Spoilers for all five seasons of Boardwalk Empire, which had its series finale last night, below.
The series finale of Boardwalk Empire was, as the show has often been, a frustrating glimpse at what might have been.
Boardwalk Empire could have been a show that traced Nucky Thompson's (Steve Buscemi) suffering for his original sin: His effort to advance his career by selling a vulnerable girl (Gillian, played by Gretchen Mol as an adult) into virtual sex slavery to the evil, powerful man who created Atlantic City. It is no coincidence that Nucky's two most dangerous enemies—Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), who almost kills Nucky, and his son Tommy* (a/k/a Joe Harper, played by Travis Tope), who actually gets the job done—are poison fruit borne by the seed he planted long ago. That story is tragic in the classical, Greek sense.
Or, Boardwalk Empire could have been a show that traced the rise of Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and his relationship with the Jewish mobsters Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Meyer Lansky (Anatol Yusef). Seeing the origin of the American Cosa Nostra and the various ethnic tensions that riddled its creation would've been fascinating—an American success story with a Godfather-twist.
Or, Boardwalk Empire could have been the tale of Al Capone's rise from a boot-licking nobody into one of the most famous men in America. Anchored by the devilishly wild performance of Stephen Graham, who wouldn't have tuned in to see Capone's rise and fall, his attempt to balance his struggling home life and wild public persona? Lord knows there would've been no shortage of sex, drugs, and gunfire for the brass at HBO (not to mention the audiences in desperate need of a Sopranos replacement).
But, in the end, it was none of these things. Because it tried to be all of them at once, Boardwalk Empire was never able to find its soul, its reason for being. So instead we got a trio of half-stories (a quartet if you want to count the woefully underdeveloped Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams) storyline; a quintet if you want to Nelson Van Alden's (Michael Shannon) sad tale of decline), none of which were fully fleshed out, all of which felt rushed at the end. Nucky's story got the most screen time during the five-season run, but not enough to really give last night's dramatic reveal the oomph it needed. We missed virtually all of Lucky Luciano's rise to power by skipping ahead a bunch of years between seasons four and five. And we spent so little time with Capone's family that we had to be reminded in the "Previously on..." pre-cap that he had a son and that his son happened to be deaf and that, by the way, he loved his family very much.
There are things that I really loved about Boardwalk Empire: Jack Huston's performance as Richard Harrow, the man with half a face; Steve Buscemi getting a chance to shine; Arnold Rothstein's gambling gangster; Bobby Cannavale's turn as third-season heavy Gyp Rosetti. It's just too bad the show didn't know what it was about.
*In the third or fourth episode of this season, my lovely, brilliant wife speculated that Joe was actually Tommy. It's telling of how badly they botched this storyline that my response was "Who?" But as soon as she said "Tommy Darmody" it clicked and I instantly realized she was dead-on right. Because Tope was playing Tommy with all the mannerisms of a young Michael Pitt—the languid body movements, the half-squinting facial features, the slight tilt of the head—just as Marc Pickering spent all season absolutely nailing the mannerisms of a young Steve Buscemi. Once you saw what was happening, you couldn't unsee it. A brilliant bit of staging by the Boardwalk Empire showrunners.