Alot of the backgrounds were done with CGI making the sets appear bigger than they really are. But it was done very well from what i could tell.

HBO doesn't engage in product placements, at least not in the past.

Is this sarcasm? honest question. Because maybe it's coincidence, but I see a lot of product placement on Entourage especially. Every time they have a beer it's a Budweiser.

Oh, definitely. But I'm pretty sure that there's still a lot of elaborate building that goes on.

Interesting. Did not know that.

Entourage is the king of Product Placement, but a lot of times its different products every week.

If you watched Hard Knocks with the Jets, Pepsi and Taco Bell were mentioned/shown a lot. Not sure if thats on HBO or the Jets.

that's what i thought, it seems like they've had Budweiser like every episode since season 1. And it's always bud heavy too. mmmmm :clap:

Saw this on a friends DVR. It was amazing. This looks worth 10 bucks a month.

That wasn't Torrio that pulled the trigger. Torrio met Capone on the docks. It was a Torrio henchman.

That was Colosimo that was shot and I think they gave him a bit of short shrift. They kind of make him out to be a bumbling idiot that gets blown away when in reality, he was a critical organized crime boss and was the equal of Torrio as far as gangland politics go. In fact, my recollection is that Torrio and Colosimo were partners at one point.

I think they started the episode about a year too late, they had some excellent character development that they missed out on pre-Volstead act.

I'm also not sure I loved Buscemi in this show. He seemed a little out of place; I just don't see him having a dark enough side for this character. I think it would've been better with a guy like the guy that played Rothstein as Nucky's character.

Should still be very good, but I'd have made a few changes.

Heres the thing. I think those of you with this opinion may be jumping the gun a bit.

I think that Enoch is supposed to be a character who is, for lack of a better word, a pansy.

Remember at the end when Jimmy (i think thats his name, the WWI vet) says, "You can't be half gangster. Not anymore." I think that was a tell-tale sign that Enoch is trying to not be a gangster, and maybe he will have a hard time deciding whether he will stay half-legit or go in all the way.

Sorry if I didn't make any sense there, I'm pretty tired.

That's the producer's choice.

HBO is a subscription service and to my knowledge, does not accept cash for product placement.

Doug Ellin recently mentioned this in an article.

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/how_...nOQmgjFX38MnzI

Ellin said he couldn't charge for product placements even if he wanted to, because HBO is an advertising-free channel. But he uses real brands the way he uses real celebrities, like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who was in a recent episode.

"I try to keep it as real as possible," said Ellin. That's why E (Kevin Connolly) drinks Belvedere on the rocks and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) orders Johnny Walker Blue. "Guys have specific tastes," Ellin observed.

That's a fair point.

It just seems from the commercials that he's supposed to be a bit of a badass.

Rothstein is asking him over the phone if 'this is how you do business' and he yells back at him "if you want to see how we do business, show your ass in Atlantic City again" or something equally bravado-ey.

If they're trying to sell him as a pushover, a pissing match with Rothstein isn't the way to go about it. Nor was "then stop listening to the grown-ups conversations" crack on Lucciano.

I see them actually trying to send him down a darker road and I just don't think he has those chops. And what fun would a pansy primary character be anyway?

We shall see.

Omar sighting...

I was happy his name was in the opening credits, I was disappointed he only had one line.

Although in The Wire, he didn't even show up til the 3rd or 4th episode.

Wow! If that is true, this will quickly become my favorite show.

I guess it could be considered weak because it was just the character introductions but I was still really impressed.

Don't think of it in terms of being weak, just that it supposedly gets even stronger moving forward.