Michael "Omar" Kenneth "Little" Williams, Steve Buscemi, and ehhhhh Michael Pitt in Martin Scorsese's BOARDWALK EMPIRE

Up until the announcement about the final season, part of me was hoping it would limp along for another ten years or so and just slide through the 20s and into the 30s. But that is also just the sick part of me that would really love to see a show set in the recent past just keep going and going to trace the characters and their descendents through the decades.

Yeah, loads of stuff happened, but so much of it was pointless stuff like Nucky's nephew going to college or Gyp Rosetti or Rothstein and Margaret or Nucky not going to Florida or Paz de la Huerta. I do like this show, but it has really taken it's time with some looong detours, which now doesn't really amount to a lot. The evolution of Nucky has been pretty standard.

8 episodes :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8kBuOUsqU

jesus christ, this is still going

still with the Jeffrey Wright character? wtf

So, any thoughts on the new season? It struck me that I'm pretty happy it's only eight episodes, I don't need to see any more of this. It's not bad or anything, I just don't think the first four seasons has added up to a lot, and the time-jump pretty much difuses the little buildup that has been.

no more Rothstein though :(

I am bummed at a) no Rothstein/Mrs. Thompson action and b) no Chicago hijinks w Mueller, Capone, and Eli

did the first episode air already and I missed it?

Aired last night.

well I guess I have something to watch tonight then

Glad that Chalky bust out of prison and decent as the flashbacks are, when there is only 7 ep's left they need to stop fucking about with flashbacks.

Chalky was sent to prison? did I miss something last season?

or forget something?

No this occurred in the 8 year gap.

It's a spoiler, but no excuses for not seeing it yet!

Michael Shannon really underused by this show in general, kinda bums me out.

p good episode. stockbroker suicide appropriately shocking; Margaret's getting fired scene also really good. re: flashbacks kept waiting for lil Nucky to run into lil Don Draper

Pretty meh opener. Flashbacks not welcome. Maybe should have ended last season. No more one eyed dude :(

are they setting up Nucky's nephew as being involved in prosecuting Capone or is that too obvious

hard to say. maybe obvious is what they're going for this season, idk.

have enjoyed the last 2 eps, was worried the whole season was going to be as dull as that opener.
still not loving the nucky flashbacks, finding them more and more annoying

joseph kennedy casting is A+, dunno about the accent but his look is A+
always meant to say the same about the guy who plays bugsy, looks very similar to the old photos imo..maybe a little on the skinny side is all

Kennedy being a sanctimonious dick is a nice touch

the quote he had re 9 children being a guarantee made me lol

glad things worked out joe

and yeah, his sanctimony was top-notch

trying to figure out where this chalky storyline is going

yeah it seems a little aimless. I liked the scenes inside the house, at the same time it was clear Chalky was gonna off that dude as soon as he went too far.

otm

i miss rothstein. show feels a little less interesting without him

widow rothstein going after Margaret seemed very Sopranos-like, the whole "there's no getting out" thing

it was also kind of great though because you could see Maggie doing the same thing back in the day, and you could see the defeat in her eyes once she realized that

tangentially related:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/an-american-sculptors-masks-restored-french-soldiers-disfigured-in-world-war-i/2014/09/22/4748b8d4-38ec-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html

The season is humming along nicely, but I kind of think the 7-year jump screws up the whole thing. So much always happens each season, and this year is no exception, that it can't help but make those 7 quite quiet years seem really really odd. So Chalky gets the opportunity to escape from prison at the same time as Gillian decides she needs to get out of the asylum at the same time as Luciano recognizes Van Aulden, at the same time as Margaret's boss kills himself, at the same time as developments in Cuba kill Sally. A lot of it is drawn together by the moves Luciano is making, which upsets everything, but that can't help but make the rest of it seem like really weird coincidences.

it's ok and I'm still getting some laughs out of Michael Shannon's resting bitchface but what makes this feel really perfunctory is the foregone conclusion that the central villains - Lansky and Luciano - both live for several more decades

it seems p clear where this is going - Nucky dead, Margaret set for life, Van Aulden and Eli redeemed, Lansky and Lucianio triumphant, Capone in jail

idk what's gonna happen with Chalky. It's been so long since the last season that while I recognized the lady in the last scene, I couldn't remember her exact relationship to Chalky/how that all got resolved

The character who Nucky is loosely based on lived on into the 50's as far as I can remember, Lansky was the real stayer though!

This is an interesting Luciano fact...

Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples International Airport. Luciano had gone to the airport to meet with American producer Martin Gosch about a film biography. To avoid antagonizing other Cosa Nostra members, Luciano had previously refused to authorize a film, but reportedly relented after Lissoni's death. After the meeting with Gosch, Luciano was stricken with a heart attack and died. Luciano was unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport in anticipation of arresting him on drug smuggling charges.

I have a hard time seeing Van Aulden and Eli being actually redeemed, but otherwise you're spot-on, I assume. And having those flashbacks taking up all that time... Though congrats to the show on the guy they got to play young Buscemi this week, that was uncanny.

I shouldn't be complaining. The show is still fun to watch, and it was probably never going for anything more than pulpy fun. But back when it started, I really thought it could be the gangster-version of Deadwood, showing the birth of organized crime, and story-lines like Nucky helping with electing president Harding seemed to promise something more ambitious than just gangster-machinations. But in the end, the show had next to nothing to say about the twenties, about politics, about race, about gender. It's less Sopranos or Deadwood and more Game of Thrones. Which is okay, I guess.

haha yeah re: younger versions of other characters they have really got guys that can nail the other actors' mannerisms. young Buscemi's teeth oy.

agree this is p weak on the larger thematic stuff

really cleaning house with secondary characters

i had 3 eps backed up & decided to pull the pin

i'll circle back when it's done, not feeling it imo

the pointless deaths in this series... I mean it's to be expected that people are going to die violently but it seems like so many characters have died randomly/to no end they just get their faces blown off for no real reason etc.

not particularly interested in a big showdown with Luciano, Lansky and Siegel since it's established fact that all those guys live

I would have felt very sad about this series dimming out and dying if it wasn't for The Knick coming along at just the right time and doing something completely different and more essential with period drama. But tbh still enjoying these last few eps.

Just caught up over the last week, it's not the glory days of S3, but still very enjoyable and solid. I could easily do another full season TBH.

Though congrats to the show on the guy they got to play young Buscemi this week, that was uncanny.

Yes, I was half convinced it was him in prosthetics till I checked!

ok didn't really foresee Nucky's abject surrender coming

I kinda like where this is going, until I think about it. Taking the whole feud and dealing with it in a single episode was surprising, and the death of Mickey Doyle was funny, but... Once again it's just so much unconnected stuff on top of each other. Eli saying goodbye to Willie, and Willie then being abducted immediately afterwards was laughable. And the Death of Doyle just feeels like cleaning house, once I think about it. And everything with Gillian in the episode was great, but then I think about it, and the idea that Gillian would all of a sudden sent at letter after seven years, coinciding perfectly with Nucky being back, and Chalky being back, and Eli having to return...

Weird coincidences really don't bother me in fiction, particularly consciously pulpy fiction - what's that thing that someone said - 'you can get your characters into trouble with coincidence, as long as you don't get them out of it with coincidence'. something like that.

Anyway, this is feeling very rushed at this point. This season really could've used a full run.

Young Gillian almost as well-cast as young Nucky.

Bugsy was a laugh.

Once again it's just so much unconnected stuff on top of each other.

^^^this. I can appreciate Nucky's redemption arc coming into focus (altho it had occurred to me at least a couple episodes ago that where they were leading up to with the flashbacks was Nucky pimping Gillian to the Commodore and presumably his wife/baby dying as well...?) but a lot of the rest is like checking off boxes randomly: time for this character to die, oh look Capone's busted, now let's kill off this other character etc.

My love of this series went down one notch after Jimmy Darmody's death and a fair few after Richard Harrow's, but it has been a very enjoyable trip. Just wish the last one would have been better conceived and a few episodes longer, but never mind!

I'd forgotten how much the juvenile Bugsy Seigel character was there from season 1.

Well that ended about as well as could be expected