"In the final end, he won the war, after losing every battle ..."
That certainly does not apply to Boardwalk Empire's main character, Nucky Thompson, who dies in the closing scene, but I rather think it applies to the show itself. In the final end, in the final assessment, for all its flaws, Boardwalk's final season, final episode, final scene have earnt it a place as a truly great TV show, rather than just a very good one.
I'm surprised. It begun to great fanfare, not to mention vast budget, with Terence Winter in charge and Scorsese on board, but the first season disappointed just a little. Not only did it take a fair while for the characters to bed in (including the fact that, for me, Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Kelly Mcdonald all took a while to convince as leads), but, in truth, not all that much seismic and thrilling happened and there were a few accusations of misogyny, or at least over-masculinity, flying around.
Still, if one looked on the bright side and believed in the show, one could take confidence from the relatively gentle pace of the first series. It's just possible they've got this all figured out ...
And now it's over, of course i'll never know if they had it all figured out or if they made it up as they went along, if the best of it came about by accident, but what's important is that as I watched that closing scene, I felt rewarded, I felt impressed, I felt like I'd been told the full story, I felt like the show had given me everything important it possibly could have done. Boardwalk Empire wasn't just a flashy quasi-historical tale of gangsters and guns, it was the immaculately paced tragedy of Nucky Thompson.
When it was announced, shortly after the end of Season 4, that Season 5 would be the last, I was surprised. Though I've tried, I haven't been able to find out if closure was prematurely forced on the showrunners. I'd felt at that stage that Boardwalk could run and run. Why, we'd only got from 1921 to 1924 after 4 seasons. Prohibition didn't end till 1933. Nucky Johnson (on whom Thompson was, it turns out very loosely, based) didn't die till 1968. How are they going to tie this up?
Then, when Season 5 began with the jump 7 years forward to 1931, it seemed obvious. Building to the end of Prohibition, the downfall of Capone and, most crucially, when the big boys made their play and took over, the guys that dominated American crime for a long, long time - Luciano and Lansky. Real people, real events. Whatever happened in Boardwalk Empire, these guys had to emerge the winners.
The show's treatment of its most famous characters - besides the likes of Warren Harding, Eddie Cantor, Jack Dempsey and Joe Fitzgerald making occasional appearances - Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Ben "Bugsy" Siegel and indeed Al Capone, cemented its mastery for me.
Particularly the first two - from the start, Luciano, as played by Vincent Piazza, was a little unconvincing. Really, this guy? He seemed like a little bit of a dumb small-time hood. His authority and poise grew, but slowly. So, when he made his devastating play in Season 5, Nucky was as surprised as the viewer. "I underestimated you, Charlie ..." as we all had, and suddenly, finally, Luciano looked like a dark overlord, an embodiment of evil.
Lansky had been even more innocuous and inconspicuous, (superbly played by Anatol Yusef) small, composed, watchful, articulate, in just one small scene had he kicked the crap out of someone who slighted him, just to show what must have been there. Apart from that, he was background boy, businessman. Again, the show got it just right. Nucky referred to Luciano as "his boss". Mistake. Lansky's full power is a bit shrouded in mystery - was he really one of the most powerful men in America, or was he more of an accountant, a sideman? We'll probably never know. But we know he lived till the 1980s, so he must have been pretty smart to manage that.
In both cases, Nucky got them wrong, underestimated them. He was a smart guy, but he made some terrible decisions when trying to thwart the tide of history and they contributed to his downfall.
But, as that final season so expertly unravelled, his real downfall lay in one moment, 30 years earlier, one sin which he never recovered from, one decision where ambition turned to evil and crushed decency. He gave up the teenage Gillian Darmody to the horrific Commodore and got what he deserved for it, killed by her teenage grandson, to whom he hadn't been able to show enough kindness to redeem himself.
So, in the end, Nucky's downfall was wrapped up with three generations of Darmody (fictional characters) more so than Arnold Rothstein, Johnny Torrio, Esther Randolph, Joe Masseria, Nelson Van Alden, Valentin Narcisse, Gyp Rossetti, Al Capone, Harry Daugherty, J Edgar Hoover, George Remus, Waxey Gordon, even than Luciano, Lansky and Siegel, he'd managed to escape from all those enemies with his life still intact and a couple of million in the bank. It was his terrible betrayal of a girl who trusted him as a young man who might still have been good and the course that took him down that destroyed him.
But, still, what a list of enemies! After its steady start, what an extraordinary gallery of memorable characters and memorable performances there were in Boardwalk Empire. What an incredible thing that the one character of unimpeachable moral goodness, the one that everyone was rooting for, whose trials tore at the heartstrings more than any other, was a man who'd killed over 200 people in cold blood. Richard Harrow was just one of many brilliant characters whose impact grew and grew. Van Alden, of course, Chalky White, Gillian, Rothstein, Narcisse, Sally Wheet, Eddie Kessler, Mickey Doyle, the list goes on. And then there was Gyp Rossetti.
Perhaps he was a bit too much, perhaps the show loved him so much that he rather dominated Season 3. But has there ever been a more frightening, nightmarish, memorable villain? I dreaded every time he appeared on screen. Narcisse, a more calculated, chilling evil had almost the same effect on Season 4. His comeuppance in the very last episode seemed well deserved!
Because, of course, the fictional characters, well, most of them, had to die to clear the way for the cold hard history of organised crime in America. From Jimmy Darmody and the despicable Kaestner to Owen Sleater to Eddie Kessler to Richard Harrow, then on to Season 5, in quick order, Sally, Van Alden, Chalky and finally Nucky himself. Somehow or other Eli's still alive, Gillian (but what kind of life?) and Margaret, shrewd and independent, in the best shape of all of them.
Boardwalk Empire managed to tie up all its loose ends, to give the impression that every scene, every moment had been meticulously planned all along, however untrue that may be.
Finally, a word on Steve Buscemi, who took a while to convince me as a ruthless gangster, but grew, showed more layers to the character, every episode of every season. Perhaps the best thing about the show was how, throughout the early seasons, he allowed other characters to dominate scenes around him, but then, in the end, was able to seize his moment and make Boardwalk Empire his story all along.
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