience with the Bishop. The Bishop is thanking Nucky for the giant donation his wife made on his behalf—the one he never would have made in a zillion years. And oddly, we’ve seen no real fallout from Margaret ruining the big land deal and screwing a bunch of powerful men our of a large share. I have to wonder if Harding et al will make their displeasure known at some point this season.

Margaret gets her private audience, and has a delightful and hilarious exchange with the same two doctors she always seems to talk to at that hospital. The oldster is still extremely condescending, and secure in his belief that the flowers on the grounds are more important than prenatal care for poor women. Ultimately, Margaret gets the Bishop’s blessing to start a women’s clinic—and does so in such a way that the condescending doctor will look like a fool if he doesn’t oblige. Prenatal care, what a good idea! I really hope it catches on. Anything to lower infant mortality rates for mothers who think they’re doing a fine job if a mere five out of nine fetuses live to become children.

Nucky hasn’t been sleeping. As any CPAP user can tell you, not being able to sleep can give a guy waking dreams—what some people call hallucinations. Nucky’s been having those in spades, and at a time when he can’t seem to get in touch with Billie Kent. Men who lie professionally need to bring new women around from time to time so at least one person can still see them as honorable. With that in mind, Nucky is anxious to find out why Billie hadn’t answered her phone in days. Oddly enough, the timing of the dream sequence and the lame, flat ending of this episode almost gave viewers the feeling that the whole episode might have been a big long dream sequence. For the sake of that poor flammable cop in Taber Heights, I hope that’s true.

We got some new information this week in the form of brothel gossip. Gillian Darmody has not actually told anyone that her son, Jimmy, is dead. She’s still emptying out his bank accounts, and presumably still pretending that she’s the mother of Jimmy and Angela’s son. It seems that she’s also a partner (business this time, not sex) of Lucky Luciano. I’ve read enough mob books to know that women who hang out with Charlie Lucky are never as pretty at the end of the friendship as they were in the beginning.

When Gyp Rosetti makes a visit to Gillian’s uh…Gentleman’s Club, she tells him that Eli once wanted Nucky dead. I can only imagine her twisted motive for doing so. As with every Gyp Rosetti scene this season, I was waiting for him to fly into a rage on her at any moment. He didn’t. Not yet.

Nelson Van Alden. It’s hard to watch him trying so fervently to be an honorable man. The more honor one has, the tougher it is to keep it, or something. Nelson (now George) deals with the office hazing and losing the money he wanted to buy he and his oddly frisky wife their own home. Personally, my mind boggles at hearing of a time when you could have a job for just a few months and think you could actually make enough money to buy a house. Where does THAT happen?

Watching Nelson getting busted by the same crooked agents who used to bust his chops when he was a Fed—well, it sucked. Van Alden has made his share of mistakes. But you can tell he just wants to be on the straight and narrow, and still be able to earn a decent living.

Speaking of earning a living, it appears that Lucky Luciano has his fingers in a lot of pies. In addition to booze and women, he also hustles heroin—with the intention of making things right with Massaria. Benny the crazy hot-head nearly gets jacked by some of Massaria’s guys. The confrontation goes predictably, adding a cribbed line from The Godfather pt 2 for good measure.

Mickey Doyle is still alive. Seriously. This week, he’s been telling people that he’s the one who popped Manny Horvitz. As they say in the gangs of today, he was just tryin’ to get juice, so he could get his props. We already know that Richard Harrow killed Manny, and for reasons that had nothing to do with acquiring the respect of one’s peers.

Mickey takes an unsuspecting chubby girl home for some romantic interface, only to find Harrow patiently waiting in his darkened living room. The girl gets away; while Mickey is led, whining like a puppy, into Nucky’s office at an inopportune hour.

This is where easily the most interesting exchange of the episode takes place. Harrow makes Doyle admit that he killed no one, and was just talking shit. He then explains to Nucky that he’s the one who killed Manny, as payback for Angela Darmody. Displaying a true sense of both heroism and justice, Harrow goes on to explain that Jimmy was a soldier, ie: he knew what he was getting in to. Jimmy agreed to play the game; and he lost. Harrow assured Nucky that he and Margaret had been good to him, and that he wished them no harm. The rest of their exchange hinted at the possibility of Harrow working for Nucky. There were also a few hints of reconciliation between the Thompsons. It’s anybody’s guess where that might be going.

Overall, this episode didn’t make a ton of progress story-wise, which is not to say it wasn’t entertaining. Let’s hope that the season only goes up from here.

-Wednes