Boardwalk Empire/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • After Chalky drops the word "motherfucker" in casual conversation, Nucky turns to Eddie, his butler, and asks, "What's a motherfucker?"
  • Eli's speech at the St. Patrick's Day Celtic dinner, which almost provokes a war between the Americans and the native Irish.
  • The look on Lucky Luciano's face when Arnold Rothstein tells him that he's sleeping with Jimmy's mother, not his wife.
    • Rothstein's snarking in that scene is pretty funny, too - "I've got a crystal ball, Charlie, and you're missing your trousers."
  • "He says you should fuck your grandmother... with your faggot penis!" (After realizing that she understands Yiddish, Van Alden forces a middle-aged woman to translate the preceding into English for him, in front of her young son. Topped only by Agent Sebso correcting her - he specifically said "little faggot penis.")
  • Rothstein, on the topic of the D'Alessio brothers:

You know what the nice thing about the Bronx Zoo is, Charlie? There are bars between you and the monkeys.

  • "That imbecile is going to be the next President of the United States!"
  • The maid's explanation to why she chose to poison the Commodore instead of outright killing him. "Because if I had used a shotgun, I'd have to clean up the mess myself."
  • Van Alden's Oh Crap reaction when Lucy walks into his office which gets even worse when she reveals she's pregnant.
  • Perhaps one of the darkest funnies in recent television, near the end of the first season when Chalky has taken two of the D'Alessio brothers prisoner. One starts getting lippy to Nucky and Jimmy...

Mook: Fuckin tough guy huh, gonna shoot me for mouthing off?
Jimmy: Well, I wasn't going to but now you kinda talked me into it. [BANG]

    • As well as the look on Meyer Lanksy's face. If his hands weren't tied, he would have facepalmed.
  • Capone eats an apple.
  • Van Alden and his wife walking in on two agents wrestling in the office.
  • Mrs. Van Alden looks very turned on watching her husband bust a restaurant that's selling liquor. Cut to a bed hammering against the wall...and zoom out to reveal Van Alden is showing her the mattress is busted.
  • In "Ourselves, Alone", Lansky and Luciano's tandem Oh Crap reactions to Bugsy telling them that Rothstein's outside waiting for them.
    • And then later in the scene, Rothstein one-ups them by volunteering them to be muscle on a liquor delivery in lieu of allowing Joe Masseria to kill them. The subsequent stunned look from Luciano and Face Palm from Lansky are perfect.
  • Capone's nonplussed reaction to Third Person Person George Remus.
    • The scene in "Age of Reason" when Nucky's just about had it with George Remus:

Remus: Remus finds you petty and resentful.
Nucky: Well, Remus can go fuck himself.

    • Remus is a gold mine of funny - catch Jimmy's WTF reaction to him in "Battle of the Century" and his mockery of the Third Person Person syntax.
  • The Commodore's reveal of his newly dyed hair. "Did he fall into the shoe polish?"
  • Arnold Rothstein's hilariously unsympathetic reply when asked by Jimmy if he has children,“No, but I'm told they often say unexpected and amusing things.”
  • Nucky wishes Owen a top o'the morning, and says "That's what you people say, isn't it?" Owen replies in (friendly) Sarcasm Mode "Yes, and if you leave your shoes outside at night, we'll fix them for you."
    • Made all the funnier/more ironic by the fact that Nucky has to be a maximum of two generations removed from the Emerald Isle himself.
  • When Margaret has to go to confession in connection with Teddy's first one, and brings this up to Nucky, raising the issue of all of the shady things she knows about. Nucky kind of looks at her suspiciously and asks "Exactly how Catholic are you?" (as if there's a variety of Catholic that doesn't confess sins at confession). Nucky himself is of course Catholic, making this funny/inexplicable.
  • A really dark one is the "...seriously?" look on Jimmy's face when Manny Horvitz says he can't kill his associate, Herman for conspiring with Nucky . . . because he's injured. Manny's a kosher butcher, of course.
    • It's also kind of funny (also in a dark sense) in that part of Jimmy's reaction is to the effect of "Wow, so this is how crazy other people think I am."
    • It's pitch black humor, but there's something kind of humorous about Manny turning down the offer of money and instead murdering Angela by citing a Yiddish proverb to the effect that money is nothing if you don't have your health.
      • Plus his "What the fuck?" when Angela's girlfriend rather than Jimmy falls out of the bathroom dead. It's like he's wondering if he got the wrong house.
  • Every single one of Van Alden's interactions with Lucy in Season 2. "This is what the actors are supposed to say?", "Please speak up", "I brought lemons"... the list goes on and on.
  • Van Alden's expression when he sees the flickering light after Agent Clarkson wakes up and talks to him, as if he just received a sign from Heaven.
  • A lot of "Peg of Old".
    • The entire meeting between Nucky and Van Alden over the latter's baby with Lucy. "If there was ever a time..."
    • Nucky shows us a particularly entertaining way to get reporters off your back - get Jack Dempsey to (mockingly) demonstrate his left hook on them.
    • Van Alden's underwhelming reaction to a screaming baby:

That's an extremely penetrating sound.

Jimmy: It's hard to believe that in a year and a half, things have changed so much.
Luciano: Sure, Meyer started shaving.

    • Van Alden's epic WTF face when Nucky suggests a Biblical name for Van Alden and Lucy's baby girl.

Van Alden: I am a married man.
Esther: There goes my dream.

Luciano: Word is, [Nucky]'s got a beef with his brother.
Rothstein: I would have thought James Darmody.
Luciano: Nah, Darmody ain't got it in him.
Rothstein: Pillow talk, Charlie?
Luciano: What, his mother? I'm through with that.
Rothstein: (nods, then sniffs and has a disgusted expression on his face)
Lansky: What's the matter?
Rothstein: Manure. But what can you expect when you conduct your business in a stable?

  • Nucky upon hearing Margaret's son crying after she slapped him: "You were just praying!"
  • When Nucky and Teddy visit New York to consult Rothstein's lawyer, Bill Fallon, Teddy spies a baseball in Fallon's office signed by Ty Cobb. Fallon makes a big show of giving it to him. As Teddy goes out of the room to let the men conduct their business, Fallon opens his desk drawer to reveal a drawerful of signed Ty Cobb baseballs. The smirk on Rothstein's face and the raised eyebrow from Nucky just make the scene.
  • Nucky's overly literal take on a Biblical parable. "They couldn't bend their arms?" Also funny because Margaret brings up Nucky's own use of parables, and that part of the scene could be read as a Lampshade Hanging of the show's love of Let Me Tell You a Story.
  • Mr. Pearson of Princeton puts into words what has been painfully obvious throughout the entire show:

(to Jimmy) "That's your mother?! I thought she was . . . well, let's just say your life is pretty Jacobean all on its own."

  • Lucky, Lansky and Capone telling Doyle that they are cheating him out of his part of their previous deal, then Capone slapping Doyle while laughing his ass off.
    • And then Doyle tries to get back his money by recruiting Van Alden for a fake federal raid against them:

Doyle: I put this whole operation together, and what do I receive? A poke up my ass.
Van Alden (deadly serious): Painful.

  • This exchange from the season two finale:

Nucky: Et tu, Eli?
Eli: Huh?
Nucky: Shakespeare. Julius Caesar.
Eli: There was a character named Eli?

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