Boardwalk Empire: Eldorado

October 27, 2014 11:58 AM - Season 5, Episode 8

Series Finale.
posted by Catblack (9 comments total)

Margaret to Joe Kennedy, "Here’s an experiment for you. Think about the things you want in life, and then picture yourself in a dress."

Excuse me while I stand to applaud.

I didn't like the ending all that much. I thought it a little too tidily retributive.
posted by orange swan at 12:03 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I thought the whole thing (except maybe the scene with nucky and the tv, and Capone's scenes) was mediocre. Like a checklist, ticking off the closing plot lines. Did we really need more about nucky and his dad? Did anyone care? And though I called the Joe Harper twist, it wasn't very satisfying. So a kid if fourteen or fifteen ends up, what, in jail for shooting nucky? Good job destroying 3 generations of darmodies. Thought it cheapened Richards story to have tommy end up with no family, too.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:39 PM on October 27, 2014

I varied from thinking it was OK to quite liking it. The whole story of Nucky's life was really summed up by the Commodore, yeah? It was all about leaving your mark, and what you were willing to do to make that happen. And Nucky didn't leave anything of value, everything of his came to nothing and the world marched on, with Luciano and the rest of the new guard. And television.
posted by gaspode at 12:44 PM on October 27, 2014

I've been rewatching the season with my girlfriend, but I couldn't resist staying up late to watch the last episode. I thought the stuff with the TV was all a dream sequence, or a drowning death sequence, but I guess it wasn't. Lots of little details this season upon rewatch make it very enjoyable. Nucky gets a letter in the 3rd episode, for instance, but doesn't open it until the 7th. Things like that.

I will have to keep an eye out for the work the production team does, because for all the quibbles one could have with the show, the costumes and real or digital sets, were aces.
posted by Catblack at 1:35 PM on October 27, 2014

I didn't like the ending all that much. I thought it a little too tidily retributive.

That's the perfect phrase to explain why I felt the same way. I had seen the Joe Harper/Tommy Darmody theory a couple of episodes ago, and I didn't like it then.

I did come around on the flashbacks, though, and the casting of them was excellent. I found young Gillian's moment juxtaposed with Asylum Gillian very moving (and the styling to match the two characters was excellent), and she was a character I was kind of finished with at the end of last season. Making Nucky's life turn on the moment when he gave Gillian to the Commodore was much more effecting than I expected it to be, although they let it be the Commodore's idea rather than have Nucky offer her, which I was afraid he would do.

I enjoyed Boardwalk Empire for the most part, although I still think Margaret was misused and poorly conceived after a really promising start. It's like the writing staff backed away from something there and decided to write her as far more milquetoast.
posted by gladly at 1:36 PM on October 27, 2014

The casting on the flashbacks was truly excellent. I know we only got young adult Nucky for 4 episodes, but that actor, Marc Pickering (yeah, I had to look him up) absolutely nailed it. As did Nolan Lyons, who played lil' Nucky. It's amazing how much of season 5 hung on the strength of their performances.
posted by Catblack at 2:09 PM on October 27, 2014

Where did Tommy get the gun, for god's sake? He was in custody, if not in a cell: if he had it then, they would have taken it away and then given it to Nucky, not Tommy. Or maybe not, I guess: it was the hotel, not the cops.
posted by mwhybark at 10:43 AM on October 28, 2014

I guess that the finale really drove home for me my annoyance at how far from reality the show went. The real Nucky Johnson married a stripper, went into sales and lived happily ever after until the ripe old age of 85.
posted by octothorpe at 4:04 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, looking back, Boardwalk really did peak at the end of series 2. Three, while bonkers fun had a little too much fan service, 4 was oh okay and the last was let's get this over with. It was never the same after they got rid of Jimmy (and Lucy) and definitely once Margaret took a back seat.

I wasn't holding out much hope with the blatant clearing of the tables of the previous episodes. Its obvious that they had the idea for the ending and just then worked towards it, twisting the characters as they needed to.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:41 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]