SPOILERS AHEAD
I’m really admiring Boardwalk Empire‘s narrative audacity this season, from a structural perspective. Last season’s cliffhanger was that Jimmy, Eli, and the Commodore were conspiring to take Nucky down. My assumption, and everyone else’s I assume, was that we’d spend much of Season Two watching this happen. It’d be a slow race toward the final coup attempt: the conspirators working to keep their plans secret before the trap is sprung, Nucky working to stay on top and get to the bottom of the setbacks that would surely start to befall him.
Instead, the coup happened in the season premiere. It turns out Nucky’s too big to take down in one fell swoop, but that aside, he learned that his brother, mentor, and protege had all betrayed him; that the city bigwigs were backing his enemies; that he was all alone, with his money and clout in serious danger. Instead of whether the coup would take place, the season is about what happens afterward. Smart stuff.
So too is the arrangement of the warring parties. In a battle between Nucky and Jimmy, there’s no default for the audience’s sympathies. Nucky’s the guy in the credit sequence, but the story we were really sold from the beginning is the story we’ve seen many times before — the hungry young man on the make. In other words, there are two protagonists, and after watching them work together for a full season (albeit with some hiccups), we’re now watching them become one another’s antagonist. Who do you root for? What’s more, their primary allies on the criminal end of things are the show’s two most compelling such characters, Chalky and Richard. We’re obviously to root against the conniving, child-raping Commodore, and the politicians on both sides aren’t worth spit, but there really is no easy way to take sides between the primary players. Obviously there are plenty of big prestige cable dramas who at least attempted to split audience sympathy between rival factions, but for the most part there were still clear good guy/bad guy lines established initially, regardless of where things went from there — sheriff versus crime boss, cops versus druglords, stern but kind Northerners versus arrogant, hedonistic Southerners. Boardwalk Empire has really split things down the middle, and I’ve got no idea what side I’m gonna come down on. Mostly I hope for a rapprochement. Don’t you?
Tags: Boardwalk Empire, reviews, TV, TV reviews
I find myself really uninterested in the big gang war plot of the show. I just can’t get worked up about either Nucky or Jimmy. The reason I keep watching the show is for the less prominent characters: Richard, Margaret, Chalky. I think I want a whole show about the immigrants, blacks, women and all the other non-white guys in power. Their stories seem more compelling than whether Nucky is going to get more money or go to jail for his crimes or get killed by another criminal.
You’re certainly not wrong about that, although gang wars are where my bread is buttered. I think the problem the show will face if things keep heading in the direction they seem to be is that while Nucky, Jimmy, and the Commodore are (I believe) all fictionalized-enough versions of their real-world-history counterparts for the show to play things a little loose with them, the same certainly cannot be said of Arnold Rothstein, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Joe Masseria and so on. The closer they all drift toward the center of the narrative, the harder a time the show will have with creating genuine suspense and uncertainty (well, for mob buffs like me at least), since we already know where and how all those guys end up.
I’m assuming they all end up dead. (Spoilers!)
Some sooner than others!
My primary interest in that show other than watching good actors read solid lines on handsome sets is the way that it blends political and gangster power in a way that suggests 19th Century American politics gave birth to both 20th Century American politics and 20th Century organized crime, which sounds about right to me. I mean, when you talk about a gang war this season, a lot of those shots fired are political ones rather than actual ones.
I also like how they responded to charges of trying to manufacture another The Sopranos by saying fuck it and using the guy that in our house we call “Irish Furio.”
Also it reminded me I wanted to read David Copperfield.
It’s definitely a smorgasbord of pleasurable things to look at and listen to, as I’ve said all along. It’s certainly a fine showcase for weird actors: Buscemi, Pitt, Shannon, Williams, Coleman, Stuhlbarg…though this reminds me that I wish the women had more to do. What happened to Angela this season?
Perhaps your analysis reveals why it hasn’t caught on with the critics — if it is “about” early 20th century politics in such a direct way, then perhaps it’s too tough to find the nice easy analogues with current politics that critics need from their genre television.
What would be the last major intersection of politics and traditional organized crime in America, btw? Joe Kennedy rigging the Chicago election results for John? (That really happened, right? That’s not some bit of liberal-tweaking CW that’s actually bogus, like black Confederates?) Jack Ruby killing Oswald? For the sake of this question I’m referring to Irish, Italian, and Jewish gangsters of Prohibition vintage and their descendents.
“Also it reminded me I wanted to read David Copperfield.”
Ha! It reminded me I need to clean my garage.
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