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

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

Thinking about the season-to-season story of the series, in retrospect some of the storytelling decisions are just totally baffling to me

The whole "lets care about al capone" angle felt v unearned

Well, they've always had those scenes with his son. But the whole Al Capone story has seemed very unconnected to everything for me.

These last few episodes managed to make me think of Nucky Thompson as a unique tv-character, the half a gangster who was always too dirty for the fine world he craved, and too pretentious for the gangster world he should probably have stayed in. And his original sin kept on haunting him. I liked that. But another prestige drama ended with the main character taking a bullet in the very final moments, how boring.

lmao sigrid going ham

man this ended badly. completely lost all energy and verve. didn't feel tragic at all, just perfunctorily knocking people off.

man oh man how many years did they make this show for

either too many or not enough. it's a weird thing where it was often pretty good as it was but could have been so so much better

5 seasons. i just got hbo now sow i'm catching up on a lot of stuff.

either too many or not enough. it's a weird thing where it was often pretty good as it was but could have been so so much better

― balls, 26. oktober 2015 03:10 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Spot on. After season four, I thought the story was really getting going. And then they had a time-jump and spent a final half-season of tying it unsatisfactorily together. The whole show amounts to less than it should.

Just went through the whole series in the last month, too, actually. It's a solid B+ show - never really reaches the heights of the greats, but consistently watchable with wonderful production and acting. I was fine with the last season for the most part, but I have a soft spot for time jumps, plus Nucky's Lost flashbacks with the Darmodys to wrap the entire thing up was good. I liked the faster pace of the final season, actually. Watching all five seasons in a month probably also helped. As much as I like Bobby Cannavale as an actor, Season 3 was my least favorite, with the rest being about the same quality.

Frederick, definitely agree about the whole show amounting to less than it should. Nucky such a great central character tailored perfectly to Buscemi as an actor, Shannon's performance as Van Alden endlessly compelling and amusing. Just about everyone in the main cast was consistently solid, though some got shorted by the varying quality of their storylines (Eli, Margaret, Chalky).

I'm guessing they had a rule that if they used a person's real name they had to stick to history (Capone, Luciano, Lansky, Rothstein) but if they didn't it was open game (Nucky, Jimmy, Doyle) with some weird exceptions (uh, Means, maybe). I did admire their dedication to the historical fiction when they tried.

I'm at third season and really enjoying it, way more than I thought. I saw Michael Shannon attacking the guy with the steam iron, rampaging around last night and it has kept me smiling all day.

michael stuhlbarg and anatol yusef were both great. i got a little sick of stephen graham and vincent piazza honestly.

i think it would have been more compelling to see how these guys survived as prohibition was lifted; nucky especially, some kind of davidsimonish point about how capital perpetuates itself through radical changes of regime, how men like nucky make themselves like capital to survive. but instead we got this hurried luke skywalker stuff.

xp ha, that is an amazing scene!

def a high point

xp goole which is of course what happened in real life!

I am disappointed that we didn't get to see the real exit for Stuhlbarg/Rothstein, he was another very fun character. I'm sure we would've gotten it if the show the show had gone on longer, since they were paving the way for this in season 4.

Since I didn't watch the show on the air, what was the cause behind the short final season and time jump? Budget issues, I'm assuming..

BTW, I watched Daredevil earlier this year so all the stuff with Owen had an extra layer of amusement

the appearance of joe kennedy seemed to promise that kind of storyline. oh well.

I spent the entire series pining for Jimmy Darmody

Yes, and despite his madness--at first presented like "You Can't Go Home Again---especially after you've been Over There," the things he experienced, incl. the killing he did in The Great War, but then flashbacks eventually reveal why he left college and went, etc---*despite* all that, whenever he and his wife and baby were at home, especially in their little cottage by the sea, so eerie and restful, I could see how they could tell themselves it was all gonna be alright...the eerie afterlife of Richard Harrow too, even more spooky with the glimpse of hope, of escape...
The historical Nucky did make it through the Depression---went to prison for a while, after a honeymoon---not too long a stretch, and I think he lived on into the 50s. Still mean to read the nonfiction Boardwalk Empire (author apparently not that thrilled with the series).

Lots of really good acting all the way through, despite some gratuitous blood-slogs (and career-slogs, like suit wars).

skipping Rothstein's demise def felt like a missed opportunity

the book is pretty trashy iirc

Since I didn't watch the show on the air, what was the cause behind the short final season and time jump? Budget issues, I'm assuming..

largely budget issues - shoe was never the phenomenon hbo needed/wanted it to be and was expensive to make (cf deadwood). winter and scorsese seemed ready to move on to their rock show.

season four felt like a total drag to me -- the big thematic movements of the earlier seasons had basically ben fulfilled and they really didn't know how to advance interesting new plotlines (season three was already sorta manufactured by an artificial conflict in that regard and trying to pull the same trick over and over would get old _fast_), so i was fine they tied it off when they did.