Boardwalk Empire, an HBO show meant to replace The Sopranos as the most-watched show in the premium cable network’s history, started its last season in a way in which disappointed most Boardwalk Empire fans. A show that started with its first season in January 1920, with the inception of Prohibition, and followed a pattern of each season covering a time period of one year, threw its fans for a loop when …
“You never wanted to be here, not from the start.”
Last week, I thought the ending of the series would come down to Nucky atoning for his guilt over Gillian. I was slightly wrong.
A show with a large cast of characters, which comes out with a solid series ending almost always has to narrow its focus for the last few episodes. Sunday’s penultimate episode saw us tying up loose ends with Eli, Margaret (sort-of), Luciano, Lansky, and Capone.
Boardwalk has the ability to lead you slowly in a forward direction, so slowly you may not understand where it’s going or why it may be going there, and then it picks up speed so fast, it’s as if the writers have cut the brakes on the train, as it plummets downhill.
We set up dominoes just to watch them fall, and that’s just what the writers have done this week. Boy, how they fall. The only man still standing, the man who’s alsoways standing, no matter what may come, is Nucky.
We are officially at the midway point of Boardwalk‘s final season. If the series doesn’t tie itself up by the end, and it seems poised not to do that on any concrete level - strictly based on the fact that Enoch Johnson isn’t imprisoned until 1941; then after tonight’s episode, at least we can say that Nucky, framed by his flashbacks, and the return of Margaret, has become honest with himself and those around him.
The theme of today’s episode is brought to you by - “every character is trapped in a hell of their own making.” Chalky, man, he’s in some serious trouble. Obviously, when Milton essentially took Chalky hostage, things were going to get dicey.
The theme of today’s bleak episode is brought to you by bad parenting and failed fathers!
“Be honest and true boys/whatever you do boys/let this be your motto through life” a voice-over of what sounds like Gretchon Mol, reading a children’s poem, as coins sink in the waters of Atlantic City, 1884, “sprinkling the sea with gold”. How easily they wasted their precious currency in these days. How rich and …