empire tv show about gambling in atlantic city

The sequel nobody needed was also the Anakin Boardwalker prequel nobody asked for! It was a fairly absurd way to wrap up a show, but also somehow a perfectly Boardwalkian one: As the clock ran out, they actually found a way to double down on Nucky.

It blew a sizable chunk of those eight hours on languidly paced 1890s-set flashbacks to Nucky’s origin story, with Nolan Lyons and then the eerily Buscemic British actor Marc Pickering playing younger versions of the character. The overlong good-bye is a mistake that a lot of TV shows make, especially now one of the silliest rules of our present Golden Age of Fancy Televisioning is that even a damp squib like The Newsroom gets a third and final season in which to end things “on its own terms.” But Boardwalk didn’t just run eight hours too long. This entire season was a gratuitous postscript to the bleak and masterful Season 4, whose last shot would have worked just fine as a closing note for the entire series: Jack Huston’s Richard Harrow, the closest thing this show had to a soul, dying on the sand while dreaming of the peace his life denied him. Nucky was never going to become as iconic as Tony Soprano - or even Tony Blundetto - but they never stopped believing. This has never, ever been true, but you have to give it up to Boardwalk creator Terence Winter & Co. for staying the course anyway. Say what you will about Boardwalk Empire, it died the way it lived - unshakably convinced that Steve Buscemi’s cagey, peevish Nucky Thompson was a compelling protagonist whose journey was a strong enough engine to power a TV show.

Empire tv show about gambling in atlantic city