Hold Me in Paradise

Plot

Nucky visits Chicago for the Republican National Convention, where he finds himself intrigued by the candidacy of Warren G. Harding over more established candidates, despite the fact that he meets Warren's mistress and bastard child. He promises Harding's manager the votes of the New Jersey delegation in exchange for blocking Senator Edge's nomination for the vice-presidency, knowing that his former ally has secretly sided against him in funding new roads for Jersey City rather than Nucky's own Atlantic City.

Nucky stops by Johnny Torrio's brothel looking for more information on Harding. As Nucky talks to Torrio and a judge from Ohio, Jimmy comes downstairs and runs into his old patron. Nucky behaves coldly towards Jimmy, criticizing him for never writing his family. It is revealed in the episode that Internal Revenue agent Van Alden, still working out of Atlantic City's post office to investigate Jimmy, has been intercepting the steady stream of money and letters Jimmy sends to Angela.

Eli watches over his brother's affairs. While collecting money at the casino one night, Eli walks into an armed robbery. He is shot and wounded by the D'Alessio gang, who planned the heist with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

When he learns of Eli's wounding, Nucky returns to Torrio's brothel and asks Jimmy to come back to Atlantic City, reminding him that, as an Irishman among Italians, Jimmy will always be an outsider in Torrio's crew. Nucky stresses that he needs Jimmy's help in the intensifying turf war against Rothstein and the Italians. He offers him a percentage share in his smuggling operations and help in dealing with Van Alden's investigation of Jimmy's heist from the first episode. Jimmy is noncommittal, although later he looks on wistfully as Torrio and his men laugh and joke in Italian.

Agent Van Alden's personal problems are brought to light in a scene introducing his depressing home life. He is struggling with his wife's desire for a child, though she is infertile. She pressures him to provide money for an operation he cannot afford. Afterwards, Van Alden is shown gathering all the money he has intercepted from Jimmy, then mailing an envelope to his wife. However, it is soon revealed that he has actually passed the money along to Jimmy's girlfriend Angela; Van Alden's wife breaks down in tears as she reads the letter confirming his decision to trust in God's will rather than get her an operation.

Rothstein prepares for legal trouble over his role in fixing the 1919 World Series.

Margaret finds herself entangled in Nucky's business affairs when he calls from Chicago and asks her to watch over his office and, without opening them, hide certain documents in the chaotic aftermath of the casino robbery. The final scene of the episode reveals that she has spent the entire night sitting at Nucky's desk, reading the ledger that details his profits from bootlegging.

Critical reception

IGN gave the episode a score of 7.5 describing it as "a calm before the storm episode, [it] also succeeds at settling Nucky's political ties by establishing new ones, this time tethered to Warren Harding's Presidential campaign. The sky may be the limit on Nucky's political capital, but all he wants are his roads to Atlantic City. And he'll need them, as the war threatens to bring both allies and enemies to Nucky's town."

The A.V. Club gave it a B rating.

Ratings

"Hold Me in Paradise" boosted its adults 18–49 rating 0.3 points to a 1.5 rating. The episode had a total of 3.213 million viewers.