That's a function of the script and not the actress. Lucy is intended to be shallow and a gold digger. Her character has limited dramatic ability, there to suggest wantonness, and is clinging to Nucky, even offering to have a baby since Nucky's become attracted to Margaret.
If an actor creates a reality to fulfill the writers and follows the director's vision, is the actor annoying or talented?
You have to seperate the characters from the actor themselves, something many fans seem to have a difficult time doing.
I agree, I didn't care for Lucy, but that's the goal of the writers because this sets up Margaret as the innocent who's lured into Nucky's arms. The writers being better than that, made sure that Margaret was much more, not just a victim, but a person with some sense of self, who's a member of the Temperance League, but who's also a survivor.
The worst kinds of writing are when they do things like, "Well what can we inflict on this character this week..?". Life isn't like that, sure there are ups and downs, but they're gradual. Things are accelerated and people have an expectation for something new to happen each week as they tune in, and so bad writers will come up with crazy scenarios.
Better writers will create a mytharc and gradually independent choices from the first episode, and the alteration of those choices (because we step forward and then back to course correct our choices), inevitably lead to conflict with other characters...or resonnance with other characters.
Billie is written as an intelligent young actress doing what she has to in order to find a part that gets her noticed. That doesn't pay well, and being an entertainer is limited, roles are not always around, but the bills must be paid. So she needs a sponsor to help pay for the rent.
Still we see she had talent in her tryout with a known actor and in front of a director. She's got a future, but the writers now have three women in Nucky's orbit, and since he's poison, his actions will damage all three. Even if that's poison by proxy with Agent Van Alden.
Go back sometime, and listen to one of Eli's speeches to Nucky, and you'll hear what the writers truly think about Nucky. That's a bit simplistic, for Nucky's not the Devil. It's human nature to want to personify the Devil and make him the scapegoat. Did Nucky make people buy booze? Sure, he's the drug dealer of the day, but one that's about a wink and a nod, and who's selling an essential product. Since it's illegal, it's got to be supported by muscle, graft, crime, etc. It's not like it's heroin.
The show could have gone for several seasons given the Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Meyer Lansky characters.
Aleska Palladino is not only lovely but breathtaking, vulnerable, and likeable. It's just for some reason most lesbians in Hollywood are written as doomed. There's lots of academic articles on that mythos. It's so frequently done that it's become annoying. At it doesn't fit that mishappen mold either, as clearly she's depicted in the throes of passion with Jimmy, so at best she's a bisexual and mostly lonely for love.
Her character was crucial to seeing Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) as not just a damaged WW1 veteran sniper, but a whole person struggling with his appearance after a war, being practically unhirable at the time, but good at killing.
We've had the Phantom of the Opera character before in shows like Beauty and the Beast. Writers I guess are afraid of breaking the spell of making them vulnerable and tragic and having unrequited love, and then not allowing them to be normal, healthy, and able to cope with their injuries or appearance.
In reality, veterans return from war with amputations, horrific burns, mental illness from PTSD (shellshock was one of the most common complaints in WW1), loss of hearing, blindness, etc and manage to not only work, but marry, have children, and live on.
That's the difference between Hollywood and real life. I guess it's more interesting to make it tragic in the minds of the writers. Maybe they think that's what we want.
It's not what I want. It's braver and more difficult to write such that the characters have to work things out than fall to pieces. It's rougher to deal with the aftermath of war, struggle, maybe have a lifetime of struggle, but to cope and make peace with it through the love you have for your spouse and children.
It's unfortunate that the characters have to be written in a manner that's not honest to the 1920s in how a normal person would react to their situations and cope.
Possibly the bravest aspect of Boardwalk Empire is illustrating the huge damage that can be inflicted by child abuse or the potential of child abuse or the illness of a child or the death of a child. All of those things are aspects of the collision and resonnance of characters.
Nucky's wife loses her mind from the death of her child. Nucky never copes with his child's death and his dettachment to his first marriage and perpetually tries to cope with it. Jimmy has a child out of wedlock and to a woman he barely knows, but she's the only example of a romantic liason, while his mother abuses his trust when he rescues her.
Gillian is very damaged with child abuse while perhaps 12 or 13. She wants more than anything to have an honest romantic relationship, but has zero ability to create one, and can only manipulate and manufacture them.
Eli imperils his children and wife from his association to Nucky. His son loses his ability to attend college and must work, then later loses his future repeating James Darmondy all over.
Capone's child is deaf and Capone struggles with his boy ever being normal. Deafness had a huge stigma in those days and there were limited options and sign language was considered a crutch. That historic cruelness is seldom mentioned in Hollywood.
James' son is constantly imperiled by his father's occupation, left alone so Angela can have affairs, lives in a bordello, is torn between Richard and Julia, though Julia's drunken father first abuses him with harsh language.
It's the "sins of the fathers revisited upon the next generation" paradigm over and over.
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