Enter Manny Horvitz. Or Munya, if you like. Stage directions say he laughs huskily and fries up thick slabs of liver he sliced with his own knives. His every joke is a threat, but his every threat is really a cautionary tale – what you see is what you get. A handshake is a handshake is a handshake. You promise, you best deliver the goods. Because he’s got a freezer full of guys strung upside down by their toenails. And that’s what makes Manny so dangerous a predicament – not his single-mindedness, not his the fact he’s a trained shochet with a grudge, but because he’s the only one without pretense. Look at how Charlie, who surrounds himself with Jewish partners, calls Manny “Sammy Sabbath” and a “cafone” even while employing words from Horvitz’s native tongue. Is he a boor for his actions as adversary or his unashamed and inescapable shtetl mannerisms? Is he a boor because he shows only one face to the world and that is his own?
Makes sense that Manny’s introduction appears tucked in the swirl of a masquerade that is What Does The Bee Do?, an episode which begs the question – are you your mask, or have you become it, and if so, is it only because the world has no use for the person behind it?
So you can’t be half a gangster, Jimmy, but which half are you? A businessman with a suit cravat and a bold proposal or an Oedipal brigand in the woods? Is Gillian the manipulator or the manipulated? Lady Macbeth or Lavinia, daughter of Titus? Can she even be one without the other?
The episode bloats, in a marvelous way, with reinforcements of that theme. Look at Richard Harrow, unmasking himself before Angela. (Oh, Richard, who suffers callbacks to so many other false facades. Phantom. Tin Woodsman.) It is here he reveals that he is neither the half of himself masked or the half unmasked, but the scar that lies in shadow. He is a past kept distant, a relationship mangled. Even Jimmy, who would fight for him to the last bullet, says that he can’t tell what’s going on under there. But is that because he only ever sees Richard masked? (Harrow’s most truthful moments, both those directed inwards and towards the audience, are always filmed sans-mask.)
Or have Arnold Rothstein, bantering gently with his wife before he practices his greeting like a player reading through his lines. So which is it, AR? Are you a family man forcing yourself to be a gangster, or are you a gangster forcing yourself to be a family man?
Chalky exhibits the same internal dissonance at his family dinner from hell, shamed for his provincial manners, separated from his family but absolutely right in that those manners put food on their table. How about that shot of him whittling the stake, looking on his family from the inside out because he can no longer pretend? And then there’s Margaret and Owen standing awkwardly by as Nucky Thompson, Irish-American, cracks jokes about those Irish-born. Owen feigns good-naturedness but at the end of the day shows Nucky that what he really learned on those turbulent shores was how to blow things to bits. And, sure you could judge Margaret for sneaking money away, but can’t you also feel her realizing that she is only grasping at make-believe as mistress of house, can’t you also see her looking at those maids and wondering if that’s who she really is underneath and ensuring that her children are provided for should she be returned to it?
The past is always there, always dogging at your feet, threatening to reveal who you really are when you strip away the mask. Which finally brings me around to the reason of why I really love the watch pun, beyond Charlie’s abysmal (and by abysmal I mean fabulous) sense of humor and the fact that I will never get over gangsters sipping from teacups.
Of all of Boardwalk’s imposters, Meyer is its greatest – and I mean this in the best possible way. What do you talk about when you talk about Meyer Lansky? You talk about his smile. His deadly, deadly smile that looks like he wants everyone to get along but really means that he wants you in the ground. But it’s a not a real smile. So catching a glimpse of the real Meyer, no fronts, is a rare gift, and it seems the only environ that allows it is the Darners and Weavers.
You already know how much I love this set and how I wished it had been used for more than two scenes, firstly, because it shoots in such a gorgeously dingy fashion, all corners and low lamplight and smoke, and secondly, because it really is Meyer’s office, Meyer as the man with the plan, Meyer as the head honcho, Meyer in his element. Notice how Meyer’s always sitting relaxed at desk while Charlie lurks in the background. As Meyer says, “it’s the old neighborhood,” and it is here that you see less Meyer the polished businessmen and more Meyer the jagged-edged street punk.
When Charlie brings up the watches, Meyer protests: “we schlep around with a box of watches, what do we look like?” Now, as I’ve said, Meyer uses Yiddish only two other times in the series. One, when he’s trying to gain AR’s backing. Two, when he’s breaking the poker player’s face. Meyer is distinctly uncomfortable baring his Jewishness openly in a way Manny is not. I draw the comparison because even amongst Jews in America, there was a critical distinction between the uptown Jews like Arnold Rothstein, debonair, suave, and most importantly, assimilated, and the downtown Jews like Meyer Lansky, obvious castaways of old world Yiddishkeit. See how Meyer’s attitude changes not when Benny intrudes, but when Meyer catches sight of AR hanging outside the glass.
You get the sense that the Darners and Weavers is the one place Meyer lets himself settle among his own people. Not the glitz of uptown Manhattan or AC, but the grime of the Lower East Side. Grime on the windows, grime on the wallpaper, grime under the fingernails. Hence the ‘pushcart’ crack – typical Jewish merchant, pottering around, scraping for a living. A joke. I touched on this in an earlier post, but one of Meyer’s sore points in my opinion is his desperation to avoid the stigmas of Jewish money. But, here, in the old neighborhood, where he acutely feels that cultural connection more than any other place, his own internal dissonance is also too much to bear. How can he match his upward ambitions with his desire to escape his past? How can he escape his past where his past is the only place he can let the mask fall away?
Charlie sweeping the watches away from the table is a mark of his growing frustration with subordination. A slip of the mask. But Meyer sinking into his chair, sparing Charlie just a flicker of a glance before lighting up? That’s the mask coming back on, and it will never, ever come off again.