‘Boardwalk Empire’ Recap: Season 5, Episode 1
What will the “Boardwalk Empire’’ legacy be? It’s a question to think about as the fifth (and final) season premieres. Is it going to be remembered at all when this Golden Age of TV dramas is over?
After its lush and entertaining rookie season, with the backing of supernova talents like Martin Scorsese and Terrance Winter, you could certainly have envisioned the show climbing to that “Mad Men’’-“Breaking Bad’’-“Friday Night Lights’’ tier.
Sadly, it never really happened. The show meandered into a slump somewhere around the late second-early third season and lost a great chunk of its critical and commercial momentum; meanwhile, “Game of Thrones’’ stole its thunder as HBO’s flagship program and “The Walking Dead’’ became the biggest show on television.
Zombies and dragons triumphed over bootleggers and feds.
That doesn’t mean the show’s entirely without its merits. Boardwalk Empire’s become entertaining again by embracing a pulpier side of storytelling and stocking its roster with a seemingly endless array of underappreciated acting talent — Jeffrey Wright, Bobby Cannavale, Julianne Nicholson, James Cromwell and the HBO alumni team (Domenick Lombardozzi from “The Wire’’ and Dominic Chianese from “The Sopranos,’’ for example).
That, and it could be the best-looking program in the history of American television — it’s never lost that Gatsby-ish eye for golden era Atlantic City spectacle (as someone who lived in Jersey for almost a decade, I still can’t believe that’s how it was). The Gatsby era is out for the final season, though, and the Joad era is in.
We’ve got one of the rarest — and trickiest — things in modern drama in episode one: the TIME JUMP, to seven years after the end of season 4. The glitz and glamour of the Roaring Twenties are gone, replaced by the sparseness and depression of … well, the Great Depression. It’s a big change.
Fingers crossed the show’s up for it.
This can either give a series an intriguing twist (the revamped “Battlestar Galactica’s’’ third-season jump comes to mind) or, when handled awkwardly, can just be a distraction (the strange way they handled things in HBO’s bloody “Rome’’ series, for example).
In the premier episode, most of the country is out of work, but Nucky seems to be doing just fine — business-wise, at least.
Prohibition’s on the verge of extinction and Nucky’s looking to Cuba to establish his newest, legitimate empire, Corleone family-style. He’s still got a line to Cuba with Sally Wheet (Patricia Arquette, having a nice little career resurgence these days — hopefully this prompts even more people to see “Boyhood’’).
He’s also got a new potential partner, an influential mid-forties businessman from Boston with a broad accent who hates the Brahmin families, has a boatload of kids and spouts off phrases like, “One generation, that’s all it takes in this country.’’ Guessed who it is yet?
The addition of the Joseph Kennedy character gives a nice little jolt to the show — Matt Letscher is excellent as the patriarch — and it allows for the show to explore what an emotional wreck Nucky is. Those years of estrangement from Margaret and the rest of his extended family have taken its toll.
Kennedy takes joy in pressing just the right buttons as the two dance around a deal. He refuses to drink around the ever-more-addled Nucky (forcing the business-minded Nucky to drink — gasp — seltzer) and sniffs out the emotional void in Nucky’s life in a fabulous scene in Thompson’s office.
One quick grin and a booze pour later, and we’re seeing the Kennedy family we’re used too — Joe books it to hook up with a chorus girl. We better see more of Joe Kennedy. Jack, Bobby … they get all the movies. About time we saw Joe being profiled.
Elsewhere, the other empires are shifting. Luciano and Meyer Lansky are now under a new boss, Salvatore Maranzano, who’s got his eye on Narcisse’s Harlem territory. A meeting between the three doesn’t go too well at all, and there’s a first strike launched on Narcisse — two hitmen show up and murder an entire stable of hookers (and the pimp, too) at a bordello.
Looks like we’re in for some all-out “Godfather’’-style mob wars this year.
Speaking of New York City, Margaret’s been surviving for those seven years on an account from the scam she ran with the now-dead Arnold Rothstein. Now, the jig is up — Mrs. Rothstein is squeezing her for the dollars. What rich person can she turn too? Let’s guess…
Chalky White (who’s aged the most out of the cast, it looks like) is out on the lam with a fellow prisoner, a real live-wire act. He brings Chalky to a house that he thinks contains a safe, setting up a “Desperate Hours’’-like situation with the mother and daughter who reside there.
The daughter appeals to Chalky’s humanity by referencing his own daughter, the one tragically killed in front of him at the end of last season. It works.
Eventually. Chalky ends up claw-hammering the man to death before he can strangle the young girl. Like Darth Vader, there might still be some good in him. Barely.
The whole episode was intercut with brief glimpses of a young Nucky, just under the influence of The Commodore, an all-around errand boy at an Atlantic City hotel in the late 1800s.
He delivers flowers on a daily basis to a young showgirl from a suitor; they meet a tragic end, of course, his first introduction to the violence of this world. Young Nucky also pines for a little girl who visits the beach each summer (his first heartbreak) and wakes up from an alcoholic nap with her name on his lips.
That little girl isn’t there when he opens his eyes, but Margaret is. An unexpected reunion. She’s there for the dough, of course, but will a revitalized relationship come along with it?
Other thoughts, as I listen to the episode on repeat:
• Truly spectacular set design work for the late-1800s Atlantic City beach scenes. Hard to believe people actually wore that stuff out to go swimming, isn’t it?
• That poor actor who had to play the self-pleasuring Ford auctioneer.
• No sign of Michael Shannon’s Nelson Van Arden or Shea Whigham’s Eli Thompson, at least not yet. Presumably, they’re still back out in Chicago. I’d expect to see them soon.
• Looking at the cast list this season, I see HBO’s dug into their well again. Jim True-Frost, best known as the investigator-turned-teacher from “The Wire,’’ is joining the cast as Eliot Ness, presumably a more accurate portrait than Costner’s in The Untouchables. The real Eliot Ness, FYI, was kind of a mess in real life.
• Only eight episodes to this season, so I’m looking forward to writing these for you for the next two months. One question — anyone else find that they really enjoy pairing hard alcohol with these episodes? I think it adds a touch of class.
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