Boardwalk Empire

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Episode seven; I was wrong about this show. The sniper episode is quite excellent and moving for anyone who lost family in the Great War.  An unconscionable waste.

What I love about the Jimmy-Richard dynamic is the fact that they are essentially two sides of the same coin.
Jimmy can hide his scars rather easily, and apart from his limp, there is little to suggest the horrors he went through.
But then you realize that the way Richards looks like on the outside is also the way Jimmy looks like on the inside.
Hence why his wife is so terrified of the man she once loved.

Very true. I've been disappointed by the centenary coverage of the beginning of the Great War as so little of it has examined how this cataclysmic event shaped the rest of the 20th century right through to today.

I see 1914-18 as a madness that we never recovered from.

http://grantland.com/features/world-war-one-soccer-game/

I think this paragraph from the piece I linked to above sums up the utter annihilation of human life rather well:

Quote :

Fighting on the scale of the Great War is essentially incomprehensible, like the atom or the spaces between stars. Its extremity defeats the imagination. You can say “16 million dead,” but what’s 16 million? You can picture the lunar hell between the trenches, the broken trees and craters; you can try to fathom the misery of life in the armies, where rats outnumbered men. But these are conventional images. It may be that all you can do is to sift through fragments, to search for illumination in unexpected places. Sixty thousand men vaporized in an afternoon is inconceivable, but you can find a statistic that makes you catch your breath. This one is eloquent: In August 1914, a British recruit had to stand 5-foot-8 to be accepted into the army. In October, the limit was lowered to 5-foot-5. By November, it was set at 5-foot-3.

Thanks for the links, Sabs. A thoughtful well-written piece. Some good writing in Grantland.

Finished S1. Watching the baptism scene between Van Alden and Sebso I suddenly realised I'd already seen it whilst waiting for a flight back in 2011. Strange what the mind brings back.

Bit disappointed that the relationship between Jimmy and Richards didn't develop, but I'm sufficiently interested in those characters to get season 2. I suppose I better stay out of this thread for a while.

I'm only part way through the final series but I agree that it feels rather listless, though confusingly it also feels somewhat rushed and contrived towards producing an ending.

I agree the show is a missed opportunity of sorts, though I suspect the creators probably feel the same way. My recollection is Michael Pitt's drug problems forced them to accelerate a lot of plot into the second season and narrowed the focus to the gangster drama, when I believe the intention had been to explore more of that early 20s world. I remember an interview with Winter where he discussed the plans they had had for Jimmy's wife as an agent to explore the 1920s art scene in New York.

After series 1 it always felt like the show was afraid to stray too far away from the crime angle. There were a lot of occasions where it seemed to dip their toes in the water only to go back running ashore. Part of why I found season 4 refreshing was the focus on African-Americans. It was at least something different.

Still some great scenes though. The scene with Eli and Mueller on the lift to Capone's suite was bril.

I don't understand why they didn't still use the Angela in NYC idea.
Even if they still killed Jimmy.

I finished the finale. Series finale's are always polarising but I really enjoyed it and for me it recast the way I view the series. The Grecian flourish while somewhat contrived (but not absurdly so) added a thematic cohesiveness I thought the show had lacked (it's been rightly accused of lacking focus). While I question if they started the show back with Scorsese intending it to focus around the deal a man makes with the devil in order to escape the misery of his existence, only to doom three generations of a family to the same misery he didn't want for himself, and bring about the means of his own downfall in the process, I think it worked.

After all, how much time did the show devote to notions of family and ambition over the years? 

I've never rewatched this show but I just might now.

I thought the last season was disappointing, but there are others who take a more kind reading of what we got, and most of them seem to focus on the same things you mentioned.

My biggest gripe is that we didn't learn anything new about Nucky or any of the other characters by the attention to his early years.

We already knew his father was abusive, that he had delivered Gillian into the Commodore's claws when she was a mere child and that his subsequent feelings of guilt over this had caused him to become a surrogate father to Jimmy.

I also thought that the nature of his death was rather contrived. I suspect that the only reason they made the large time jump (getting rid of a great character like Arnold Rothstein in the process) was to age the kid up enough to make it believable that he would seek out Nucky and get his revenge.

The child actors were pretty good though.

Especially young Gillian, she must have worked very hard with a speech/accent coach to sound so much like a young version of Gretchen Mol.

The chap who played 20-something Nucky was so good you'd think he was Steve Buscemi's long-lost love child.

CJB wrote:

The chap who played 20-something Nucky was so good you'd think he was Steve Buscemi's long-lost love child.

True, he got the facial ticks just right, as well as the voice. The fake teeth they put on him were a bit distracting though.

Salomé wrote:

I thought the last season was disappointing, but there are others who take a more kind reading of what we got, and most of them seem to focus on the same things you mentioned.

My biggest gripe is that we didn't learn anything new about Nucky or any of the other characters by the attention to his early years.

We already knew his father was abusive, that he had delivered Gillian into the Commodore's claws when she was a mere child and that his subsequent feelings of guilt over this had caused him to become a surrogate father to Jimmy.

I also thought that the nature of his death was rather contrived. I suspect that the only reason they made the large time jump (getting rid of a great character like Arnold Rothstein in the process) was to age the kid up enough to make it believable that he would seek out Nucky and get his revenge.

It's a valid point, though I tend to agree with Winter that there's a big difference between being told that Nucky brought Gillian to the Commodore and seeing it dramatized. Previously we knew that Nucky was a pimp to the Commodore, that he brought Gillian to her, and that Nucky/Commodore subsequently looked after Gillian. But we didn't know that Gillian was the first he brought to him, we didn't know that Nucky was already aware of the Commodore's predilections, that his predecessor/mentor had quit over a refusal to procure young girls for him, and that he did so purely to advance himself and at a betrayal of both his wife and a pre-existing relationship/duty to Gillian. I thought the flashbacks fleshed it out really well.

I agree the ending was contrived but I feel the show has been far stronger on plotting than other dramas of its generation, and again, I personally felt the impact of the twist warranted the stretch. I felt the show had earned it. There was nothing that the show really contradicted by going the route it did. The development was perhaps somewhat less likely, but I feel therin lies its genius. A twist is supposed to be unexpected. Obviously your mileage will vary as to whether the twist stretched creduilty to such an extent it diminished the moment. I feel it didn't.

From what I've heard the time skip was chosen for the following two reasons: Lucky establishing the Commission, Capone's charging of tax fraud, and the beginning of the end of prohibition. Capone and Lucky had become major supporting characters and it allowed closure to those stories. The show began with the birth of organised crime in the bootlegger, and ended with the professionalization/modernization of organised crime. It began with prohibition, it ended with (the beginning of) its end.

Also a reliable source indicated that earlier plans were for Gillian to kill Nucky and then herself, this was after the time jump was announced and earlier in the season's production. So while that guy may have lied to keep the suspense/mystery, it suggests the time skip didn't have to do with who pulled the final trigger. 

I really, really hope Ambler isn't reading this thread still 

The Buscemi actor was terrific.

And how good was that Norah Jones song over the end credits?

Finished S2. Yeah, I'm somewhat behind ...

Enjoyed the operatic tone but with so many loose ends and storylines wrapped up I'm not sure I feel the need to continue.

It falls apart a bit after the second season, its a good spot to end.

From season three onward the great highlight is really Terry Winter's dialogue and the production values.

For me, it really fell apart when they turned Richard, the embodiment of the Lost Generation, into John Rambo (you'll know the episode I am referring to, Vesper). Though the decline had already set in long before that. I agree that the end of season two is a good place to stop watching.

Been a few years, but the highlight of the show for me was the FBI (?) agent going to work as a flogger of household appliances and ironing his colleague in the face.

CJB wrote:

Been a few years, but the highlight of the show for me was the FBI (?) agent going to work as a flogger of household appliances and ironing his colleague in the face.

That was already when the show was past its peak, but I agree that the Van Alden story-lines were always amusing, if nothing else.

His wife was hilarious too. "Hus-band".