HBO's Boardwalk Empire

Very disappointed. Jimmy Darmody was the best thing about the show, and Nucky's not nearly as interesting without him around.

I'm wondering if Michael Pitt became too difficult to work with and/or expressed a desire to leave the show. To me, it really does not help the show's future or even advance the storyline to kill off that particular character.

 

Looks to me as if they are going to make massive cast changes next season.

Jimmy - gone

Commodore - gone

Angela - gone

Gillian - not much reason to hang around now that both Commodore and Jimmy are dead

Eli - apparently going to jail

Van Alden - apparently out of sight in Illinois, although this probably augurs a much larger role for Al Capone in next season's storylines


Richard will be an interesting character. With Jimmy dead you could see him simply disappearing. Or making a spectacular bid for revenge.


Thought the "Godfather" homage/ripoff tonight was a bit overdone.

 

Or, Gillian could get really pissed that Nucky offed her baby and evoke Starman justice...

 

That too; they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of discussing the Commodore's will if there wasn't a payoff.

Maybe she had something to do with it -- that was kind of a gratuitous "god forbid" when they discussed Jimmy's possible demise.

 

To me, Jimmy's killing takes this show to another level.

In the wire, Stringer Bell had done so much dirt in seasons 2 and 3 that his death was inevitable. If they hadn't killed him off, the show would've lost a bit of credibility. He had to go. It was that simple. You can't just keep a character around because he's the best on the show, or because, in the case of Stringer Bell, the women loved him.

In Boardwalk Empire, Jimmy did so much dirt and bungled so much, that this was a logical conclusion. It was almost impossible for Jimmy to go back to being Nucky's muscle. He had gone too far, albeit he was pushed hard by his mother, the other way to come back. It's ironic because Nucky always warned him about going to fast. It's ironic because the mastermind behind the entire coup, Jimmy's wretch of a mother, now gets off scott free. But, to me, this had to happen.

The wire survived the loss of Stringer Bell. Avon Barksdale for much of season 2. Omar. Prop Joe. Wallace. DeAngelo. Frank Sobotka. Bodie. All main characters. All big losses. All losses that people wondered how the show will go on. It was still the best show in TV history.

Boardwalk Empire is the same kind of thing. Al Capone will rise to power. Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky will rise to power. The show will go on. And it will thrive. I'm sure of it.


Michael Pitt, by the way, is a great actor

 

So, who gave more to the church yesterday, Margaret or Marion Barber?

 

The payoff was that Jimmy wanted to make sure his son would inherit everything if he died. He knew what was coming.

 

After the very powerful epi last week, I was disappointed in this week's finale.

Frankly, it had very little tension ... even with the shocking murder at the end (When Jimmy asked Nucky during their earlier chat, "why can I do for you?" and they cut to a close-up of Margaret immediately in the next scene, I thought for sure Jimmy was going to kill her. Wrong 'em boyo.)

Maybe I'm spoiled by Mayor Kane's betrayal of a family member in Boss -- that has some tremendous pathos going for it.

Boardwalk's finale seemed a bit rushed, as if everything needed to be tidied up rather quickly.

 

Yeah, they dispensed with the season-long Nucky-on-trial subplot in a matter of about half a show.

 

After watching it a second time with the benefit of knowing what's going happen, you can really tell Jimmy was preparing for the end.
I wonder what Nucky is going to do when he finds out his wife signed over the land to the church. Now that Jimmy and Angela are both gone, does the Richard character just go away? I don't like Van Alden, but I would have liked to see more than 45 seconds of him in the season finale hiding out in Illinois.

 

It was establishing that he's in Cicero, Ill., which just so happens to be where the Capone/Torrio headquarters were. Only a matter of time ...

 

But what did he tell the Norwegian/Swedish nanny? "Come on, we have to get married/pretend to be married, change our names and move to Chicago."