Might want to bring it up here
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Azor Ahai
RE Complete Monster entries again, been bringing them up on the Special Efforts thread and as far as I can tell, it has been determined that none of them likely count. Here's the list I removed:
- Complete Monster: One of Capone's rivals, Charlie Sheridan, is definitely this one. Cutting a ghastly scar into the face of Jimmy's girlfriend kinda gave it away.
- Manny Horvitz, the Jewish butcher/bootlegger from Philadelphia. Quite possibly the scariest person on the entire show. Manny killing Angela and her lover in Jimmy's house places him firmly in this category.
- Owen Sleater is pretty callous and brutal, even for being a character on this show.
- Arnold Rothstein is polite and intelligent but is absolutely ruthless and has no problem ordering murders for his own benefit. He mentions that he once caused a man to choke to death for his own amusement.
- Hans Schroeder in the pilot. He's a violent, abusive bastard who mistreats and beats his wife and children and beats his wife so hard she lost a baby. His fate (Being viciously beaten to death and tossed in the ocean) is so well deserved You almost want to shake Nucky's hand.
- Gyp Rosetti's Establishing Character Moment is beating a guy to death, after he was nice enough to help fix their flat tire, for an innocuous comment he takes as an insult.
Manny, Owen, and Rothstein all have sympathetic moments/redeeming qualities. Hans and Charlie Sherridan don't have those sympathetic features, but at the same time, I'm not really sure their actions are evil by the standards of the show, given all of the awful stuff done by the protagonists.
Rosetti is a new character (only one episode appearance at the time of writing). While his behavior so far is pretty bad, I'd wait a bit on him.
Hodor Hide / Show Replies
There have been some awful things done on the show, but beating your clearly pregnant and expecting wife so bad that she has a miscarriage is a truly heinous act. He killed his own child. And over what? Money that Nucky gave her. Of course, Hans thinks she has to be whoring herself out to people. And after he lays down a beating, what's he do? Just picks up and leaves, with his kids bawling and his wife on the ground in a bloody heap. The next time we see him, Hans is at the casino drunk and gambling away Margret's money. There is no sign of remorse from Hans over anything he's done. His character is thoroughly detestable by the characters and audience.
Cleric of Banjo
I pulled this for Discussion:
- Also, all the of the really corrupt politicians want to remind us that yes, they are Republicans, and yes, they only care about women and blacks insofar as they will vote Republican.
I honestly don't think that this is necessarily bashing toward modern Republicans. While the show isn't always the best about historical accuracy, Nucky's historical equivalent and the actual political machine in New Jersey at the time was Republican. The series is set at a time when the Democratic Party was more of a Southern/racist party and the more immigrant/minority friendly Northern politicians were Republicans. So, Nucky and co. are the lesser of two evils (contrast the show's depiction of Frank Hague, a Democrat who is much more bigoted and unsympathetic than Nucky)
Its only in the late 1930s that the Democratic party started being more pro-minority/ pro-immigrant and having members like Al Smith in New York and Anton Cermack in Chicago.
Cermack is kind of a good example in that his predecessor,William Hale Thompson, was a massively corrupt Republican supported by Al Capone who seized on anti-immigrant sentiment in their race (the way Nucky has been shown to do), and for his part, the pro-immigrant Cermack was equally corrupt.
You make some fair points, and I'm certainly not denying that the New Jersey political machine was Republican and corrupt at the time, but I put it there because I felt that Scorsese/the writers made the point a few too many times that the corrupt politicians are Republicans. Not that New Jersey has changed much. Now it's a Democratic state (except the governor) that's corrupt to the point of giving Chicago a run for its money.
Also, I seem to recall (I could be wrong) at least one scene where Nucky is talking to Chalky White and he tells Chalky that he wants him to deliver the black vote for the mayoral election (against the only uncorrupt politician we've heard of so far who is a Democrat) and Chalky says he can't guarantee that. Blacks already voted mostly Republican until around the late 60s with Johnson and the Civil Rights Act, so I didn't see the point of that scene except to remind us that Republicans don't care about blacks except for political reasons. Plus there's the time that Nucky tells Margaret that he wants her to lie to the League of Women Voters...so that they'll vote Republican. Many women voluntarily voted Republican because the suffragette leaders were Republicans (including Susan B. Anthony), they didn't need to be lied to to do it.
Maybe I'm overreacting, I just felt that the writing got rather ham-handed when it came to reminding us that the super-corrupt political machine was Republican. Historical accuracy or not, it just felt like they reminded us of that much more than was necessary.
Edited by abomb30
Removed this from Alas, Poor Scrappy
- Averted with the death of Billie Kent, Nucky's mistress in Season 3. There were more people wondering if Babette was okay than worrying about her, if at all.
You can't really avert a subjetive trope because it's not something that gets played by the writer and a negation makes it an absolute, when it comes to factual, objetive tropes only remarkable aversions should be listed. You can consider Billie a romantic plot tumor but a quick google search http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/billie%20kent?before=105 shows people lamenting her death, and not only for the fanservice.
Azor Ahai
Re the Complete Monster additions. I don't think Van Alden counts anymore. In the first season, he was in that direction, but he seems more like a Jerkass Woobie or Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds now.
Not sure about Hovitz, although I can't really think of a good argument against his inclusion. It's kind of funny how Jimmy is a sociopath and so are his good friends Richard and Al, and even Jimmy thinks that Hovitiz is nuts.
Hodor
The Commodore really should be on the complete monster list, all things considered.
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