Boardwalk Empire, thank the gods of Luck, Nucky, and HBO, is back on Sunday nights. I’m as ready to have Buscemi and Scorcese entertain me as those fans in the plush little theatre (in a scene about 40 minutes into last night’s episode) were ready to settle down and give themselves to Chaplin.
If you haven’t seen last night’s show yet, this might contain spoilers. If you haven’t seen Boardwalk Empire at all, you’re kidding only yourself. Yes, the first few installments of the opening season were slow, but the investment is paying off. This is no Ponzi scheme; this isn’t Lost, where you end up wanting to take the producers and writers to court for having engaged your attention under false pretenses.
This is serious television and it’s for grown-ups. It’s actually for smart grown-ups. And that’s why today’s post is a highly scientific IQ test based on what you liked best in last night’s program. This exercise will prove, without question, that the “Wechsler Intelligence Scale” should be replaced by the “Nucky Thompson Smart Scale.”
–Highest ranking: IQ of 183 or over:Not only can you figure out how the various bootleggers are interconnected and interdependent despite their competition, animosity, and the fact that many of them get shot before you can bond with their characters, you can also follow the subtle nuances of the finely tuned but unbalanced relationships between Nucky and Jimmy, Jimmy and The Commodore, and Nucky and his brother, Eli, who is the poster child for what happens to young athletes when they are applauded for their prowess on the playing field but lack what might be referred to as “brains.” Also, you know what the Volstead Act is. You do not think Volsteads are part of the rodent family—although, in Atlantic City, the Volstead Act is not unrelated to rats.
–Pretty high-ranking IQ 128-182: You noticed that Nucky screwed up when he said a character was “disinterested” rather than “uninterested” and your favorite line was “You’ll be judged by what you succeed at, not what you attempt.” Both of these lines refer to Jimmy. If you are an Intellectual and Sensitive Academic Woman, you feel deeply for the complex and unhappy young veteran who has only half a face and wears a mask, even though he also shoots people at close-range with a sawed-off shotgun. If you could talk to him, you could save him. If you are an Intellectual and Sensitive Academic Man, you want to spend time with Jimmy’s bisexual wife or his fascinating artiste-figure of a mother (who has a line in last night’s episode making everybody scream “Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud! Emergency!”). You don’t want to save them, exactly, but you wouldn’t want them to go to waste, either.
–Regular IQ 98-128: You liked the line describing a character as “beset by convenient maladies”; you liked the homage paid by Scorcese to Chaplin; you liked the decor, the costumes, and especially the use of the Irving Berlin song—a song that set the tone for the rest of the episode, the refrain for which is “After you get what you want, you don’t want it” and whose lyrics include: “You’re always wishing and wanting for something/When you get what you want/You don’t want what you get.”
–Not smartphone ready IQ 5-98:Your favorite scene is when the person who could have her own Oscar-category (“Beautiful Woman With a Rich Family but Without Any Talent Whatsoever Attempting to Play a Stupid and Bad Actress and Yet Really Failing,” Paz de la Huerta) appears almost naked, pregnant, and handles money.
Where on the Boardwalk do you fall?
