Boardwalk Empire

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by GloucesterChief

I liked how the scenes after the Jimmy, Richard, and Nucky show their characters.

Jimmy's last scene was him going over the wall in WWI. Jimmy never really left the war and the way it changed his personality.

Richard's last scene was him coming home unscarred. He found peace and left WWI behind him.

Nucky's last scene is his younger self finally catching a coin. It shows his character never really evolved from grasping for money.

Good points.

Most of the time, I just enjoyed the show (with the occasional horrified glance during a particularly brutal scene, like when Eli beat that guy down in his workshop). Realizing that Richard Harrow was, in fact, actually dead hit me very deeply and emotionally.

I also like how the whole cycle of terrible events that happened to characters we like all ties back to Nucky making a decision to kill his soul to win the commodore's trust and approval, which eventually kills his body, too.

Nucky gives Gilllian to the Commodore, who knocks her up. This damages Gillian irreparably.

Gillian eventually takes drunken advantage of Jimmy as an adult (probably after years of inappropriate behavior with him growing up). This damages Jimmy irreparably, leading him to go to war and come back even more of a shell.

Jimmy, because he's a shell, comes back and starts trying to find ways to "fill" or "satisfy" himself. But the one man who can pull him out of it - his true father figure, Nucky, is so pissed at the decision Jimmy made to join the army, he pushes him away. This leads to Jimmy betraying Nucky, winning, not knowing what to do from that point forward, and eventually dying.

And, finally, Jimmy's son Tommy - damaged by the death/disappearance of his father and mother, time spent under his grandmother's wing, witnessing multiple people gunned down in the brothel, the disappearance of his surrogate dad, Richard - empties the clip into Nucky.

Nice storytelling.

One final side note:
I have to wonder if Jimmy's famous line "I told you, you can't be half a gangster, Nuck..." was originally intended to be the final line of the series as he, in league with Luciano and Lansky, dealt with Nucky finally and personally. Rather than the other way around...

[lewdog]

I just did some light reading on Capone and he dealt with Syphilitic Dementia in his late 30's. I never knew you could get Dementia from Syphilis? In his early 40's he had the cognitive capacity of a 12 year old. Wow.

Interesting.

[jjjayb]

Wow. Just watched the last episode last night. I didn't realize it was the last one, so the ending was a bit of a shock. Great show.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by jjjayb

Wow. Just watched the last episode last night. I didn't realize it was the last one, so the ending was a bit of a shock. Great show.

They did a good job with following the history timeline But Nucky was not gunned down in real life. It's fiction, but still why kill him off?

This season paled be comparison to the other seasons. Season 1 was off the charts and it went downhill from there.