Flipping through the channels, someone could easily assume Americans are a backward looking people. That impression seems remarkably astute at this moment in American history. We as a people are facing the spectre of a double-dip recession, a number of foreign conflicts and a politically divided country. Given the state of current affairs, Americans have earned the right to look to the country’s past. Perhaps we are searching for the answers of today’s problems in the actions of our forebears. Regardless of our motives, when turning on the TV today, viewers receive a number of historical narratives that chronicle American conflict and how the people of yesteryear dealt with said conflict, perhaps most notable of which, is to make a drink.
Whether on re-runs of the now finished “Mad Men,” on Ken Burns’ new documentary series “Prohibition” or on Martin Scorsese’s collaboration with “Sopranos” writer Terence Winter for “Boardwalk Empire,” TV has been full of fashion, history and booze.
Perhaps a quote from a British captain circa 1846, as heard in the opening lines of Ken Burns’ “Prohibition,” can explain Americans’ recent fascination with the drinks of yore: “They say the English can not fix anything properly without a dinner, but I’m sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain, you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink, because it is hot; they drink because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave.”
In what is essentially the fictitious companion piece to Burns’ “Prohibition,” HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” beautifully illustrates what happens when Americans cannot (legally) get their booze: violent crime. The second season of “Boardwalk Empire” brings back a familiar cast of crooks, hitmen and congressmen, and the three are often hard to tell apart.
Despite the slow start in the first season, the show eventually created unique and compelling TV; Steve Buscemi even became a convincing Atlantic City king-pin. Toward the end of the first season, after a couple of over-the-top scenes (I’m particularly thinking about a violent country baptism), the show nearly reversed the initial slow start and risked turning from a laudable depiction of the period and its organized crime into a very expensive melodrama (the pilot alone reportedly cost $18 million).
This season the show has reached a good balance between internal conflict and mob violence, and my complaints about last season are all but gone. Plot aside, the set, the dialogue and, for the most part, the acting is spectacular. Furthermore, Season two is rife with conflict between the lead “Nucky” Thompson (Buschemi) and nearly every character in the series, including his brother Eli, his teetotaler mistress Margaret, the law, rival gangs and the enterprising Jimmy Darmody with whom “Nucky” has played the father figure up to this point.
Aside from the central drama of the show, there are numerous subplots that are often as compelling as the main plot, like the interactions between Angela Darmody and Richard, “the Tin Man.”
 The show is filled with music of the jazz age, impeccably reconstructed clothes from the era, speakeasies, organized crime and original representations of the era’s struggling minorities, African Americans and women. Because of said examples and innumerable others, I raise my glass to “Boardwalk Empire” and will stay on the edge of my seat watching and waiting to see how another generation of Americans got into and got out of their problems.