HBO's Boardwalk Empire - Season 1 - Page 9

HunterTarantino summed it up better than I could.

When Margaret walks into the election celebration, that moment between her and Nucky floored me. Such great, subtle facial cues that conveyed so many emotions.

So many other amazing moments in the finale. I need to see it again already.

It's very good and ended up coming together better than expected. But it's so clear that it's HBO's Mad Men substitute. Sometimes, it gets pretty clunky, but usually it's so entertaining I don't care.

But Mad Men has got this beat hands down. Not nearly as predictable or derivative. It was a great first season, though.

So wish I had. This was indeed great. Lots of emotion, lots of good setup for whats to come but also very satisfying as a conclusion for the season. Loved the moment Singer mentioned, and also the last shot of the two of them on the boardwalk with their smiles fading to that little tinge of conflict and uncertainty before panning over to the sunset.

This here be the truth.

Also I agree with this. It's damn entertaining, but I'm hoping it really shapes into something great next year. With all the talent involved there's no reason it can't.

Pretty great finale.

Kinda sad how the misteress is convinced she's gonna be the first lady.

While I wish Van Alden had left, it was hilarious when Lucy showed up to tell him she was pregnant. The look on his face was greatness.

Someone is gonna betray Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore. I don't see Jimmy going through with overthrowing Nucky or if he does someone will betray the plot to Nucky and it will get stopped.

The Nucky/Margaret stuff is so good. Like it was mentioned above...the looks they gave eachother at the party. Just so good.

The looks they gave one another paired with the subtle push-in from the camera = perfection. Like Singer said, emotionally moving.

I might have missed it but are we supposed to know or infer what was written in the diary that the Nurse gave to Nucky after he let her off the hook? I'm pretty sure it's the Commodore's and it may have something to do with the alliance against Nucky, but I don't know for sure.

Decent episode and agreeable enough series. I think the main problem overall is I think we just saw 12 episodes of backstory. Where it ends seems a very exciting place forward and I hope it'll capitalize on it next season, but really thinking about it there weren't that many plots of arcs for a season that sure acted like it did have them, with the exception of Margaret/Nucky and even then, on Nucky's side, it was a bit of decompression. I like that the Jimmy/Nucky context was markedly different from what we all theorized early on, I never thought he was literally his son but did assume he was Moltisanti figure and Nucky's coldness in the finale was rather unexpected/compelling, but again, it wasn't so much story as backstory. I think the series did best with the political maneuvering/backdoor dealing, rather than the explicit prohibition/crime elements or actual character arcs, which is probably good news considering the post-finale status quo seems engineered for political maneuvering/backdoor dealing within the main characters, rather than with random guest stars. I do hope now that the characters have been thoroughly sketched, they'll be allowed to act.

Buscemi's little pause when he told the story of his dead son was SO good. Emmy worthy just by that. Supporting actor is a toss up between Pitt who's simply amazing and Shannon, who's getting weirder by the episode and i love him more for that.

The death montage was simply superb. The price being the creepy 2 face guy (keep forgetting his name). That shot was very unsettling.

So did Nucciano kill one of Nucky's guys at the end?

As it was happening I was wondering where he was going to go with it, and then it just worked like gangbusters. Buscemi is really inhabiting Nucky much more than I thought was possible at the beginning of the season.

I fucking adored it.

Lesser shows would have got at least two whole scenes of dialog to get through what this show did simply with Nucky and Margaret looking at each other and her symbolically ordering champagne. They both like each other very much. But they both have ulterior motives for continuing their relationship. And they both know this, about themselves and each other. And they both know about the skeletons in each other's closet. In a season they have seriously built one of the most layered and realistically motivated relationships I can remember.

Nucky telling Margaret about the death of his son and his wife was phenomenal. No theatrics from either Buscemi or McDonald. Just well timed poses and using their eyes. Either tearing up or simply looking into the distance horrified by the memories.

Even the Angela/Jimmy stuff was excellent. From their talk at the table to her (subconscious?) rejection of him by cutting her hair, there's plenty of gold to be mined.

And I wouldn't count Jimmy as a loss for Nucky, just yet. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the early episodes next season ended with Jimmy getting in Nucky's office and saying "I have something you should know." Otherwise Harrow is going to be a major wild card next season. Jimmy may have brought him to Atlantic City but he seems to be pretty much getting orders straight from Nucky lately. And Nucky telling him to off Jimmy probably isn't going to be much of a problem for him.

i highly doubt Harrow would ever turn on Jimmy, they share a bond that Nucky could never touch, and I think he knows that.

Loved the quick shot of Chalky at the election party

When I saw the "previously on" lead in, I thought I would be impressed if they could fit all the story lines referenced in an hour. And they did... and I was. But, besides that, it didn't feel like a particularly great finale. It was very good, like the series has been from the beginning, but it lacked a strong emotional hook. Van Alden's story is not grabbing me at all, and even Margaret getting the cloth in the cake and deciding to go back to Nucky felt like a bit of wheel spinning more than her character going to a new place. Not that it was unrealistic, or even unwelcome, because she's obviously going to wrestle with the idea of being with someone like Nucky. It just felt like more of what we've already seen, with the exception of the scene where Nucky confides about the death of his wife and child, which was the knockout moment of the finale.

Just an aside about the poison thing: I was surprised at first that they didn't reveal that Jimmy convinced the maid to take the fall, as I believe that is the case. Nucky obviously wasn't in on a cover-up, which is what threw me because, since he was there, I thought he must have been. But remember, it was left ambiguous when Jimmy said to his mother "it's up to you." We've already seen they will plot devious capers together, and, since the doctor knew, they couldn't very well have continued poisoning him.

I don't believe they're acting in Nucky's interests at this point, but something tells me eventually it will benefit them to do so, and Jimmy will betray the commodore.

What was that short scene all about? We see Nucky getting paid immediately thereafter, which doesn't support the idea of Lucky betraying anyone.

I'm glad I followed Phil's advice and watched this one after Walking Dead, but I do feel like the only plot resolution I actively enjoyed watching unfold was Jimmy's backroom ascension with the Commodore and Eli. Van Alden's story imploded hilariously. One of Boardwalk's themes is that nobody's incorruptible, and Van Alden's plot aligns with that, but it was all so isolated from the rest of the story.

The Margaret walkout last week was engineered around Nucky's dead kid speech. Not that it was a bad speech, but it seemed like melodrama generated just for Nuck to cash in that dangling exposition ticket. Margaret does learn how much sin she's willing to live with, so there's some growth there, which was nice.

I still wish we'd been given more Rothstein. We learned a lot about these characters, but with Rothstein tied up with the series scandal and Van Alden a total mess, the only palpable external threat to any of the leads was the bumbling D'Alessio brothers. There were plenty of internal conflicts, but as the finale's moniker suggests, most of them reset to (more or less) normal before the end credits. It's a good show, but the bulk of the first season felt like prologue.

I think it just shows, like it historically happened, Luciano and Lansky starting to strike out on their own.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

Just realized that when Jimmy is on the train, you hear the German soldier crying out the word from the story Jimmy told to the guy that cut Pearl before Richard Harrow kills him. Nice little detail

Great news!

Didn't think it was a big enough scoop to submit as news; apologies if THUD feels differently.

Some of that CGI is so subtle, ever so slightly expanding the depth or detail of a shot, I had no idea when watching the show. Really, really impressive. That kind of perfectionism is why Boardwalk is the best thing on TV right now.

So thanks to a friend's DVR, I'm finally watching this. Only two episodes in, and it's great. One question, since I didn't read the thread yet to avoid too many spoilers--what is with Colin Hanks' random, wordless appearance in the funeral home parlor in the first episode? I rewinded it twice to make sure, and yeah, there he is, standing off to the side smoking a cigarette. But he's not listed on the cast on IMDb. What gives?