'Boardwalk Empire' returns for Season 3

HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which returns for its third season on Sunday, is a classic mobster story about men with big egos and bigger guns facing off - in ways bloody and brutal - against other men with big guns and bigger egos.

The Prohibition drama, starring Steve Buscemi as Atlantic City political boss and bootleg booze-trader Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, has more than its share of male aggression, gun-and-switchblade-generated gore, and late-night grue, but it doesn't pretend its characters live in a vacuum.

Angels may fear to tread the boardwalk in Boardwalk Empire's version of Atlantic City, but women certainly do not, and to series creator Terence Winter's credit, the drama doesn't divorce its male leads' stories from their social environment or their relationship to women. The series opens in 1920, the year Prohibition went into effect and the year women got the vote.

True to the genre, Boardwalk Empire features, in virtually every episode, its bad-boy leads consorting with oodles of prostitutes and strippers. Like cigars and whiskey, the gals serve as currency, tendered by one goodfella to another to lubricate business deals.

But we also were introduced to some of the most memorable female characters on TV, including Margaret Schroeder, an Irish immigrant and mother played by the remarkable Kelly Macdonald; Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol), a showgirl, dancer, and stripper whose son, Jimmy, is Nucky's protégé; and Jimmy's wife, Angela (Aleksa Palladino), a would-be modernist painter.

After its first season, however, the show undercut itself, settling in its sophomore year for the scintillating (and titillating) rather than the deep.

Margaret, especially, gets a raw deal.

The Margaret we first met provided the series with its moral compass. Intelligent, fiercely independent, and headstrong, she more than matched Nucky in virtually every way. She's outspoken. She outwits a senator in a debate about women's suffrage and she lets Nucky have it over his illegal activities.

Her élan diminished in the second season in inverse proportion to her wealth and social status - which rose rapidly when she married Nucky. When her daughter contracted polio, Margaret lost her wits, convinced she was being punished by God for being with a sinful man. She was eventually reduced to a petulant, spoiled wife whose only pastime was to order the servants about and dole out Nucky's illegally earned money to Catholic charities.

In the opening episode of the new season, we learn Nucky can't stand to be around her. He spends most of his nights with his new mistress, Lillian "Billie" Kent (Meg Chambers Steedle), who is, you guessed it, a . . . showgirl.

The second season did have one bright light, Esther Randolph (Julianne Nicholson), an assistant U.S. attorney who tries to prosecute Nucky. She was a brash, funny, wisecracking dame who'd fit right in opposite any Bogart character. Sadly, she lost the case and left the show.

If feminism implies the birth of an independent consciousness, of a self-awareness that's not rooted in the needs of men, then Angela Darmody was Boardwalk Empire's closest thing to a feminist hero. Frustrated by her marriage, she fell for a lesbian novelist and began carving out a life for herself. A couple of episodes later, they are both gunned down by one of Jimmy's enemies.

With Margaret cut down to size and Angela and Esther cut out of the show, Gillian Darmody emerges as the series' most notable woman. Portrayed by a stunning and fearless Gretchen Mol, she's a larger-than-life character straight out of Greek tragedy (or daytime soaps). She had a hellish childhood, becoming pregnant at 12 when she was raped by Nucky's mentor. A mother at 13, she learnt to use her feminine wiles (as they say) to survive, and eventually thrive.

How manipulative is Gillian? In a flashback, we learn that she was so jealous when she first met Jimmy's wife-to-be, Angela, that she seduced her son (shown in disturbing detail).

Season 3 finds her the madam of an upscale brothel called the Artemis Club: The girls recite poetry and play classical music before taking their Johns upstairs.

It's Gillian, not Margaret or Angela, who defines femininity at the start of Boardwalk Empire's new season. Let's hope Winter and his writers will offer more alternatives.