• Courtesy of HBO
• EVERYTHING'S COMING UP NUCKY: Steve Buscemi (center)

In Philadelphia, Manny Horowitz, in a synagogue basement, waxes nostalgic about his (presumably) his Russian hometown of Odessa and its more open ruthlessness. He suggests that there, it’s worse for the middlemen: “From the middle, it’s easier to fall down than climb up.” Manny’s taking a meeting with Nucky, Owen Sleater and Mickey Doyle, and offers, “You give me Waxey, I’ll give you Darmody,” although Nucky points out that Manny seems hardly in a position to give up anybody.

Perhaps Manny’s too well hidden for Jimmy and Richard to exact their revenge on him, so instead, Jimmy’s being a responsible civic leader/crimelord and addressing the Chalky situation. Back in Atlantic City, Jimmy and Richard deliver the three Klansmen to Chalky’s warehouse. “Welcome back, fellows,” says Purnsley (I think) to the Klansmen. Chalky says, “Tell your Daddy I’ll call off the strike,” and Jimmy replies, “I will,” and not, “Oh, I stabbed Daddy.” Jimmy also asks Chalky to notify Nucky that he wants to meet. Richard points out that Nucky will never forgive Jimmy.

Nucky returns home to find the servants trying to teach Emily to use her new braces. Katy shoots Owen Sleater a look and generally lurks at the margins of the entire episode, but never acts on her knowledge of the Margaret/Owen affair, even though she’s clearly thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Margaret has a sit-down with Esther Randolph, having brought Father Brennan along for moral support. When the two women talk alone, Esther recalls that in a previous life as a public defender, her only clients were desperate women. Esther questions Margaret’s loyalty to Nucky: “What has he ever given you besides money?” Margaret can only reply, “He’s never been cruel to me,” and points out the overriding importance of her children. The issue of Margaret’s testimony also informs a discussion between Nucky and his lawyer, who suggests she could sink Nucky’s case.

Back at his house/crime scene, Jimmy’s thinkin’ and smokin’ when Nucky arrives with Owen (who’s doing Jimmy’s old job, as Jimmy points out). Jimmy reveals that the Commodore has died, and admits that he often intimidated him. “He was your father, Jimmy. Nothing looms larger.” Jimmy says that once the Commodore told him, “You’re a good son,” and Nucky looks visibly saddened, clearly having never heard such words in his life. Jimmy offers another mealy-mouthed excuse for the failed hit on Nucky: “I never meant for that to happen.” Nucky asks, “Then why did it?” and Jimmy blames Eli. But let’s not forget that the night of the shooting, Jimmy spoke to Nucky immediately beforehand.

Margaret sits knitting in the kitchen and the camera tracks in, horror-movie-style, but it’s just Nucky, who airs their differences about religion. “If there is a God, would he have given me this mug?” he quips, before declaring, “There is more God in the love I feel for you than in all the churches in Rome.” The softness in Buscemi’s eyes is quite affecting, but Nucky almost botches it by switching to self-interest, how he needs Margaret to marry him so she can’t testify against him. When he claims to be sorry over what’s happened, the teakettle starts whistling like Margaret’s alarm bell. But she accepts Nucky’s “proposal.”

Isaiah Whitlock and his muttonchops reveal that the Commodore’s death has been declared an “accident” and that his old well left everything to Luanne Pratt, the servant to allegedly tried to poison him. Jimmy tears up the will so the estate can go to Jimmy and his son, and then takes a meeting with the town power brokers. “Mom, no more advice,” he tells Gillian (too late), and asserts his desire to support Nucky, even though Neary and the others scoff.

Next comes a terrific montage clearly inspired by The Godfather, but no less effective for it. Esther Randolph dresses while rehearsing her opening statement in Nucky’s trial. Margaret makes a confession and marries Nucky. Jimmy and Richard stride into the courthouse, burst in on Neary and extract a confession at gunpoint. “It’s a suicide note,” Richard remarks before blowing out the back of his head. The G-man who Van Alden shot, in bed with his leg plastered, applauds Esther as Neary’s secretary/mistress starts screaming.

Nucky’s trial begins and ends almost immediately: with Margaret married, Van Alden gone and Neary out of the picture, Margaret’s case collapses, and she agrees to accept a verdict of mistrial to get her ducks in a row. “I’ll take the ducks, your honor.” It turns out Halloran’s confession of murder was contingent on Nucky’s conviction, so Halloran gets remanded to Leavenworth, protesting through his wired-up jaw. Should we assume that Halloran never fingered Eli for the drunken murder of that alderman earlier this season? It seems a conspicuous loose end. Anyway, Eli walks, for now.

That night, Nucky returns to home drunk and happy. He beat the feds, the land deal passed, and Margaret allows him to share her bed, since they’re married. Everything’s coming up Nucky! Margaret just has to sign the deed back to him. The next day, Nucky pays a visit on Eli, who’s on his front porch boozing it up. “A little early, isn’t it?” Nucky asks. “‘My own recognizance.’ That means I make the rules.” Nucky confronts Eli with the attempted murder and orders him to plead guilty to the charges against him and accept a two-year sentence. Nucky glares contemptuously at Eli: it’s like there’s no character her actively dislikes more his brother.

In New York, Luciano and Lansky present Rothstein with the heroin deal, “as a courtesy,” as if they’d never tried to go behind his back. (If Jimmy’s ex-partners have an opinion about what’s happened with Jimmy, we never hear it.) Nucky calls Rothstein to ask, as a courtesy, if it’s OK if Manny Horowitz were to disappear, and admits to having a difficult decision. Rothstein suggests that he flip a coin, and when it’s in the air, he’ll realize what he wants.

Jimmy has a pleasant afternoon taking his son for a pony ride and talks about self-sufficiency. The horse handler offers the boy a hat, asking “Soldier or cowboy?” and the son picks the soldier hat. That night at the Commodore’s, Jimmy and Richard drink up and literally share war stories, with Richard seeming surprisingly mellow, although he says, “We’re still there, aren’t we?” Jimmy takes that to mean that, as veterans, they’re still fighting the war in their heads, but I wonder if Richard actually meant that they’re still killing people. Jimmy takes a call from Nucky, who’s got Manny for him and arranges a rendezvous. Jimmy tells Richard he needs to handle it himself. Richard notes that Jimmy’s son wears some kind of ersatz dog tag so he’ll know where Meemaw is, and thinks about something.

Jimmy shows up for the rainy, Road of Perdition-y meeting. Manny’s a trussed-up prisoner, but not really — it’s a double cross! An almost unrecognizable Eli holds a shotgun on Jimmy. Jimmy asks who’s going to pull the trigger: Owen? Manny? Eli? Nucky pulls out a pistol himself, hands trembling a bit. Jimmy coolly questions whether Nucky can handle committing murder, especially, “When you run out of booze, and you run out of company, and the only person to judge you is you.” Is Richard Harrow, sniper extraordinaire, hidden in the shadows to come to the rescue?

Nope. Nucky shoots his onetime protégé. “You never knew me, James. I. Am not. Seeking. Forgiveness!” Nucky declares before finishing him off. Flashback to World War I, U.S. soldiers gather in a trench and when the whistle blows, Jimmy goes over the top and vanishes.

The next morning, Nucky greets his family at breakfast. Margaret asks where he was that night, and Nucky replies “Just out,” and that he patched things up with Jimmy, who “reenlisted.” Nucky and his cronies go out to the site of the future highway and drink “to the future,” Nucky not realizing that his new wife has just signed the deed over to the church.

Notes
“Boardwalk Empire’s” creators have really cleared the board, haven’t they? After killing off Angela and The Commodore while potentially writing out Eli, Van Alden and Lucy Danzinger, I never expected Nucky to kill Jimmy, even when Nucky had the gun in his face. For one thing, Jimmy significantly helped Nucky’s legal problems by killing Neary, so for Nucky to turn around and shoot Jimmy seems like not just a mortal sin and a capital crime, but just a dick move.

So why did Nucky kill Jimmy? Why did Nucky forgive the brother he doesn’t respect, but not the young man who was like a surrogate son to him? Of course, having married Margaret, Nucky has an actual stepson, and doesn’t need a surrogate any more. And given that Eli and Jimmy blamed each other for the hit on Nucky, maybe Nucky just doesn’t have enough respect for Eli to make such an attempt. Maybe Nucky decided to side with his flesh-and-blood family member. But thinking back to Rothstein’s advice, killing Jimmy was apparently what Nucky really wanted to do. So maybe he did it because he had something to prove — that he was really as “gangster” as the men around him, and Jimmy’s failed insurrection deserved harsh punishment.

Jimmy possibly even knew it was coming, or at least that it was a strong possibility. The pony scene with his son and the bit with the boy’s dog tags (or whatever they were) represented a goodbye, and he wanted to face the music without Richard’s presence. The last time we saw Richard, he was thinking about something, and for a second I wondered if he was going to make Jimmy’s life easier by killing Gillian. Instead, will they form some kind of new We Hate Nucky Club next season?

Speaking of Richard, I just want to point out that Jimmy and Richard wear masks when attack Klan meeting down by the riverside, but don’t wear masks when the storm the public building, in broad daylight, and shoot Neary. (Of course, Richard wears a mask all the time, but you know what I mean.)

We missed the bootlegging payout scene Doyle alluded to last week with Capone, Luciano et al. In fact, Capone wasn’t even in this episode.

Will Van Alden be back? He seems to be set up for a new life in Cicero, Ill., but has Noel Murray in the AV Club points out, that town’s proximity to Chicago suggests some kind of third-season dynamic between Van Alden and Capone. Perhaps Esther Randolph will remain Nucky’s legal nemesis.

"To The Lost" reminded me of "Treme's" second season finale, in that it tied up so many loose ends, it's hard to know where the show will go next. Season two’s final scenes suggest that Nucky’s most formidable foe may well be his new wife Margaret, who has no qualms about sabotaging her husband’s business dealings when he plays her for a fool or proves too brazenly immoral. Ironically, signing away the land will leave Nucky hard up for cash, so Margaret’s action may have the unintended consequence of driving him further into criminal enterprises next season.