12/23/2023 0 Comments Shows like boardwalk empire![]() ![]() And because the show is fixated on Nucky (reasonably so, given the lack of time), supporting characters we spent a lot of time with in previous seasons are just sort of left to rot.Īll that said, Boardwalk Empire is still a superb series overall. His murderer’s identity is so obvious and on the nose that it inspires an emotionless response. The end of Prohibition means Nucky is rendered a dinosaur and the audience is forced to plod along with him to a predictable death. We are not invested in their current states because we lack the context of how they arrived there. The overwhelming feeling with Season 5 is less that it’s bad television and more a sense of “who cares?” The characters we’ve come to know so well are pale shadows of their former selves. While HBO surely had reasonable budgetary considerations in mind when they pulled the plug, and while perhaps we should appreciate that the network gave Boardwalk the courtesy of one more season, it’s nonetheless impossible to ignore the dramatic decline in quality in Season 5. Instead, the creative collapse of the series was entirely the result of a rushed ending. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, there weren’t too many cracks showing in Boardwalk in the lead-up to its final season. But it’s hard to look at the introductions of compelling characters like Gyp Rosetti ( Bobby Cannavale) or Valentin Narcisse ( Jeffrey Wright) and declare that the show had no interesting ideas left. Some might argue that the series was already running out of steam prior to Season 5. Viewership also declined to an all-time low, presumably because viewers realized that a massive time jump made previous plotlines and characters feel borderline irrelevant. Clearly, the showrunners ran out of time and weren’t even afforded the benefit of a full season (there were eight episodes in Season 5 instead of the customary 12). It makes perfect sense that the series would end along with Prohibition, but it makes no sense at all to leap ahead seven years in order to achieve that goal. But the disappointment with Boardwalk’s final season has little to do with whether or not it measures up to a classic. It’s not exactly fair to Boardwalk that the show draws some inevitable comparisons to The Sopranos, which is arguably the greatest TV drama ever made. In seeking to deliver a crystal-clear resolution, the show ends up giving us an ending that feels as cold and lifeless as Nucky’s dead body. It seems that Boardwalk Empire learned the wrong lesson from the end of The Sopranos. What’s more apparent is that Nucky’s death feels deeply unsatisfying. The reveal that Jimmy’s son killed Nucky is hardly a surprising one, although it may not be intended to shock us. Thus, it’s hard not to see the consequences of that frustration in the end of Boardwalk Empire, which gives us an unambiguous death scene for Nucky, who is killed by the son of Jimmy Darmody ( Michael Pitt). The finale of The Sopranos is easily one of the most hotly debated in TV history, and its refusal to explicitly show the literal death of Tony Soprano (if he did indeed die) was met with some frustration. And both shows are, of course, about New Jersey gangsters. Boardwalk premiered three years after Sopranos went off the air. Show creator Terence Winter was a writer on The Sopranos for most of the series’ run. In some ways, one can’t help but consider Boardwalk Empire to be a follow-up of sorts to The Sopranos. ![]() Williams) becomes an escaped convict and Gillian Darmody ( Gretchen Mol) is in prison. Much has also changed with Al Capone ( Stephen Graham), who has transformed from an up-and-comer to a full-fledged celebrity gangster akin to Robert DeNiro’s portrayal in The Untouchables. The dangerous duo of Meyer Lansky ( Anatol Yusef) and Lucky Luciano ( Vincent Piazza) are on separate paths, after four seasons of being almost inseparable. ![]() ![]() Nucky Thompson ( Steve Buscemi) is now operating out of Cuba instead of Atlantic City. While there are some significant gaps between each season, a gap of seven years means we’re now looking at a show that feels almost entirely different from where we started in Season 1, or even where we left off in Season 4. The show also blows past the death of one of its most compelling supporting characters, Arnold Rothstein (played by the brilliant Michael Stuhlbarg). The unfortunate reality with Boardwalk Empire is that a fascinating chapter of American history, namely the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression, is simply skipped over by the series in the interest of time. The simple but devastating act of making alcohol illegal ignited an entire industry of black market criminality that gave rise to some of America’s most notorious gangsters. It makes sense that a story about an Atlantic City-based bootlegger would have a conclusion that coincides with the repeal of Prohibition. ![]()
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