Nearly a decade ago, HBO’sBoardwalk Empire, an epic crime tale about Prohibition-era gangsters in Atlantic City,ended abruptly with an abbreviated fifth season. The network decided that the show’s good-but-not-great ratings couldn’t justify its budget, so the showrunners were forced to skip ahead seven years between the events of Seasons 4 and 5 in an effort to rush to the story’s conclusion. This doomed the otherwise masterful series to a predictable and deeply unsatisfying finale. What makes this finale so remarkable is how strongly it contrasts in quality with the rest of the show, which was filled with insightful writing, gorgeous costumes, stirring performances, and heart-pounding action sequences. As we revisit Season 5 ofBoardwalk Empire, we’ll see why the series deserves the both honorable and dishonorable distinction of being the best TV show with the worst conclusion.
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The Final Season of ‘Boardwalk Empire’ Has a Massive Timejump
It makes sense that a story about an Atlantic City-based bootlegger would have a conclusion that coincides with the repeal of Prohibition. The simple but devastating act of making alcohol illegal ignited an entire industry of black market criminality that gave rise to some of America’s most notorious gangsters. The unfortunate reality withBoardwalk Empireis that a fascinating chapter of American history, namely the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression, is simply skipped over by the series in the interest of time. The show also blows past the death of one of its most compelling supporting characters, Arnold Rothstein (played by the brilliantMichael Stuhlbarg).
While there are some significant gaps between each season, a gap of seven years means we’re now looking at a show that feels almost entirely different from where we started in Season 1, or even where we left off in Season 4. Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) is now operating out of Cuba instead of Atlantic City. The dangerous duo of Meyer Lansky (Anatol Yusef) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) are on separate paths, after four seasons of being almost inseparable. Much has also changed with Al Capone (Stephen Graham), who has transformed from an up-and-comer to a full-fledged celebrity gangster akin toRobert DeNiro’s portrayal inThe Untouchables. Chalky White (Michael K. Williams) becomes an escaped convict and Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol) is in prison.
The huge gap in time means that we as an audience now struggle to recognize and understand characters that we once knew intimately. Given that so much happens in each season, from deaths to shifting alliances to evolving business schemes to the introduction of new characters, a gap of seven years makes it feel like we’ve lost almost all connection with the show’s characters, save for Nucky. This makes much of the show’s precise and purposeful writing now feel irrelevant.
How Does ‘Boardwalk Empire’s Ending Measure Up to Other Prestige TV Dramas?
In some ways, one can’t help but considerBoardwalk Empireto be a follow-up of sorts toThe Sopranos. Show creatorTerence Winterwas a writer onThe Sopranosfor most of the series’ run.Boardwalkpremiered three years afterSopranoswent off the air. And both shows are, of course, about New Jersey gangsters. The finale ofThe Sopranosis easily one of the most hotly debated in TV history, and its refusal to explicitly show the literal death of Tony Soprano (if he did indeed die) was met with some frustration. Thus, it’s hard not to see the consequences of that frustrationin the end ofBoardwalk Empire, which gives us an unambiguous death scene for Nucky, who is killed by the son of Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt). The reveal that Jimmy’s son killed Nucky is hardly a surprising one, although it may not be intended to shock us. What’s more apparent is that Nucky’s death feels deeply unsatisfying. It seems thatBoardwalk Empirelearned the wrong lesson from the end ofThe Sopranos. In seeking to deliver a crystal-clear resolution, the show ends up giving us an ending that feels as cold and lifeless as Nucky’s dead body.
It’s not exactly fair toBoardwalkthat the show draws some inevitable comparisons toThe Sopranos, which is arguably the greatest TV drama ever made. But the disappointment withBoardwalk’s final season has little to do with whether or not it measures up to a classic. It makes perfect sense that the series would end along with Prohibition, but it makes no sense at all to leap ahead seven years in order to achieve that goal. Clearly, the showrunners ran out of time and weren’t even afforded the benefit of a full season (there were eight episodes in Season 5 instead of the customary 12). Viewership alsodeclined to an all-time low, presumably because viewers realized that a massive time jump made previous plotlines and characters feel borderline irrelevant.
Some might argue that the series was already running out of steam prior to Season 5. But it’s hard to look at the introductions ofcompelling characters like Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale)or Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright) and declare that the show had no interesting ideas left. Unlike, say,Game of Thrones, there weren’t too many cracks showing inBoardwalkin the lead-up to its final season. Instead, the creative collapse of the series was entirely the result of a rushed ending. While HBO surely had reasonable budgetary considerations in mind when they pulled the plug, and while perhaps we should appreciate that the network gaveBoardwalkthe courtesy of one more season, it’s nonetheless impossible to ignore the dramatic decline in quality in Season 5.
The overwhelming feeling with Season 5 is less that it’s bad television and more a sense of “who cares?” The characters we’ve come to know so well are pale shadows of their former selves. We are not invested in their current states because we lack the context of how they arrived there. The end of Prohibition means Nucky is rendered a dinosaur and the audience is forced to plod along with him to a predictable death. His murderer’s identity is so obvious and on the nose that it inspires an emotionless response. And because the show is fixated on Nucky (reasonably so, given the lack of time), supporting characters we spent a lot of time with in previous seasons are just sort of left to rot.
All that said,Boardwalk Empireis still a superb series overall.The Officealso had a pointless final season, but that doesn’t prevent its fansfrom endlessly rewatching it. As lackluster as the final season ofBoardwalkmight be, that’s how spellbinding the first four seasons are. There isn’t a single flawed performance in the entire cast. The fictional characters are as equally compelling as the real-life notorious gangsters. The costume and production design are both immaculate. The writing always seems to be telling us something about human psychology, crime, and American history without ever feeling like a lecture. The direction, especially in theMartin Scorsese-helmed pilot episode, is both appropriately stylized and restrained. Perhaps best of all,Boardwalkgives usthe show-stopping Steve Buscemi lead performancethat the world always needed.
