So where were we? Oh, right: the blood-covered guy in the woods.
The lone gunshot victim is being hustled into the emergency room, having somehow managed to survive for several days in the woods. How he managed to do this, however, remains a mystery…or, at least, it does to Eli, anyway. “He’s fat?” suggests Eli. “He’s insulated? I don’t know. How should I know? I’m not a doctor.” Nucky’s pissed off about the whole situation, but he’s particularly angry at Jimmy…and, really, can you blame him? Nucky tells Eli to take care of the situation, and he certainly gives it his best shot, but attempts to smother the poor bastard with a pillow fail, though it’s not clear whether it’s because Eli’s a bad smotherer or if the guy just has really good lungs. Either way, it’s a minor miracle that Eli manages to quickly set aside the pillow just before Van Alden and his boys swing in to the question the fellow.
Catching the tail end of Nucky’s charitable phone call served as yet another piece of evidence that he’s had his own issues with a child at some point in his past. As ever, it was nice to see as much of Lucy’s body as possible – little did we know how much more we’d be getting later – but when she started talking about the possibility of having a baby, I thought the way she said “mommy” was highly disconcerting. I know some guys get off on baby talk, but hearing her talk that way while half naked and seconds away from giving a blow job, all I could say was, “Ew.”
Wow, I knew Nucky was a big shot, but when you’re big enough to get Eddie Cantor to play your private party, you’re really something. Eli pops ’round to tell Nucky about the situation at the hospital, but when Nucky tries to give him shit for not having stayed at the hospital to protect their patient, Eli – otherwise distracted by Cantor’s goo-goo-googly eyes, basically says, “This ain’t my problem, go be pissed at Jimmy,” and to echo my statement from a few paragraphs back, can you really blame him?
Speaking of Jimmy, when they put the focus on his fascination with how his wife could keep their son still long enough to take his picture, followed by him flipping through the photo album, I thought it was simply to offer a sense of how depressed he was with the lost time between him and his family and how different he and his wife have become. I didn’t anticipate that it would lead to that scene with Jimmy and Tommy ending up at the photographer’s studio. I can see why he would’ve been suspicious of the photographer at first, based on the scandalous shot of his wife baring her shoulder, but once Jimmy had met the man and his wife and seen how comfortable Tommy was around both of them…I dunno, I guess I just thought it would dissipate somewhat. Instead, he seemed to get even more jealous, though part of that could simply be because he’s dealing with so many emotions that he just doesn’t know what to feel.
