Well, it is au revoir to “Boardwalk Empire,” not, as I once feared , adieu. The novelistic series set in Atlantic City during Prohibition will be back for another season. So Sunday night’s finale was an end to what has happened the past weeks and a teaser for what lies ahead.
I confess I have become a “Boardwalk Empire” fan, though I usually watch the show on a HBO rerun and not on Sunday nights when it was first shown. That’s because I am also a fan of “The Good Wife,” though this season “TGW" seems less good than in the past. Maybe it’s because the tension of whether Will and Alicia will ever do it is gone. They have, in case you don’t watch, been doing it, though Alicia finally, and a bit belatedly, got a case of the guilts last week. And this season the show seems a lot more about Cary, a smart assistant D.A., and Kalinda, a bisexual investigator, who are not uninteresting but are, let’s face it, quite young and cool. Alicia, her husband Peter, and her lover and boss, Will, are middle-aged and not really cool and that’s probably what made the show so popular with its boomer audience.
But back to “Boardwalk Empire,” which is like an old-fashion novel based on real-life characters. The main character is Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the man who ran Atlantic City in the 20’s when Atlantic City was very much the Las Vegas of its day. All sorts of historical figures weave in and out, from gangsters such as Al Capone and Arnold Rothstein to corrupt members of President Harding’s administration. And there is Nucky’s mistress, an Irish widow—thanks to Nucky—named Margaret Schroeder as well as Jimmy Darmody, once Nucky’s protégé and now his enemy. See what I mean? There are loads of characters and loads of off-beat but accurate Prohibition details.
