Boardwalk Empire Series Finale Review: What Are You in the End?

Boardwalk Empire S05E08: "Eldorado"

What an odd journey Boardwalk Empire embarked upon during its five seasons on the air. If you can recall the summer of 2010, before the series debuted, the show was hyped as the big savior in prestige drama that HBO needed after a couple of weak years. Armed with a massive budget, creative firepower from The Sopranos' Terence Winter, and the direction of Martin Scorsese, Boardwalk was supposed to guide us through the next age of Great TV. Four years later, The Newsroom Game of Thrones has grown into HBO's real savior; meanwhile, Boardwalk has weathered some creative bumps and the occasionally frustrating subplot to make it to this point, its series finale. And while it's fully unfair to say that Boardwalk didn't live up to its immense expectations, it's also hard to imagine that HBO and Winter truly drew it up this way some years ago—just five seasons, a massive time jump, and a truncated final run. But "Eldorado," like the seven episodes that preceded it in Season 5 and many of the 48 episodes before that, managed to deliver something partially unexpected, but still very satisfying.

I say "partially unexpected" because it wasn't much of a surprise to see the finale continue the story the show has been telling since the beginning of this season, not to mention the one that I'm sure Winter and Howard Korder would argue they've been telling since the beginning. The amount of time that Season 5 spent on flashbacks with young Nucky (and young Eli, Gillian, the Commodore, etc.) was frustrating early on in the season, and while the flashbacks improved once they began to depict an older Nucky (played with real aplomb by Marc Pickering), they were ultimately still frustrating. We already knew so much of what transpired during them, and at times, it was difficult not to get lost in the possible stories the show could've told with Chalky or Van Alden before their deaths, or with Luciano and Lansky as they more clearly established themselves within the criminal syndicate.

But as these things tend to go on Boardwalk, the payoffs near the end were worth it—or in this case, at least worth slogging through everything that came before. Knowing that Nucky would eventually make the terrible choice to serve up Gillian to the pedophiliac Commodore cast quite the shadow over her introduction in the flashbacks and Nucky's subsequent promotion through the Commodore's ranks, as we really got the sense that that moment was Nucky's original sin. Before that point, he'd tried to work as hard as he could to get away from his roots and his abusive father (never seen that before), but after that point? Something very different. "Eldorado" of course waited until near the end of its running time to deliver that moment, allowing us to see present-day Nucky try to justify his actions to the still-institutionalized Gillian one last time before hitting us with the real wallop.

On top of that, the show finally revealed that Joe Harper, Mickey's young apprentice, was indeed Tommy Darmody, in town to learn more about the man who murdered his father. Nucky tried to "help" Joe/Tommy one more time with a big wad of cash, echoing Nucky's decades-old realization that working hard doesn't guarantee anything; it's all about money, and the power that comes with it. Unfortunately, so many of Nucky's choices were tinged with regret, all the way up to that moment with Joe/Tommy. As he said, money wasn't the only answer, but he'd learned that it was the best one he had.

While some of the dialogue in "Eldorado" was a bit on-the-nose (as tends to happens in series finales), the writing, Tim Van Patten's direction, the editing—it all came together in that final sequence, which cross-cut between Nucky's decision to hand Gillian over to the Commodore and his ultimate demise at the hands of Gillian's grandson, Tommy. The sequence fantastically illustrated how something Nucky did all those years ago led directly to his death: He failed to protect Gillian, he couldn't make up for it in the way he promised Jimmy, and he ultimately made an orphan out of Tommy (sorry, Julia). Nucky killed Jimmy to reaffirm his power, and so many years later, having given up everything in order to protect the last vestiges of a family, he still paid the price. Shot right the cheek, just like Jimmy was. That might be too unsubtle for some, but it really worked for me. Boardwalk was never as "deep" as The Sopranos, but it did masterful stuff with more direct symbolism, and its series finale was a crowning example of that kind of storytelling. Plus, while though I can understand some viewers' issues with how the show turned so much of its energy toward Nucky in the final season, the focus on him in "Eldorado" was about as worthwhile as you can get.

And to be fair, plenty of the stories and characters highlighted in the finale fell victim, at least a little bit, to Boardwalk's shortened Season 5 episode order and time jump, no matter how good the individual scenes were. Nucky shared scenes with his two closest family members, his wife and his brother. The story with Margaret and Mayflower Grain didn't quite pay off, and it's a shame that we didn't get to see much of Kelly MacDonald over Boardwalk's last couple seasons. However, her final scene with Steve Buscemi was a cool reminder of the odd chemistry that Margaret and Nucky had way back in Season 1; their brief dance in the glorious apartment I assume he bought for her was quite special. Likewise, Nucky and Eli had been through countless ups and downs, but "Eldorado" wouldn't've been a series finale without just one more conversation between the two. The Thompson boys ended on good-ish terms, with Eli still smarting over Nucky constantly providing him with advice, jobs, money, whatever, and Nucky was still hopeful that his brother could make it work with a family in a way he never could.

The fact that we didn't get to see a more methodical rise for Luciano and Lansky, and that the supposed war between them and Nucky really only lasted for one episode, will go down as one of the small tragedies of Boardwalk's run. But hey, "Eldorado" delivered a couple of solid scenes with Luciano guiding his new crime empire, speaking of a new era and a new method—and at least Narcisse finally got his, so that's something. Similarly, Capone's journey came to an end with one great scene between him and his son, always a source of delight, and the start of a big trial for tax evasion. The Chicago stuff provided a handful of good moments in Season 5, obviously most notably in "Devil You Know" a couple of weeks ago, but there could have been entire seasons dedicated to that alone. Stephen Graham was excellent here, showing us Capone's warmth with his family and signaling his bluster and love of the spotlight right before the trial began. Of all of Boardwalk's memorable performances, that's the one I'll miss the most.

It's too early to make any authoritative claims about Boardwalk Empire's legacy, but I strongly believe that the show's reputation improve as time goes on. As this finale displayed, Boardwalk covered such a fascinating time, full of juicy stories and compelling characters, that it was almost perpetually frustrating to some degree. But as it also displayed, the series told season-long stories with real precision—and often, real emotional impact—even if you didn't always care about the beats that led up to the satisfying conclusion. Once it's a bit removed from some of the baggage that weighed it down in its later seasons, and once it's perhaps disassociated from other, lesser shows that we as the TV-viewing public paid more attention to during its run, Boardwalk Empire will seem better than it already does. This may not have been the journey we all expected, but having reached the destination, it was well worth it.

NOTES

– I kept waiting for Mickey to suddenly appear in this episode, somehow not dead. He's probably still out there somewhere, bloody throat and all!

– You could probably add "political maneuvering around Prohibition" to the list of Cool Potential Boardwalk Empire Stories We Never Really Got to See. The series, like its lead character, always had one foot in the political arena, but could never quite tell its best stories there.

– Now that we've reached the end, it's time to do my favorite thing: rank stuff! I'd probably rank Boardwalk's seasons, from best to worst, Season 4, Season 2, Season 3, Season 5, Season 1. And the death scenes that hit me the most: Richard (obviously), Owen, Jimmy, and Chalky. What are your picks?

– Thanks to all of you who've read, commented on, or shared even one of my reviews over the past three seasons. It's been a real delight to write about this show from time to time.

What'd you think of the final episode? Worth all the time spent on those flashbacks?