This weeks Boardwalk Empire was outstanding.  Nucky seems to be in the clear after playing golf with the attorney general but there are no guarantee’s.  Jimmy and Gillian appear to be working on their own now, the Commodore didn’t even manage to make an appearance in this episode, which is understandable considering the shape he is in.  Eli, Jimmy and Gillian continue to insist that the Commodore is fine, no one believes them.  Eli feels lost because without the Commodore he is useless and he knows it.  Jimmy knows he doesn’t need him and tells him so at the very beginning of the episode.  There was so much tension building up in this episode between so many different people, it was good to see it get a chance to unleash itself.  I love the way this show always manages to give you a deeper insight into every character and not always just the main ones.  This week we got to see more into the life of both Eli and Richard Harrow.  Richard has thankfully found a new lease on life thanks to an encounter with a stranger in the woods.  I was horrified that he would actually kill himself.  I completely understand why his character would have suicidal thoughts but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one of my favorites in this series.  The way he and Jimmy handled business at the end of the episode was just too cool.  The episode ended in the same room it started with Jimmy getting his revenge.

The fight with Eli and Nucky had been waiting to happen for so long now that it was almost a relief when they finally began throwing punches.  I understand why Nucky started shoving Eli, and he is the older brother but come on, Eli is the sheriff.  Half of his job is fighting, and he is clearly bigger than Nucky.  I should have known Margaret Schroder would be Nucky’s savior once again by putting a shotgun to Eli’s head just as he was about to draw his pistol.  I was really hoping to see Nucky and Eli reunite but it clearly wasn’t meant to happen. The real question now is where does Eli go from here?  Nucky was his only hope and when things couldn’t look worse he had to go and kill Ward Boss O’Neill.  It clearly was an accident and Eli was completely hammered but still, he murdered Ward Boss O’Neill.  There’s no getting out of that now.  I feel bad for Eli, he has always been way too dumb for his own good but as long as Nucky was making his decisions for him he seemed to be okay.  Once he began to make his own decisions things just kept getting worse and worse.  First he started following the Commodore, then as soon as the Commodore went out of commission he went right back to Nucky.  He should have at least known that there was no way Nucky would just immediately accept him back.  I can’t wait to see what ends up happening with Eli, and his half brained deputy who now knows that Eli murdered O’Neill.  I like Jimmy but I don’t want to see him following his mother anymore.  I hope he finds a way to keep being successful and it seems like with the help of Richard Harrow he his practically unstoppable.