The Season 2 premiere of HBO's 'Boardwalk Empire' wasted little time thrusting the Atlantic City power structure we grew to know in Season 1 into a state of chaos and flux. While some critics, including AOL TV's own Mo Ryan, have called 'Boardwalk' slow-paced and somewhat boring, the action-packed Season Two premiere delivered major developments for Nucky Thompson and several of the show's main characters. It opened and closed with a bang, literally and figuratively.

A few minutes into the episode, the Ku Klux Klan attacked Chalky White's bootlegging safe-house in a chilling, 1920s-style drive-by-shooting, emptying a gigantic machine gun into the distillery. The brutal attack killed four of Chalky's people and wounded half-a-dozen others, including a woman. It was an unsettling and intense scene to watch that proved to be a pivotal jumping-off point for several of Season One's simmering storylines.

Chalky managed to shoot one of the Klansman as they escaped, but in a reflection of the unjust racial politics of the era, the story around Atlantic City immediately became "Chalky White shot a Klansman," and a political crisis unfolded for him and Nucky Thompson.

(S05E08) "A lie ain't a side of a story. It's just a lie." - Terry Hanning

Rest in peace Omar Little. Wow. Honestly, that's all I really want to talk about. So let's get everything else out of the way first. I'll come back to Omar. Where to start then? How about my weekly rant on Scott Templeton? When I first saw that quote at the head of the episode, I was wondering who the hell Terry Hanning was. I figured he must hold some weight if his quote was the one selected to grace the episode though. Then we saw him. The military vet that Scott "interviewed" under the bridge the day he went slumming with the homeless. I've been waiting all season for a moment like this.
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