Booze, Broads, and isn't Mad Men about to start?

I love the 1920s, really I do. I mean women had just earned the right to vote and, despite the criticisms hurled at them by intellectual suffragettes, flappers were liberating women from corsets, sitting in bars, smoking and drinking with the boys, working outside the home, and wearing pants. The decade that brought us an immigration act, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Gatsby old chum, jazz, frozen food, oh and let's not forget the resurgence and growth  of the KKK, is also the setting for HBO's newest serial that is apparently about baby gangsters.

In addition to being a smorgasbord of everything we think we know and love  about the 1920s-gangsters, free flowing booze, flapper talk, crooked politicians-Boardwalk Empire is visually stunning. The scenes of Atlantic City the way it was way back when are so insanely beautiful that I want to rent out the place for a sweet 16 for my un-conceived daughter-complete with late night sideshow style barkers urging you to come in and watch a girl in high waist shorts do the Charleston.

                       

Aside from the aesthetics, I couldn't tell you much about the show. There are bootleggers, a bunch of dirty politicians, famous Mafia bosses in their adolescence, and a battered woman. Basically its like Gangs of New York, Casino, and Goodfellas with ragtime and fake pearls. For a show filling the time slot of another show where no one is what they seem-who knew Lafayette's new boo was a Mexican warlock?- and wraps up before a show where just when you think you know a character they change-except Betty she's pretty much the same character she's been-the fact that the characters in Boardwalk Empire are exactly what they appear to be-they are based on historic figures-is not refreshing, just not like the others. Maybe next week I'll change my mind...I doubt it