**SPOILER ALERT**

Last night’s season 2 finale of “Boardwalk Empire” has generated some strong reactions from fans, as Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) was killed at the end of the episode by Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi). The plot twist rivaled the death of Ned Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” as one of the bigger TV surprises of 2011, though in this case the twist seemed forced and out of place.

Many fans are upset, as Jimmy was a popular character. He was a tortured soul who was an integral part of the storyline through the first two seasons. That said, I’m not bothered that the writers decided to kill him off, but I wasn’t very impressed with the way they got to this point.

Season 2 revolved around the many troubles faced by Nucky Thompson. Nothing was going right for him, and Jimmy joined forces with his father with the encouragement of his bizarre mother (Gretchen Mol) to try to take back control of Atlantic City from Nucky. From the beginning it was clear that Jimmy wasn’t cut out to be a boss. He was indecisive and didn’t have much business sense. Next to characters like Al Capone (brilliantly played by Stephen Graham) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), Jimmy looked like a naive kid as he bumbled his way through a bunch of failed deals. When it came time to kill off Nucky, Jimmy didn’t have the stomach for it, though he reluctantly went along with the plan when pressed by the real gangsters and Nucky’s brother Eli.

Yet Jimmy and fellow war vet Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) never hesitated to use violence violence against others, like scalping a foul-mouthed rich guy who ridiculed Jimmy and struck him in the face with his cane as his business ventures went south. Jimmy was an enforcer, not a leader.

But there was something deeper going on, as Jimmy was fighting all sorts of demons, from his troubled childhood to his relationship with his mother to his experiences in the war. The writers tried to convey this throughout the season, and frankly it wasn’t very fun to watch. You wanted to root for Jimmy, but the wild swings in his behavior made little sense.

All of this strange behavior became easier to understand in one of the final episodes when we had a long flashback to Jimmy’s time at Princeton. The episode seemed like a waste of time until we saw the scene where Jimmy’s mother has sex with him at the end of a drunken night for both of them. Gretchen Mol’s character was always a little creepy and this took the bizarre relationship to another level. Jimmy then quits Princeton and joins the army, and the war experience finished him off on an emotional level.

Yet this entire setup leads to a moment where Jimmy lets Nucky kill him without a fight as explained by showrunner Terence Winter in a recent interview:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you first know that you were going to kill off Jimmy?

TERENCE WINTER: Probably at the very beginning of season 2. The idea was to try and push things to their absolute limit, even if it makes it difficult for yourself and your writing team. If you take things to their logical extreme with the situation we created, Jimmy has betrayed Nucky, he tried to have him killed. You want to be honest about the storytelling. In the pilot, Jimmy told Nucky: “You can’t be half a gangster anymore.” We wanted with the first two seasons to follow that trajectory, where he goes full season from being the guy who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty to actually pulling the trigger himself. And what’s the strongest version of that? To pull the trigger on the very guy who told him, “You can’t be half a gangster anymore.” It’s like, “Guess what? You’re right. I can’t. And here’s me now fully becoming a gangster.” Anything short of Nucky doing it himself wouldn’t feel real, it wouldn’t be real. And it would be a cheat for us to say, “We want to keep our beloved character Jimmy Darmody alive.”

One of the things I wanted to do by design in the finale is make the audience pissed off [at the start of the episode]. I wanted people to say [when it seemed like Nucky and Jimmy would reconcile], “Oh great, after all that, it’s all going to be forgotten and Jimmy is going to be back in Nucky’s good graces.” I wanted them to think right up to the very end that Nucky is going to forgive him and take him back. It was a really hard decision. You’re sort of blowing up your own show, in some ways. Now we’re back in the writers room trying to figure out where we go from here without Jimmy Darmody.

My only concern plot-wise was wondering whether Jimmy would really go so willingly to what he likely believes is his death.

We know with [the previous week's episode] that he’s so emotionally damaged. I don’t think Jimmy ever expected to come back alive from World War I. I think he probably left for the war hoping he would die and was surprised he survived. He’s been a walking dead person ever since we’ve met him. He’s come back and gone through the motions of a person trying to make his way in the world, but ultimately becomes resigned to his fate. He gets manipulated into this run against Nucky, who was his mentor, and really the only father figure of any meaning that he has. The plot failed and he knows, as a good solider, he’s going to have to fall on his sword. He fully knows what he’s walking into at the end. He’s not armed. He says goodbye to his son. He basically gives Richard Harrow permission to not come with him. He knows he needs to be punished. The circumstances of his life have unraveled to the point where he’s willing to accept his fate. And psychologically Harrow is prepared to respect that as a soldier.

I guess he succeeded in his trick for the final episode (I was fooled), but overall it was a failure. I just don’t buy it that Jimmy would voluntarily go on to his death. He moves Heaven and Earth to save Nucky from his legal troubles, and then let’s Nucky take him out? It just didn’t make sense. He also leaves his son in the care of the mother he’s come to hate. It was great to see him finally tell her to shut up when he had his final meeting with his father’s associates.

Also, Nucky is smart, and he knew that Jimmy was truly sorry for his mistakes. Jimmy proved it with his actions by basically saving Nucky’s life. It would have made sense to have a reconciliation at the end, but I guess that wouldn’t give them headlines with a big plot twist. Meanwhile he lets his brother Eli slide even though Eli never lifted a finger to help Nucky.

Cable dramas like “Boardwalk Empire” can be great because networks like HBO let the creators and writers tell their stories with minimal interference. This often produces complex character and rich stories.

Here, however, the characters are so complex that we can’t predict any of their behavior. Margaret (Kelly MacDonald) was just as unpredictable as Jimmy, and now we have Nucky shooting Jimmy just so he can look like he’s turning into a “full gangster.”

I’ll watch the show when it returns, but right now it’s a mess. Hopefully the writers can up their game with a fresh start.

Make no mistake, this is not only your dad’s but also your grandfather’s whiskey. Depending on your age and where your family was during prohibition, it might even be your great-great-grandfather and/or grandmother’s whiskey. Say what you like about Canadian whisky, it’s stood the test of time.

Sometimes referred to, particularly in Canada, as rye despite the fact that it’s primarily made with corn spirits, Canadian whisky, unlike now resurgent American rye whiskey, never threatened to go away. Still, while some uninformed bartenders still think rye is just the name of a type of Jewish bread, it’s the rare bar that doesn’t stock Seagram’s V.O., Canadian Club, Crown Royal and often Black Velvet. Its the even rarer connoisseur or cocktail aficionado who will admit to being excited about them, with some liquor snobs deriding Canadian as “brown vodka.” Following their lead, younger drinkers who have taken to premium brands of bourbon and Scotch, have largely ignored it. That’s not to say unassuming Canadian Whisky has no fans among the cognoscenti. We kind of love it and no less an authority than cocktail historian David Wondrich suggests Canadian Club — a value-priced favorite of ours — as the perfect vehicle for an Old Fashioned, the most purist-friendly whiskey cocktail we know.

In any case, pop culture seems to be slowly becoming more aware of American rye whiskey’s almost-as-retro northern cousin. The 2008 primary elections saw Hillary Clinton swigging a much-discussed shot of Crown Royal, the very smooth Chivas Regal of Canadian. Though the label is angled so that the logo is just slightly out of our view, it’s clear that Canadian Club — first brewed by distilling legend Hiram Walker — is Donald Draper’s poison of choice on “Mad Men.” (In the first episode, newbie secretary Peggy Olson is informed that rye is the same as Canadian, and told it’s what her new boss drinks.) It also sure looks to be Canadian Club that washing up on the Jersey shore in HBO’s bootlegging themed early gangland drama, “Boardwalk Empire.” By law, Canadian whisky must be aged at least three years, though Canadian Club and Seagram’s V.O. are both aged for six

In fact, the popularity of Canadian whisky — which many insist must be spelled sans “e” — in the U.S. goes back to those dark days for everyone but gangsters between 1920 and 1933 when the sale and manufacture of liquor was illegal in the land of free and home of the brave, but thoroughly legal up north. Jewish-Canadian entrepreneur and liquor distributor Samuel Bronfman became wealthy and powerful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams by staying more or less on the right side of the law while doing business with the likes of Al Capone. He purchased Joseph E. Seagram’s and Sons and launched what became, for a time, a massive commercial and media empire. (It’s worth noting that the line’s flagship brand, Seagram’s 7 Crown, best known as the non-7-Up ingredient in a “7 and 7,” is not technically Canadian whisky. The U.S. version, at least, is bottled in Indiana and marketed as “an American whiskey,” whatever that is.)

Since it’s primarily blended and is generally not a very complex kind of a whiskey, it’s likely that Canadian will never have the cachet of bourbon, rye, or Scotch, but its hipness quotient may be improving slightly. Canadian Club has shrewdly played on its history with a series of attention-grabbing print ads with the slogan “Damn right, your dad drank it.” The ads alluded to the allegedly racy lifestyles of fathers of yore and used actual family photographs from Canadian Club employees.

As for cocktail and liquor aficionados, New York Times writer Robert Simonson blogged some time ago that his contacts in the gourmet and mixology worlds became obviously bored at the mere mention of Canadian whisky. However, Simonson’s April 2011 article details how there are real changes brewing in the world of Canadian booze. He specifically cites the highly acclaimed Forty Creek distillery and also attempts by better known makers of Canadian whiskey to brew blends that will appeal to drinkers used to the more complex flavors of today’s premium whiskeys.

Forty Creek does appear to be the most prevalent of the “new style” Canadian whisky manufacturers and we were able to pick up a bottle on sale at out local big-box beverage emporium. Our reaction was a bit mixed; we still think Canadian Club is more tasty and given its extremely low price, difficult to beat. Even so, we anxiously await the arrival of more and better Canadian whiskys. It’s time to see if our polite and funny friends to our north can create some premium whiskeys that will give some real competition to Kentucky and Tennessee, not to mention Scotland and Ireland.

The first sight we see this season is a bunch of kids running through the surf, picking up…a bottle? I think it was a bottle. Maybe it’s just because I was watching the episode as an advance screener, but it was so damned dark that I honestly couldn’t tell exactly what they were picking it up. But, hey, it’s a show about running bootleg liquor during Prohibition, so a bottle makes about as much sense as anything else, and I’m going to take a similar stab in the dark and presume that what they’re moving onto trucks in the next shot is crates of the same stuff. Basically, the whole segment is intended to give us a quick look at what all of the usual suspects are doing nowadays, and it looks for the most part that they’re still doing about the same thing they were when we left them. Nucky’s still enjoying the 24-hour party while Margaret remains at home, Jimmy’s busy handling the transport of product to Chalky White, Eli’s recovering from his wounds, Agent Van Alden’s with his wife, and…hey, wow, look how much more energy the Commodore’s got! Amazing how reinvigorated one can be when they stop ingesting poison, huh? Unfortunately, it isn’t long before all of the joviality is replaced by tragedy, with Chalky’s operation being abruptly machine-gunned into oblivion by a bunch of KKK members. Pretty horrifying stuff, and although Chalky manages to make it out alive, he’s rightfully pissed about what’s gone down. (At least he manages to take one of his attackers down before they drive away.)

Nucky and Margaret may be making this relationship work, but it’s clearly having a toll on the kids. After pulling an all-nighter, Nucky arrives to find Teddy ensconced under the dining room table, refusing to go to school because he’s been so traumatized by the nuns, but Nucky talks him out by sharing his own past educational experiences, leaving the adults to enjoy a bit of tense conversation amongst themselves. It might’ve shifted into a little bit of loving, but thanks to the nattering of the children, Nucky bails out, leaving Margaret understandable frustrated. Uh-oh, Teddy, you’re in trouble…

Looking in on Angela and Jimmy, it’s clear that Angela’s still an emotional wreck after losing out on the lesbian love of her life at the tail end of last season. She might be trying to put on the façade of family happiness, but there’s misery dripping from every word out of her mouth, and she obviously has no tolerance for Jimmy’s mother, Gillian. Speaking of which, how incredibly creepy was it when, apropos of nothing, she announced that she used to kiss Jimmy’s wee winkie once upon a time. Talk about your awkward revelations. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Capone’s still got a chip on his shoulder when it comes to people perceiving him as Johnny Torrio’s lackey, as evidenced by his reaction to George Remus, whose ridiculous tendency to refer to himself in the third person completely confuses Capone. Remus submits a plan to help Torrio do an end-run around Nucky Thompson, which Torrio accepts, quickly passing the buck to Capone on the matter of informing Nucky that his services will no longer be required.

At approximately the same time, Nucky is basking in the glow of his new endeavor with the Roads & Highways boys, taking bribes from an Irish gravel consortium – represented by a big-eared gentleman named Ernie – and smiling all the way. Returning to his room, he takes his latest ill-begotten gain and slips it into his stash, adjusting the books accordingly, where he’s soon greeted by Eddie, who presents him with the news that Chalky has done gone and shot himself a Klansman. Nucky and Eli are kind enough to stop by and pay their respects to Chalky and his family after hearing the report on what’s gone down (this is the first time we’ve met Chalky’s wife and son, isn’t it?), and, boy, do they get an earful as a result. Chalky’s done, having reached saturation point when it comes to the bootlegging lifestyle, and he demands that Nucky do something to help him and his African-American brethren. Nucky counters that he’s the only thing keeping Chalky from the end of the rope, and Chalky bounces right back and tells him that either Nucky takes care of the situation or there’s going to be a major uprising. It’s more or less an impasse, leaving Chalky to say little more in the end that, “Are you gonna arrest me or not?” He’s pissed…and he should be.

It’s apparent that things are pretty lax around the Revenuers’ HQ in Atlantic City when Agent Van Alden’s not around. Now that he’s in town, however, things are no doubt going to change. First, though, Van Alden enjoys a leisurely ride on the boardwalk with his wife, where she suffers from pangs of depression at the sight of the baby-incubator store and he spies Nucky Thompson and no doubt enjoys a quickening of his pulse, even if he does describe him as “no one of any consequence.” Elsewhere, concerned by Teddy’s complaints, Margaret decides to go visit his teacher, Sister Bernice. As it turns out, the Sister had a very good reason for whacking Teddy: he was playing with matches. As a former budding pyromaniac myself, it’s good to nip these things in the bud.

I had to watch the scene with the Commodore strutting around his office twice, so taken was I with Dabney Coleman’s performance. It’s good to see him actually get the chance to be bold in this role after having been forced to act so sickly for all of last season. So Eli, Jimmy, and the Commodore are seriously in bed together, eh? I knew the Commodore and Jimmy were finally forging a father-son relationship, but I didn’t realize Eli was so tight with them…although maybe tight’s not the word, since the Commodore pointedly wants to keep Eli from being too deeply involved in the goings-on. No surprise: it really pisses Eli off that he’s playing second-fiddle once again. Standing amongst his stuffed animals, the Commodore makes no bones about the lesson he’s trying to impart to Jimmy: “You’ll be judged by what you succeed at, boy, not what you attempt.”

Nucky speaks to the parishioners of Chalk’s church, vowing justice for those slain in the attack on his men…and, in a deliciously seamless cutaway, we see that he’s managing to speak out of the exact opposite side of his mouth when lecturing to a decidedly more Caucasian crowd. When word arrives that the KKK member wounded in the attack has died, Nucky orders Eli to arrest Chalky…strictly for his own good, you understand.

Happy anniversary, Agent Van Alden! Enjoy that buttermilk! Mrs. Van Alden is so unabashedly by-the-book that she’s all but guilting her husband into busting the establishment for their waiter’s between-the-lines offer for an alcoholic beverage, so when he gets up, ostensibly to visit the washroom, there’s little question that he’s going to flash his badge…or is he? Well, first he’s going to give his wife an anniversary present, the old softie. After that, though, he knocks the waiter flat, at which point we realize that his trip to the washroom was really a trip to the telephone to call in a raid on the establishment. Happy anniversary, Mrs. Van Alden! I’ve got to say, that was a pretty hysterical cutaway to the bouncing mattress, then pulling back to show that it was just our favorite agent observing that there’s a problem with the springs, but don’t tell me that the look in Mrs. Van Alden’s eyes after the raid wasn’t one of lust for her husband. Confirmed: they do it with the lights off. As she returns home a few scenes later, she’s clearly sad about her departure, and maybe he is, too, but I think he’s realized that he gets a lot more gratification from his work than from sexual release. Sorry to put it out there so specifically, but it’s true, don’t you think?

Boy, times sure have changed…for the better, obviously, but it’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that, less than a century ago, it was considered politically correct to tell the widow of a murdered KKK member, “He was a pillar of the community, he’ll be sorely missed.” When Jimmy shows up, ostensibly to pay his respect to the deceased, Nucky seems suspicious that Jimmy didn’t notice anything suspicious at Chalky’s when he was there prior to the attack, and his suspicions are reasonable, given that Jimmy clearly dodges the topic. After both guys reconvene on the porch for a quick smoke, Nucky tries to revive the parent/child relationship that once existed between them, then comes right out and asks if Jimmy has anything to tell him about what his dad’s got going on, but once again Jimmy slips away without an answer. When we later see Nucky talking to Margaret, she suggests that he’s jealous of Jimmy’s relationship to the Commodore, but he argues that he’s just angry. I’d say it’s somewhere between the two, but she’s definitely onto something, and it becomes evident that Nucky’s in search of someone else to fill the void left by Jimmy. Cue the conversation between Nucky and Teddy about the latter’s pyromaniacal tendencies, but whereas Teddy’s expecting to be beaten, Nucky tries a gentler tactic…like, y’know, bribery. Okay, so he’s not Dr. Spock. Whatever works, though, right?

Hey, it’s Richard Harrow! I’d been wondering when he was going to show (half) his face again. Despite the fact that they work together on a regular basis, Richard’s clearly still not comfortable with the idea of removing his mask to eat in front of Jimmy, let alone Angela, but that’s not the only reason he’s acting skittish this morning. Clearly, his very existence is weighing on his mind, as he asks Jimmy, “How does it feel to have everything?” Jimmy has no reply. As we see later,

Well, what do you know? I guess that theory about Agent Van Alden’s preference of work over sex wasn’t on target after all. Looks like he decided to let Lucy Danziger go ahead and keep his child after all, and – no surprise here – she’s ultimately just as hot pregnant as she was before she was expecting.

Lots of stuff goes down in the last few minutes of the episode. Jimmy does a deal with some liquor on the sly from Nucky, who’s otherwise occupied by Eddie’s panicked call about the arrival of a gentleman from the state’s attorney’s office. Turns out Solomon Bishop has arrived to arrest him for election fraud. Oh, man, that’s got to hurt. Meanwhile, Margaret’s trying to enjoy a screening of The Kid, but she’s too distracted to laugh along with the rest of the audience. Richard’s dreaming of a Norman Rockwell existence as a husband and father, a dream that is almost certainly doomed never to come to fruition. The last scene, however, shows Jimmy opening a gift sent to him by Nucky, and his reaction is all too telling: it tugs at his heartstrings, but – not unlike his emotions – he’d rather hide it away and keep it out of sight. I feel like Jimmy’s struggle with his relationship between his birth father and the man who actually raised him is going to be a major plotline of this season…but, heck, we’re only at the end of the season premiere. Who knows where things will lead from here?

A trio of random quotes and observations to close:

• “It’s nearly 8 AM.” “Considering the night I had, I’m amazed I’m home by 9.”

• “Ain’t you George Remus?” “Who’d you think I was?” “You just said it like it was someone else.” I thought Capone’s complete befuddlement with how to handle Remus’s preference for the third-person was hilarious.

• I loved the gasp that Van Alden’s wife gave when she realized that the pamphlet she was reading contained the location of all the taverns and houses of ill repute in the greater Atlantic City area. Hey, where I can get me one of those?

If the strong critical support, the record-setting ratings, and HBO’s decision to renew the show for a second season the morning after its premiere is any indication, then yes, I’d say it has a pretty good chance. But first, it’s going to have to do a lot more than deliver a captivating pilot episode – one that was directed by Martin Scorsese, the man behind some of the best mob films of the last 20 years – if it ever hopes to reach the same level as “The Sopranos.”

One good episode doesn’t exactly make a great series, but you can definitely tell that the pieces are all there to create something really special. And to help make sense of all the corruption, backstabbing, and every sordid piece of back-alley business in between, Will Harris will be blogging “Boardwalk Empire” throughout the season. Here’s a brief taste from his post about the premiere:

“I don’t know about you guys, but I was sucked into the show almost instantly, in no small part because of Steve Buscemi. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t been a fan of his work for years, but it’s great to see him in the lead role for a change. He’s perfect for it, too: Nucky’s a guy who’s got a lot of power but isn’t necessarily the most intimidating fish in the pond.”

In addition, Bullz-Eye is currently running a “Boardwalk Empire” contest asking our Facebook friends to tell us about their favorite cinematic mobsters. The contest runs through next Wednesday, September 29th, and one lucky winner will walk away with a branded flask, a “Boardwalk Empire” book about the real-life characters, and a keychain flash drive preloaded with exclusive content. Head over to the official contest page to find out how to enter and then be sure to visit our “Boardwalk Empire” blog every Sunday night for a recap of all the latest action.