Ya, but Narcisse and he talked about a partnership. Did Narcisse go back on his word, or am I missing something?
The partnership was just a ruse for the girl's benefit. Chalky and Narcisse both knew full well that the only thing that Chalky he had to trade for getting her career back was his own life. They spoke in innuendo to spare her from having that weight on her conscience, but probably more importantly so she wouldn't try to talk Chalky out of it. Chalky's line at the end was just to remind Narcisse to honour his end of the agreement.
I like how they tied the killing of Maranzano into the fictional story with Nucky's brother.
This puts the story in early September 1931. Capone is arrested in October so he's done. The real life Nucky ends up controlling Atlantic City for a few more years but his power is eroded. I have no idea what they'll do in the show as that's pretty boring.
The possibility for a spin off is amazing. The Commission abolishing the Don of all Dons and the Joseph Bonnano taking over Maranzano's family. The Bonnano family is the family from the story of Donny Brasco. They are also closely aligned with the 6th family in Montreal. Battles between the crime bosses and Mayor Laguardia, Bugsy Siegel in Hollywood and Vegas, Cuba, the end of prohibition... So much material.
I would totally watch a Luciano/Lansky/Siegel TV show. Unfortunately they've already bypassed the most interesting part. Luciano is permanently off the American streets 5 years after this show ends so there's not much to do a spin off of. Unless they do the 7 year stretch that Boardwalk jumped over.
The most persistent Internet rumor all season, that most folks (myself included) dismissed as being just too damn obvious... turns out to be the easy "twist" ending they went with anyway.
Somewhere, Richard Harrow is figuratively rolling over in his grave.
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I don't get it - how could Tommy have such a hatred at a young age for Nucky that it would make him infiltrate his organization and then ultimately murder him?
Great series - glad it ended with Nucky dying but Tommy as the tool to do it was a cop out. It would have made more sense for Gillian to have break in the asylum and kill Nucky with a shiv or something.
I'm surprised they killed him off as the real Nucky Johnson spent some time in prison and died from old age. I suppose killing the main character off is the ultimate closure moment though, there's no coming back from that.
I don't get it - how could Tommy have such a hatred at a young age for Nucky that it would make him infiltrate his organization and then ultimately murder him?
After thinking about the Finale, I have to say it was pretty "meh"
The best part of this season was seeing Luciano and Capone, rise and fall, respectivly. My biggest gripe with the show is that the slow burn of so many episodes never really paid off. Rather, we got a tons of slow Character building, that kind of ended with a whimper.
Finally, the twist of having Tommy kill Nucky felt unearned. Everything that was done by Harrow to get Tommy away from his mother and raise him right, undone. Hardly a mention of the famiy that raised him, but rather a "I have no family"
Loved the show, but ultimately the real life figures were always more facinating and what made me keep watching.
I don't get it - how could Tommy have such a hatred at a young age for Nucky that it would make him infiltrate his organization and then ultimately murder him?
Great series - glad it ended with Nucky dying but Tommy as the tool to do it was a cop out. It would have made more sense for Gillian to have break in the asylum and kill Nucky with a shiv or something.
Do you recall exactly how you guys came to the decision in season 4 that this was how it would end?
Terence Winter: I don't precisely, but the clearer that the Gillian story became, and that Harrow's ending became, in terms of the legacy of sending Jimmy's son off to live with Julia on the farm, and Gillian's own tragic story — we knew it had to come back to that relationship. Tommy Darmody, growing up hearing stories about this guy Nucky and his father, and not really sure whether this guy Nucky was a good guy or a bad guy, and needing to see for himself seemed to us the most powerful version of it.
Do you recall exactly how you guys came to the decision in season 4 that this was how it would end?
Terence Winter: I don't precisely, but the clearer that the Gillian story became, and that Harrow's ending became, in terms of the legacy of sending Jimmy's son off to live with Julia on the farm, and Gillian's own tragic story — we knew it had to come back to that relationship. Tommy Darmody, growing up hearing stories about this guy Nucky and his father, and not really sure whether this guy Nucky was a good guy or a bad guy, and needing to see for himself seemed to us the most powerful version of it.
I get the supposed rationale, but to me it seems entirely implausible given the story they put on screen. Tommy was barely old enough to understand these things on the level that would poison him enough to track down and murder Nucky. He was out of Gillian's grasp fairly early, and she made the constant attempt to shelter him as much as possible from that world anyway.
Unless Julia continuously badmouthed a person and world she had no real indicative clue about then really this ending makes no sense. With what we saw on screen over the course of 5 seasons I'm just not buying that Tommy Darmody was broken and corrupted enough to murder Enoch Thompson.
I was also pretty disappointed that they deviated from the fictionalized version of the character. I think it would have been much more poignant to dramatize fact rather than cliche fiction. Granted, I didn't expect Nucky to be murdered...mostly because his real-life counterpart wasn't. I get that it wasn't meant to be the exact same character/person, but it followed history closely enough that to make that kind of deviation was jarring...and not in a good way.
Not a fan of the finale, no matter how hard I tried to be. They did a lot of really great things in that final season. The time shifts, the rounding out of backstories, the resolution of certain characters (in some cases this actually tied to history and furthered the story in creative ways), etc. The final few minutes were, cinematically, very well done, but the context of what was actually happening kind of took away from the emotion and meaning of it.
An A+ show with a B- ending.
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Outside of that last scene, it seemed like the finale wasn't trying to do anything big. It was just trying to give closure to as many storylines as it could, and for that, I'm grateful - we aren't left with a lot of loose ends or unanswered questions.
Boardwalk Empire is done. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and regret that we won't have another season to look forward to, but I'm not sitting here thinking, "Damn, I can't believe we didn't find out how X turned out." It was a show telling the story of Nucky Thompson, and I feel that, narratively and thematically, it came to a satisfying conclusion, tying his ultimate end to his very beginning.
The ending requires some pretty spectacular leaps in logic to get to the point where Tommy actually kills Nucky. It was very poorly set up, particularly since you could pretty much figure out right away that they didn't just throw in some random kid into the storyline, but they did nothing to actually explore the kid or give any background into how he got there. Literally he could have shown up in the finale and done it and it would have been the same. Poorly done IMO.
I'd also say it's really hard to give this show anything higher than a B+. Far too much wasted potential, show never seemed to have a clear vision outside season 1 and got a little too loose in the storytelling after Jimmy was killed. Lots of great characters, not enough great stories.
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