'Boardwalk Empire' Season 2, Episode 1 Recap - '21'

After wrapping up a whopping eight Emmys out of eighteen nominations earlier this month, “Boardwalk Empire” has returned for a second season, and for the premiere, they've busted out the big guns.

Unfortunately, those guns were mounted on a truck, fully automatic and manned by KKK members in hoods, who shoot up Chalky’s distillery, killing several balck men, women and children. Chalky survives, and he manages to shoot one of the Klansmen in the neck with a rifle as they leave the scene of the massacre.

He heads to Nucky’s house, telling him that he better “Go SCHOOL those crackers,” lest he have a full-on race war on his hands. Nucky has his brother Eli take Chalky to jail “for his own protection” and to help him avoid an almost certain lynch mob.

If Chalky (Michael Kenneth Williams) can avoid the sh^&storm after the massacre (some of which is apparently now going to be caused by Nucky, who is playing both sides of the race conflict), you get the feeling his wrath is going to be some Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction”-level business.

Perhaps this episode should have run on Father’s Day, because it’s heavily focused on father and son relationships, and the way that Jimmy is torn between Nucky and the memories he has of being raised by him, and his real father, the Commodore, who is setting him up to take over Atlantic City.

Jimmy takes his own son out shooting birds, and it reminds him of memories from childhood being raised by Nucky. The two stand around chatting about the good old days on the front porch at the dead KKK fellow’s funeral. Later in the episode, we find out just how far Jimmy's warm and fuzzy feelings about those outdoorsy outings really go.

Anyway, it appears that Jimmy, the Commodore and Nucky’s brother Eli all had a hand in arranging the KKK shooting. Nucky starts to smell a rat, and warns Jimmy, funny enough, that his real father, the Commodore is “duplicitous.”

Meanwhile, Nucky’s got another kid to deal with – Tommy, Margaret’s son. He’s been getting in trouble with the nuns for locking himself in closets and playing with matches. A Thompson kid with a pyromania streak? This is what they call “foreboding” in lit class, kids. Nucky tells Tommy to mind his mother and the nuns and gives him some cash for the sweets shop. Zoinks, this can’t end well.

Michael Shannon’s Agent Nelson Van Alden continues to be the most fascinating and complex character on television. His wife comes to Atlantic City to visit for their anniversary. She’s appalled and disgusted by the booze and rampant sexuality, until she sees her husband take down the restaurant where they are celebrating their anniversary for selling booze. Van Alden treats their waiter pretty rough, and it turns his uptight wife on, and she unleashes a little rampant sexuality of her own.

After sending her back home so he can continue to fight crime in the “Sodom-by-the-Sea” of Atlantic City, he stops by the boarding house, where he pays off his pregnant whore of a mistress (also Nucky's old lover) Lucy (Paz de la Huerta) with proceeds from the raided restaurant.

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, a brasher, badder and more powerful Al Capone is working on cutting Nucky out of his equation. And that’s not the end of bad news. As the first episode of “Boardwalk Empire” closes down, Nucky’s office gets raided by Solomon Bishop, a deputy for the State’s Attorney’s office, and Nucky gets hauled into jail for election fraud.