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What works about scenes like this is how Boardwalk takes the time to explore them; lesser shows would scratch the bare minimum of character development here in favor of getting back to showing off the expensive sets or gunplay. Only a show like this could make us sympathize with him when he leaves his family to pursue a lifestyle of grift and more bloodshed. If "Limited" is any indicator, fans can expect the show to take more turns like this as the series endeavors to become more than just another show about mobsters.
What doesn't work as well are scenes about aspiring bootlegger and gangster The Wire's Michael K. Williams plays. His arc, while important to set up, feels like it would fit better in an episode less centric on the Big Three - Nucky, Jimmy and Margaret.

"Limited" ends with Nucky forcing Jimmy out of town, and we're left surprised that this turn happens in episode three as opposed to at the end of the season. The first three episodes burn through a lot of story on the Nucky-Jimmy front, but that's okay - sending Jimmy to Chicago to play gangster with Capone is a good thing.
"Anastasia", fourth episode, is so far its best, turning its criminals into sympathetic characters despite their vices and secrets, and doing so without resorting to forced or sacchrine ways.

Nucky uses his birthday party to hip-pocket one Senator Gage as means to secure local appropriations money. Nucky needs that money to pave Atlantic City's roads, to ensure that cars get to Nucky's hotels and trucks get booze to Nucky's people. Several subplots revolve around Nucky's story, including: Jimmy and Al Capone's messy rise to power and Margaret emerging as a better intellectual rival/love interest for Nucky than the oozing-sex Lucy.

Also, Lucky, on the hunt for Jimmy, shows up at Jimmy's doorstep but finds his mother, Gillian (the underrated Gretchen Mol) instead. Gillian's back-and-forth with Lucky jockeys for what will be seen as one of the series' best dialogue scenes.
As densely plotted as this episode is, most of its scenes are devoted to taking character-centric detours. The season's overarching storyline, Nucky vs. Rothstein, takes a back seat to spending time with Nucky's need to have everything perfect, with "perfect" being a euphamism for "his way." In doing so, supporting characters get significant screentime, especially Kelly Macdonald's Margaret.

The softspoken widow shows up at Nucky's birthday party and surprises both Nucky and his guests with an intellect and wit that surprises us too. As then-current politics center on women's suffrage, Margaret believes women deserve the right to vote in the U.S. because she comes from a "more civilized country" where women already have that right. She shares her beliefs with Senator Gage in a way Lucy could not about the same subject. Nucky rewards Margaret with a dance, but Margaret goes home alone. Just try not to hear Margaret's heartbreak as Nucky watches her leave, framed behind Lucy's shoulder, who has just stripteased her way out of Nucky's birthday cake.

This episode also gives Chalky his best and most organic role in Boardwalk yet. Michael K. Williams gets a great scene here, opposite a KKK leader suspected of lynching one of Chalky's men. Chalky monologues to the clansman a story about growing up in Texas, about his daddy, a master carpenter who once made a great bookshelf. Chalky's daddy was hung by six white men for being black and capable of such craft. Chalky punctuates his story by unfurling his daddy's rusty, menacing tools. The clansman asks what Chalky's gonna do with them.

"Well," Chalky looks up, "I ain't building no bookcase." With that great line, who killed Chalky's man is eventually resolved, but with a twist, and in a fashion that allows Chalky's role to feel less crowbar'd than it has in previous installments.

Despite all that works in this episode, a few things don't. "Anastasia" devotes too much screentime to the rise of Al Capone, who has partnered with Jimmy to start muscling in on rival gangster Sheridan's territory. Capone is supposed to be cocky and graiting, but his "gonna beat ya while I'll talk tough" thug act is tiring; we get it - Capone's a wild card, bitches!
The best that comes out of Al's story involves the role Jimmy plays in it. Jimmy's brains balance out Al's ballsyness, as Jimmy explains to the bourgeoning gangster to go about taking Sheridan's territory as one would conquer a country: Pieces at a time, not all at once.

This lesson is lost on Al, and it's Jimmy and his new girlfriend/prostitute who pay for it, when one of Sheridan's men visits her brothel and takes a knife to her face. (Although why retribution isn't taken out on Al instead is fuzzy.)

And as great as the machine-gun dialogue between Gillian and Lucky is, the physical relationship that it sparks between them feels like a plot thread lesser shows should exploit. (This mis

Four episodes in, and Boardwalk continues to find its footing as one of the boldest historical dramas ever attempted. Characters as compromises as those here are always compelling, especially the more human the show's writers make them out to be. For all his power and money, Nucky is still a guy who has to throw himself a surprise birthday party.