WWAW da Boardwalk Empire

[Former Prez Gerald Ford]

Rewatching it now. Great show or no? I enjoy it but I got my issues with it too

1. It’s not the Sopranos

2. Steve Buscemi is talented and also one of my favorite actors but I didn’t like him for the role. I do give him credit for making it as far as he has in Hollywood with a mug like that.. I coulda called him Ichabod Crane, but I didn’t.

3. That crazy cunt Paz de La Huerta should get naked more and spread her pussy lips for the camera. The writers and crew are definitely talented enough, they could have found a reason to get deep on that pussy with a wide angle lens and convince her it was important for her character arc

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, if you enjoyed this thread please consider donating a rib for my hungry children

 

[Udders]

Good, not great. Loved the sets and costumes though and that time period overall. Buschemi was excellent, but that Irish bitch sucked in every scene and storyline she was a part of.

 

[Stent]

It's hard not to compare it to other great shows of that era. Some weaker performances. Scripting isn't as good. The girl who looked like Sue. It's still a great show. I like seeing Buscemi in serious roles. I don't know how accurate the show is to history but it at felt accurate enough.

Michael Shannon as Nelson Van Alden is the stand out character/performance for me. He's a bit too over the top, all things considered, but his mania seems appropriate given how fucked up everything around him.

Nucky's wife is probably the worst but not enough to ruin the show.

 

[HR@PaneraBread]

Another HBO show that was great until they had to finish it and it inevitably shat the bed. Considering Joe Kennedy's gangland history you could probably have done more with that in season 5. the 8 year fast forward doesn't work other than to let Tommy Darmody grow up, it's cool to see how prohibition brought the mafia into existance but there's too big a jump from where it left off. Upto that point it's superb. No problem with 8 episodes, it honestly felt drawn out being that long, especially the young Nucky shit. They slashed the budget for it which was silly. Just blow off the angle like you mean it ffs. HBO are legendary for that shit

The Wire should have just ended at season 4 with Marlo going into gangland legend with 22 bodies the police couldn't prosecute him for.

Sopranos in retrospect was ended pretty well but at the time people were not happy and didn't get the ending. It took David Chase explaining it years later for everyone to understand, although the hardcore fans either got it immediately or had subsequently read some 400k word thesis on POV camera angles and came to the conclusion that Tony dies.

Game of Thrones (your opinon on capeshit and dragons notwithstanding) was an objectively good show that went south when they realised at the end of s6 that most of the actors weren't going to stick around for the 6 more seasons they needed to tie it up so they made up some WCW tier nonsense that came across like it was written on LSD and finished it in 2.

In fairness, Veep was quite funny right up to the end.

 

[satanssockpuppet]

I liked it way, way more than I thought I would going in. Not without its flaws, kind of a pokey ending, but right up there among the best TV dramas ever. Van Alden and the Capone character were fantastic, as was Gyp Rosetti, who was a great villain. IMO they gave the women too much screen time, and it would have been a better show if they'd have dialed that back a little.

 

[Jizz]

I always wondered if they cut the budget. the sets look a lot cheaper the last couple of seasons. i know they had to get rid of the young guy because he was a druggy and not showing up to the set. i thought he was always a good actor though.

 

[HR@PaneraBread]

I always wondered if they cut the budget. the sets look a lot cheaper the last couple of seasons. i know they had to get rid of the young guy because he was a druggy and not showing up to the set. i thought he was always a good actor though.

If you mean the guy who plays Jimmy Darmody then yeah, not sure about drugs but notoriously difficult to work with. He was also the young Mason Verger on Hannibal but he got fired from that as well. He was being a tool and the people writing the show suddenly realised his character in the movie has no face and they can just have him lose it now and put the no face makeup on any old chump that could do the voice.

 

[JesseTheGovernor]

Nelson Van Alden is maybe my favourite live-action character in any show, but I feel the general story arc is haphazard and a lot of it is boring. I like Kelly MacDonald but a lot of her shit is boring. Same with Gillian Darmody. Same with Buscemi. I liked it overall though.

 

[Dummy Gaynuts]

It's a perfectly respectable show. Great setting/costuming, great acting, terrible acting, some laughs, some action. The bullshit HBO pulled with the last season was criminal

 

[guest]

Couldnt get into it. Hate to sound like robertmewler, but it was a kiked representation of the amazing 1920s.

 

[Joe Eyed Cow]

I really enjoyed it

 

[aRTie02150]

I only watched the first season.

It's a cromulent show.

 

[Cuphead]

First 3 seasons were good. I got bored in the fourth season and never finished it. I'll go back and finish it at some point.

 

[LingerLonger]

In fairness, Veep was quite funny right up to the end.

Veep has as good of an ending as Sopranos or Shield. And was funny throughout its whole run. Silicon Valley is another that was good until the end and had a good ending as well.

Boardwalk Empire never knew what it wanted to be. Was it a historical drama with real characters? Historical fiction with entirely made up characters? A period piece with drama and events about non-crime or mafia related stuff? A mafia show? A political show? Chicago? Philadelphia? New York? It tried to do too much. The Wire struggled with this as well in the last three seasons with the schools, politics, and then the disastrously awful newspaper storyline.

Stuff like Sopranos or Shield works because the characters are not real and so you can take the story anywhere. Anyone can die or behave in any way because none of it will contradict history and alienate the audience. In Boardwalk Empire they were at the mercy of real history. Who wins what election. Who owns what famous nightclub. Who runs the various mafia groups. Certain historic events, assassinations, power changes, could not be changed. But then half of the cast are just made up characters including Nucky Thompson who was a fictitious version of Enoch Johnson (who was 6'2" and barrel chested). And so it feels odd when real characters play off of them because you know none of this ever happened.

Boardwalk Empire should have been purely historical truth as much as they could. Or have been historical fiction completely like Sopranos with real world references that do not dominate the show. And not something in between. They should have replaced every historical character with a fictitious counterpart. Like a fake Al Capone like Al Pistone. Or a fake Arnold Rothstein like Arno Rothschild and so on. Instead of just replacing Enoch Johnson for some reason.

It is always odd watching the real characters interact with the fake characters in Boardwalk because it becomes obvious who will live and die.

 

[not that Jack Horner]

Couldnt get into it. Hate to sound like robertmewler, but it was a kiked representation of the amazing 1920s.

to be fair, people would kill themselves in mass if they found out how good shit used to be

 

[WhereWeAt]

The Wire struggled with this as well in the last three seasons with the schools, politics, and then the disastrously awful newspaper storyline.

Your post nailed Boardwalk Empire, but the Wire's expansion beyond a cop show was its biggest strength.

 

[1073waaf]

I tried watching it a long time ago but I only made it a few episodes. It wasn’t awful but not exciting enough to keep my attention.

 

[guest]

I wanted to see a spinoff with Lucky, Meyer and Bugsy that ended up with them starting Vegas.

 

[Former Prez Gerald Ford]

I wanted to see a spinoff with Lucky, Meyer and Bugsy that ended up with them starting Vegas.

Damn brotherman that’s a great idea. Throw in a hermaphrodite midget, a cross dressing burlesque storyline involving Meyer and Bugsy and a strong black female lead (who don’t need no man) and HBO will probably sign off on 30 episodes no questions asked

 

[JesseTheGovernor]

i think the show should have focused on Van Alden. Idealistic, devout young agent sent in to clean up Atlantic City and he slowly gets devoured by the corruption and lifestyle. They could have slow-played his arc and put boring characters (like Buscemi, MacDonald, Gretchen Moll) in the background. Van Alden chasing the young, rising Darmody and Capone as he learns bigger fish (Buscemi, the politicians) are the straws stirring the drink.

I love Buscemi but he was miscast as the lead here. Nucky was just fucking boring and unlikeable imo.