Boardwalk Empire Roars Back for Season 2

Michael Shannon If HBO's period gangster epic Boardwalk Empire features a single truism to impart to working stiffs, it might be: It's good being the king... well, mostly. Sure, Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson - Atlantic City treasurer, energy broker and bootlegger supreme - is awash in money, energy and glamour, but his day-to-day existence can be a never-ending wager on whack-a-mole, with egos to stroke, police risks to evade and scores to remain. The show's sophomore season, which happens noisy . 1921, finds that dichotomy entirely pressure but cleverly movies the script, opening while using tomcatting Nucky deeply deeply in love with Kelly Macdonald's hardscrabble immigrant, Margaret Schroeder, but facing a potentially deadly uprising among his nearest business allies. "Alliances change," Buscemi describes. "Last season his personal existence was more freewheeling, but his family were individuals he labored with. Now he's on shakier ground together, but he's closer with Margaret." As if remaining a stride while watching law (especially Michael Shannon's fervent highlighting-on-insane federal agent, Nelson Van Alden) and bloodthirsty rivals like Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Al Capone (Stephen Graham) weren't dangerous enough, Nucky now finds themselves inside the conspiratorial crosshairs of his would-be mentor, the Commodore (Dabney Coleman) protégé Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) in addition to their own lawman brother, Eli (Shea Whigham). That, states creator and executive producer Terence Winter, might be the storytelling focus of Season 2: "It's really an issue of Nucky closing ranks and looking to safeguard themselves out of this massive attack on his world." According to Buscemi, the uprising is travelled into the insurgents' wish to have "a bigger little bit of the wedding cakeInch but furthermore rooted in by doing this to become disrespected by an overweening, dictatorial boss, while Nucky sees it a classic situation of bad deed going unpunished. "He's a smart guy in lots of ways,Inch Buscemi confesses, "but maybe he underrated how people would go through the products he's implemented, which there'd be effects." Meanwhile, Nucky makes more recent and much more effective alliances that belongs to them this season. He'll rub elbows while using Irish Republican Military, on the way recruiting Owen Sleater (Charlie Cox) to become stand-by sorts for your now-untrusted Jimmy. Later this season, he'll make a vacation in his ancestral homeland, Ireland. Around the house front, however, all is love and loyalty and renewal. Following their circumspect courtship in Boardwalk's first season, Nucky and Margaret begin Season 2 ensconced in something close to domestic bliss. For Nucky, it's a extended-preferred second chance following a years-ago deaths of his first wife and infant boy, while onetime servant Margaret now finds herself a respected lady of the house. "She's an authentic ally for Nucky, an excellent person to own by his side," observes Macdonald, who states from the romance, "It was not like love at first sight - it absolutely was more realistic, their respect and love started growing." For further on Boardwalk Empire which fall's most widely used cable shows - including Dexter, The Walking Dead and Top Chef - understand this week's problem of TV Guide Magazine, on newsstands Thursday, September 29! Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!