"But he grew old —
This knight so bold —
And o’er his heart a shadow —
Fell as he found
No spot on the ground
That looked like Eldorado."
Edgar Allen Poe, "Eldorado."
- Nucky is taking a swim at the beach was quite a poignant image. The symbolism is obvious. Nucky is man who cannot wash away his sins, no matter how far out he swims.
This scene is further elaborated upon when Nucky visits Eli one last time. He tells his brother about his swim. He had not gotten up that early for a swim in forty-five years. It was the furthest Nucky had ever gone, past the surf. "Keep going." I thought. "Keep going until you can't turn back."
"Once you're that far, there's no choice."
The dialogue in this final episode was instrumental in illustrating the end of this series. It was masterfully written. The show runners had a very clear vision for this finale, the only problem was the middle. If you don't believe me, go back and re-watch this season with the closed caption on.
When Eli asked Nucky why he was always the wise one, Nucky's answer is perfect. He simply says, "because you needed me to be." Eli is the little brother, who still asks his elder brother for advice. It's not that he cannot think for himself, it's that he does not try - which is evident with his hesitation to knock on his wife's door.
"She won't answer. She won't. Eli says.
Nucky tells him that he will regret not trying.
The Thompson brothers end on a good note. Nucky gives Eli a bag full of money and some shaving equipment. Time to get busy living Eli - is what Nucky is saying. It was a good and consistent call by Nucky to also point out that this is the last time they will see each other. I say consistent for two reasons; One: all of the history with these two is beyond tumultuous.
Two: this is the series finale - this element added more of a sense of finality to the story. Remember, these characters do not know that this is the end. We, the audience watch this unfold, knowing that the minutes are slipping away on their lives.
Nucky's final net worth is north of $2, 364, 120
While Margaret's is a more modest $29, 925. "Not bad for a day's work.
- Joe Kennedy, so many fictional characters have died this season; I was happy that this real life character was back for the finale. There is so much political posturing in late 1931. It makes sense because there was so much speculation surrounding the repeal of prohibition. Making liquor illegal would help bolster the economy during the depression. Imagine if liquor was outlawed again?
Joe referring to Hoover, "I said the horse, not the jackass." made me chortle. Roosevelt will win the impending election. Prohibition will be repealed.
Joe storms into "Conors & Gould" to accuse Margaret and Nucky of shorting his stock.
"Your husband is trying to screw me."
"I prefer to do the screwing myself." We know Joe, you have eight kids...or maybe more now? It has been a few episodes since we last saw you...
Margaret has evolved into a smooth, financial crook. She is good at the numbers game. She is the mastermind behind the shorting of Joe's stock. Ha! It is obvious that she and Nucky are swindling Joe. Instead of making him an enemy, she cuts him in as a partner. She waits until the confidence in the Mayflower corporation is so low that both she and Joe are sweating through their clothes and then...she sells the whole thing.
I thoroughly enjoyed the exchange between Joe and Margaret. Joe shakes Margaret's hand and finds that she is sweating. He voices his observation and Margaret darts back, "Weren't you?"
Unlike Nucky and Rothstein, Joe is unable to do business with a woman without insinuating that they hook up. He is let down by a cool, calm and collected woman who is all business. She informs him that he can come visit her during office hours and that her firm would love to have his business. There you go Joe. Stay true to your wife.
-Luciano, Meyer and Bugsy are sitting at top the gangster world. The meeting is set. The commission will be constructed. An organized crime syndicate with Italians, Irish and Jews working together to make as much money as possible.
I like the emphasis of the round table. "We're all bosses here."
"The Mustache Petes are in the ground." This is the future that we sadly do not get a chance to see.
Notice how Johnny Torrio is not present during this meeting. He helped get Luciano and Meyer to this point, but now they no longer need his counsel.
The young do not wish to listen to the old for very long.
-Capone was also not present at that meeting. It is time for Al to turn himself in to the feds for tax evasion. It is a reminder that no matter how powerful one person is, finance rules over us all.
This episode showed us the other side of Capone - the human side. It allowed us to remember him as not just the caricature of a hot-headed, loud mouth, drugged up, gun totting gangster, but as a family man. I saw such a range of emotion from Capone. Kudos to Stephen Graham for giving us all a brilliant portrayal of the most infamous gangster in history.
Capone's scene with his deaf son was very touching. Al tells his son that he is going away for doing bad things. He sternly reminds his son to listen to his mother. The best part was hearing the son say that he wants to help his father. That moment was reminiscent of bedroom scene between Michael and Anthony in Godfather Part 2. Watching Al's son put up his dukes hit home for me. He will continue to fight. Even with his father going away, he will not allow himself to be bullied. He will continue learning and growing as a human being. He will become a man. The hug was the cherry on top for this scene.
Watching Capone in the car, he is scared! The humanity shines. He collects himself and steps out of the car. Ready to face the people, the press, the trial and his future.
He told his brother not to worry, to smile, they'll buy off a judge. He told his wife to calm down, to make coffee. A family is on the verge of being torn apart due to the end of the Chicago outfit and Capone's trial. Will Ralph take it over? That doesn't matter. Capone's time on top is over.
He stares down D'Angelo and tips his hat toward him.
Capone's final scene of the series was perfect. In fact, had this show been centered on him, I would have applauded that ending. A fine end to a wonderful character.
Best bits
-Joe Kennedy explaining three things that are difficult to understand.
1. The work of the bees.
2. Movements of the tide.
3. The mind of a woman.
Margaret of course shoots back with an experiment for Joe. "Think about the things you want in life and picture yourself wearing a dress."
Man has been trying to figure out women for a long time...stop. We're quite similar actually.
-Capone joking to his wife about whether a famous woman is a "dyke" and telling his wife that reporters from the Chicago Tribute are all like washerwoman. Nothing but gossip!
-Luciano telling Meyer not to clock him for having three whiskeys in one hour.
Luciano also mentioned Dutch Schultz. It's a shame this show had to end so quickly. Had there been no time jump. There easily could have been one more season to showcase Rothstein's death and show some of the intense turf wars between Capone and Bugs Moran.
-Siegel jokes, when Meyer is listing off the names of those coming to the meeting, "Are those types of cheeses?"
-Narcisse had one scene in the finale and it was a brief one. The doctor finally gets whacked, by the Italians. There is no speculation of his death, he is shot in the head one last time by an assailant.
-Eldorado- is a lavish apartment complex in Manhattan. Margaret and Nucky share a dance with an appropriate song in the background that pretty much tells the audience exactly what they are seeing. Times have passed, but the sweet memories remain. There is still a spark between these two, but it is simply not meant to be.
"We danced once, didn't we?" asks Nucky.
Nucky is planning to move to the El dorado. He's lost Mabel, Billie Kent and Sally. Margaret remains.
-Mabel's miscarriage. A flashback to a young Nucky reveals the cause of what eventually led to Mabel's descent into drinking. He finds her bloody garments. He asks what happened, "A mishap." is how she explains things. He then gets on his knees and says that they should call a doctor. Mabel refuses. He then tells her in a grief stricken voice, "I work for this. Everything. For this. I love you. I disappoint you whatever I do, don't I?"
-Commodore- Nucky was always obsequious toward the devil- like figure back then. The Commodore takes Nucky's Sheriff badge away. He doesn't believe in him. Nucky darts back with the whole I'm loyal and dependent routine. His rhetoric isn't good enough.
What the Commodore said is key. "The only thing that matters is what you leave behind."
Everything that Nucky had done so far in his life, could easily be washed away by a storm.
A true legacy. Nucky's legacy begins in a weak moment of desperation when he decides to hand over a young Gillian to the Commodore.
Remember in season 2. "He pointed to the one he wanted and the rest was understood."
-Television (1931) No better way to showcase the brand new era then showing the cutting edge technology of the early 1930's. A mysterious woman spots Nucky on the boardwalk and takes him inside of a tent to see a glimpse into a future he has no part of.
"I'm the future shh." she says. Nucky doesn't understand what is going on...The woman is the embodiment of the next chapter of the 20th century. Nucky is a 19th century product, who is now outdated.
"The world to come." she adds. "I'll be there, but I won't be there."
Nucky is seeing the future that he will never get to experience.
-Domestic Violence Nucky's father was an alcoholic. He also abused his spouse. The confrontation between father and son was well done. Nucky doesn't even tell his father that his wife is pregnant, although at the time she has just miscarried.
I doubt old pa, was invited to the wedding...
Final points
Keep in mind that this season did feel rush, but we should all be happy that the story did come to an end. Exactly how it got there mystifies me. I can tell that if Michael Pitt's character is not killed off, this show goes in a different direction. Terrence Winter is writing a new show. The pilot has already been shot. He is moving on to his next project. It was time for boardwalk to end.
Does the show feel incomplete? It does and it doesn't. The seven year jump did make this final season feel off, but it was salvaged to a large degree by the show runners, Terrence Winter, Howard Korder and Tim Van Patten understood how to tie up all of the loose ends.
-The deaths of Sally, Chalky, Van Alden and Nucky did not seem as organic to me as I would have imagined them to be, but hey, I still enjoyed watching this show. Could this have been a better season? Yes? Was this season bad...of course not. All five seasons were brilliant spectacles. The sets, the costumes, directing, acting - everything. Still, the writing was always off with this show. The dialogue was well written, but the important character arcs, for this season, were well...weak.
Sally being a brassy foil to Nucky did not impress me, Van Alden and Eli in a nonsensical FBI sting was far too convenient, Chalky dying without getting his vengeance left me with a lukewarm feeling.
This season was too poetic with all of the useless flashbacks.
I say useless because the flashbacks only added to the predictability of the show.
It is ultimately a good thing that this show end after five seasons. There was no suspense for me in this final season.
I will say that Chalky's rivalry with Narcisse last season was the best thing to happen to the show since season 1. There were many moments where I thought Chalky would not make it out alive. It kept me glued to the television. I did not feel that way since Jimmy passed. The show did ultimately change with his passing, but is all honesty it was for the better.
Season 3's finale was epic, we all remember that shootout. Season 4's finale was heartbreaking. Season 5 was quite poetic, predictable, but nonetheless underwhelming. I liked this episode. I did not love or hate it. I was satisfied.
Mr. Winter comes from the school of leaving the stage while the audience wants more.
I believe that is ok to a certain degree. It's perfect for Theatre - not television (film).
The ending of the previous episode, (which I thought was too cute), set up a potential redemptive arc for Nucky. Nucky reads this letter from someone in his past, who is in desperate need of his help, someone who he has betrayed, who he lied to and broke his promise to about taking care of.
The fact that Nucky does not visit Gillian for weeks and we see this happen near the end of the episode does not fit at all. The dialogue in that scene is putrid. From an acting stand point Buscemi is fine, the direction is horrible. There is no observation. There is nothing.
The prison does close down later that year, but a better end to the character Gillian is not to have her as some "tragic character," that is lazy writing in my estimation. Why bring that character back for this season to only have her suffer in the past, present and future? It would have been more compelling to show her suffering in the past and present, but in the end get her recompense from Nucky.
Now, I do acknowledge that it does make perfect sense that Nucky show up late, because he is unaware of what transpires at the prison/asylum/hospital. The only thing that bothers me is the point of dialogue. Why not show Nucky arriving and seeing Gillian try to get up from a far, he realizes something is wrong. Gillian sees him and gives him a sad or lifeless look. The audience understands he was too late. She was not saved. The ladybug part was once again, trying to be too cute. It was not poetic, it was nothing.
Joe Harper was a terrible character. In fact, there was little, to no point in him being around for more than one episode.
The fact that he gets so close to Nucky and says he has no family undermines Harrow's sacrifice to keep him safe in the past two seasons. There is no explanation for what happened to him. How did he get back to Atlantic City? Why? He's a 14-15 year old kid now. Nucky gives him a $1,000 and he spends it all? $1,000 is a lot of money in the early 1930's! His refusal to take money from so many people and then finally accept it and blow it all after one episode is mind boggling! Of course one episode can mean that weeks or months have passed, but still...These two cyclical story lines felt forced. This ending was very predictable.
It was nice, touching, but predictable. At least there was no cut to black. Winter, learned from that mistake.
The flashbacks hurt this final season. It took away screen time from Luciano, Capone, Lanksy, Busgy and Chalky, but this is how it was written from the beginning. As uninteresting of a protagonist or antagonist Nucky was, he was indeed the main character, however his supporting cast, was far more interesting.
In the end, this gangster drama ended with what else...a "Tommy gun."
Here's a link to the farewell to Boardwalk Empire, Boardwalk Empire - Farewell - The Final Shot
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