It was a predictable finale, yes, but a rather poetic one too. Nucky Thompson was killed in the same spot where, in , as an ambitious young sheriff, he made the decision to pimp out an innocent year-old girl in exchange for job security.
His assassin? Tommy, who obviously picked up some gun-wielding skills from his adoptive father, closed out the series with the honor of exacting vengeance upon the man who single-handedly destroyed the lives of three Darmody generations. This is underscored by the game-changing moment in between the newly minted sheriff Nucky and Gillian, which is intercut between the boardwalk scenes. We last see her in an empty El Dorado apartment, sharing a tender dance with her estranged husband.
But it was nice to see Stephen Graham—who has turned in a top-notch performance all five seasons as the legendary gangster—give Capone one last hurrah as he soberly confides in his deaf teenage son and puts on one final show for the reporters in his white suit just before turning himself in on tax-evasion charges. Attorney, does not make an appearance this episode.
Unable to fully repent for giving the Commodore the green light to rape her at 13, Nucky pays Gillian a visit where he does what he does best—throws money at the situation. He arranges for her to have a private room and informs her that once she gets herself out of the nuthouse, there will be money in a trust waiting for her. Cotton sought to cure insanity. That's what the show is playing with.
It skipped over several things, actually, but let's boil it down to the three most important ones. That's hard to say. Certainly the eight-episode order for the final season, along with the fact that previous seasons' ratings have steadily declined, suggests that HBO had plenty of reason to pull the plug and did so at the first opportunity.
Even with a reduced budget, this is still a very expensive show. But in that Hitfix interview, Winter argues that the show is Nucky Thompson's story, and Nucky Thompson's story has almost run out. He's more or less right about that, too. One of the things that made season four so great was that it largely left Nucky behind, turning him into a supporting character on his own show. He took on a role similar to that of Rothstein or Al Capone in previous seasons: a major underworld heavyweight who could hurt or help the other characters as he decided.
Instead, season four focused on the struggle between Chalky White Michael Kenneth Williams and Valentin Narcisse Jeffrey Wright , which was all the more remarkable for being about very different, conflicting attempts at self-definition by two black men.
But season five returns its focus to Nucky in a big way, as you can tell from all of the flashbacks to his childhood scattered throughout the premiere. Steve Buscemi, who plays Nucky, is a great actor, and there have been hints of something more to the character over the years, but it's also not hard to feel slightly disappointed by this shift in focus.
Nucky was never as interesting as his supporting cast, even when the show was forthrightly focused on him. Assuming Winter really did have the idea to wrap up the show and he might be playing nice because he wants HBO to pick up his next show , it's disappointing he didn't realize how much mileage there might have been from Nucky shifting to the sidelines for a few more seasons, before finally returning to centerstage when the show was ready to end.
Not really, no. There are occasional hints of the chaos sweeping American society at this point — as when Margaret's boss commits suicide in front of his employees or when Chalky breaks free from a prison chain gang — but for the most part, the characters are insulated from economic disaster. Hell, Nucky spends the bulk of the episode living it up in Havana yet another location on the show's long list of them before someone makes an attempt on his life.
On the other hand, this premiere focuses so much on Nucky that it's hard to tell just how the Depression will affect the show as a whole. As the scope of the series gradually broadens, perhaps we'll get a stronger sense of just how the Depression has hurt even the show's richest characters, at least a little bit. Boardwalk Empire always starts slowly, with a bunch of stories that seem to have nothing to do with each other, then slowly begins to weave them all together, often in thrilling fashion.
This premiere was one of the show's weaker ones, and it didn't do much to justify the time jump nor the frequent jumps back to Nucky's childhood , but it was still beautifully made television, and it suggested several intriguing places for the show to go in the seven episodes left to it. That's more than enough for me, at least for right now. It was meant to be the network's next Sopranos , and instead, Game of Thrones came in and stole all of its thunder.
Then, it steadily lost ratings power from season to season, and the launch of its final season almost feels like an afterthought.
Episode guide. Play trailer Crime Drama History. Creator Terence Winter. Top credits Creator Terence Winter. See more at IMDbPro.
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