End of the “Empire”

"Boardwalk Empire" lays its final plank Sunday with the legacies of Nucky Thompson – and the show – on the line.

Three episodes into this fifth and final season of “Boardwalk Empire,” the very real Joseph Kennedy intersperses a business conversation with the semi-fictional Atlantic City bootlegging boss Nucky Thompson with chatter about his “boys.” When Kennedy finally says, “Tell me what you want,” it’s unclear whether he’s talking about money or family – or both.

Thompson becomes uncharacteristically agitated and informs Kennedy, whom he wooed as a post-Prohibition rum-running partner, that he doesn’t want to do business with him. Then he becomes equally uncharacteristically introspective and vulnerable, telling the patriarch of America’s Royal Family-to-be: “I want to leave something behind.”

The exchange marked the defining moment of the season and perhaps of the series, as Nucky (Steve Buscemi), who is basically alone, struggles to save an empire wrought in blood and booze, along with what’s left of his soul. "Boardwalk Empire" lays its final plank Sunday with the legacies of Nucky Thompson – and the great HBO show – on the line.

While earning some critical acclaim, “Boardwalk Empire” never attracted the audience, the Emmys or pop cultural hoopla of contemporaries like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” That’s a shame – the show, stretching from the end of World War I to the impending end of Prohibition, stands as one of the best TV crime drama since HBO’s “The Sopranos,” which previously employed the talents of “Boardwalk” creator Terence Winter.

Like the similarly violent “Sopranos,” Winter’s “Boardwalk” ultimately is about family.

That’s never been as clear as in this compelling final season in which the narrative of Nucky’s downfall is intermingled with scenes of his rise, beginning from his hardscrabble boyhood to his life as a corrupt young sheriff of turn-of-the-(last) century Atlantic City. The peek into Nucky’s past has proved a revelation.

While many believe “Mad Men” is the dual story of Don Draper and his protégé Peggy Olson (it’s not quite that simple), “Boardwalk Empire” is emerging as the tale of the intertwined fates of Nucky and Gillian, the waif he ultimately pimped out to the Commodore, his mentor and predecessor as king of Atlantic City. The most recent episode found Nucky haunted by Gillian’s letters, sent from a brutal mental institution, begging him to save her from a hell he partially created.

Much happened in between, of course, as the show wove in real-life figures like Kennedy and gangsters Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano, who literally brought Nucky to his knees in this past Sunday’s installment. Nucky agreed to give up his empire to spare the life of his nephew, who beat his criminal genes and a past scandal to become an assistant U.S. attorney.

Nucky hasn’t always been that devoted a family man. At the end of Season 2, he fatally shot Jimmy Darmody, his surrogate son and the tragic spawn of a teenage Gillian and the Commodore. Nucky married the young Irish widow of a man he ordered killed, and tried to be a father to her children, until the couple was torn apart by her wandering heart and his unforgiving heart.

He stands in constant danger of being betrayed by his hotheaded brother, Eli, who perhaps deserves the forgiveness he’s been extended, as evidenced by this season’s flashbacks of their wretched childhood. We’ve also seen in flashbacks Nucky’s relationship with a new character – his loving, pregnant young first wife, whose fate we’ll presumably learn Sunday.

The family theme has played out with other of the rich characters wrought by the show’s writers: Mobster Chalky White lost his daughter to a hit gone wrong, the bloody product of his affair with a woman named Daughter – whom, he learned just before being rubbed out himself, bore him a daughter.

Then there’s Nelson Van Alden, the self-flagellating G-man whose downfall into a life of crime and a death at the hands of Capone’s goons began with his and his holly roller wife’s inability to conceive. Richard Harrow, the sniper/hitman who lost half his face in World War I, saw himself in his dying breath as unscarred and happy with the family he patched together with Gillian’s grandson, whom he saved from a brothel bloodbath.

Nucky is seeking redemption, as seen in both big strokes – giving up all to save his nephew – and in ways more subtle. He sent away Joe Harper, the young mob gopher who reminds him of his ambitious, younger self – telling him to go “sweep the sand.” That’s Sisyphean task the Commodore would give Nucky as a boy. Nucky is finally seeing the folly of trying to control every grain of beachfront Atlantic City.

Some might initially have thought it folly to cast Buscemi, a strong character actor, in the leading man role as Nucky. But he quickly emerged as the brilliant, battered heart of the show. Buscemi leads a standout band of performers that includes Gretchen Mol as Gillian, a mistress of illusion and self-delusion who just might be the program’s most complex character.

History tells us what ultimately happened to Kennedy, Capone and the other real life folks depicted in the show. We’ll learn the outcome of Nucky’s and Gillian’s story Sunday, though it might take more time for “Boardwalk Empire” to reach its rightful place in TV history as it leaves behind a legacy of outstanding drama. 

Jere Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multimedia NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of "Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family." Follow him on Twitter.

Copyright FREEL - NBC Local Media
Contact Us