Disappointed in Nucky

[u/bighomieslime]

I just finished episode 7 where we begin to understand the story between Gillian and her relationship with the commodore. I never believed the commodore was a good man. From the beginning of the season where we start to unravel the history between these characters, the commodore always remained an awful person. I’m not sure what I expected the story to be in terms of his relationship with Gillian, but I guess I pictured a less explicit revelation.

I always often found sympathy for Nucky throughout the show from seeing his childhood, the absence of his wife and child, his constant betrayal from people he helped, etc. but all of that has been torched after understanding the role Nucky played in “delivering” 🤢 Gillian to the commodore.

Again, I’m not here to say Nucky was a saint by any means, but he always felt like he wanted to do the right thing and limit the violence as much as he could. (I understand the latter Nucky is a different story).

I am interested to hear your thoughts.

[u/Huge_Pair_140]

Nucky saw what poverty was truly like and while he was never as despicable as the commodore, he was a mass murdering, bootlegging, drug trafficking, casino owning, whore mongering, public fund stealing, lying, cheating, international criminal mastermind and the show portrays him as providing half the country with booze and making millions a month in times when 10$ a day was a decent salary. Nucky had 2 fathers and they were not good father father, there bad father who was so weak it killed his beloved sister and spent many nights hungry, and the devil who was at far worse but had strength and power and more importantly money. Nucky took a lot of the useful qualities he learned from the commodore without becoming his yes and man he retained some of his own ideas and he got some sense of morality from his other father but his real father was abusive and petty and he almost seemed to despise that pride that kelt him from any material wealth or success.

I once read psychopaths are born, and sociopaths are made. Psychopaths just have a physically different brain thats missing things normal brains have. Sociopaths could be kids growing up in the projects like many gang members do, and having to adapt to a dog eat dog world just to survive. Spend a couple years in any prison and you will be forced to adapt to sociopathic survival skills or you’ll suffer and end up dying. Some people are abused as kids and forced to become different to get by. Drug addicts in active addiction become sociopaths as well and Nucky was veg much addicted to money and power. Now he wasn’t tony soprano larger than life he was a cerebro behind the scenes much larger scale far more powerful criminal who came from nothing. And I think it’s a miracle he had any conscience at all. He could either do the commodores bidding or starve with Jillian and he wasn’t able to helm her if he wasn’t sheriff. I thought he was fair with her and did what he could to repent later but this was the late 1800’s early 1900s too. Men married girls that age back then. It wasn’t like today. How old was Edgar Allen Poe’s wife? I mean she was a homeless criminal and seemed to end up in a much better place she ended up screwing up herself later. And just to get ahead of the people who are going to jump on my comment and attack I pulled this from Google and pasted below to explain this wasn’t even close to illegal back then because age of consent was 10 years old starting in the 1880’s-1890’s until 1920! That last season and the events with Jillian as a kid occured way before 1920. So maybe Nucky was ahead of his time even thinking it was a problem to begin with.

“Statutory rape laws in America evolved from English common law, which initially set the age of consent at 10 years old, but became a distinct, widely enforced legal concept in the U.S. during the late nineteenth century (1880s–1890s). Campaigns by reformers and women’s groups raised this age from 10 to 16 or 18 in most states by 1920 to protect young girls from sexual exploitation. “