Much was made of the penultimate episode of the sophomore season of “Boardwalk Empire.” A LOT went down last week — much of it… uh, what’s a nice word for incest-related? Familial? Creepy? Skincrawly? I may be making up words now, but you get my point.
Anyway, there were a lot of loose ends heading into the season finale that needed tying up, most notably where the hell you go from one of the main characters on your show going Full Oedipus. I’ll save the spoilers for the next page, but let’s check in with Warming Glow Senior Correspondent Surprised Cat for his analysis.
Well said, Surprised Cat.
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Attention, Kurt Sutter. This is how it’s done.
Should’ve been you Eli!
Jesus…the balls. Big fucking brass one. Still, they’re right. Ain’t no halfway gangsters.
My wife called it when she saw Tommy wearing Jimmy’s dog tags and remembered the scene where Jimmy ripped up the will and made sure Tommy got everything if he dies. I said no way, and then BE goes all Ned Stark/Game of Thrones on us.
I called it a few months ago when I heard Michael Pitt’s agent quit representing him.
A ballsy ending indeed, and a pretty damn good episode… but i still may never watch another episode of Boardwalk Empire again.
Only by last week was I finally loving this show, as Jimmy’s arch became the most interesting thing the show had ever done up to that point. But now they have killed basically the only likable character on the show. This isn’t Game of Thrones, where you can kill Ned Stark because you have a number of other awesome sympathetic characters to fill in afterward… most of the characters on Boardwalk are either big dickheads or easily influenced idiots (like Margaret). I don’t know why I’d want to keep watching Nucky be a total villain all the time when it was already a chore to watch this show in the first place.
Pfft, I called this 47 months ago underwater with a Carmen Miranda fruit hat on my head. I don’t think anybody heard me though.
Also, I’m pretty pissed they killed Jimmy. He was my favorite character. With that being said I’m anxious to see how Richard (my second favorite character) reacts to killing his only friend in the world.
Excellent move. I’m glad television drama is getting to the place where it feels comfortable in killing main characters off when the time is right. There was no going back for Jimmy when he sided with the Commodore and Eli, and now there’s no going back for Nucky.
There’s a lot of complaining that there are now no real roadblocks for Nucky for season 3, but the show’s tagline has always been “We all have to decide how much sin we can live with,” and I’m curious to see if Nucky was really prepared to become the villain he really now seems to be.
@UU: Not to mention Jimmy’s wife who also had a connection with Richard. Richard is going to fuck some shit up.
Nucky had to avenge the coup by killing one of the leaders. The Commodore was taken care of, same goes for Neri (who was a stooge, anyway).
Jimmy’s story arc ends well – he got his big moment in Ep11, where the audience is shown exactly who Jimmy Darmody really is. That’s why it makes sense to end him now – what else could he possibly do for the show? His only way to successfully squash the sins of his past was to be King, but he just wasn’t cut out for the job.
There were small details in that scene that sort of foreshadow how Nucky is going to deal with what he did. Watch his hand throughout the scene. He’s no gangster. And sooner or later, he’s going to find out that Eli is full of shit, and he WAS the one pushing to kill Nucky and Jimmy wanted to hold back. Once that happens, we may see some Pernsley Dunn style torcher on him.
@LTF, true. She didn’t look at him like some kind of freak, she was kind to him.
@LTF – He could, but I think Gillian may now keep him on a leash. A weird, sexual leash…giving him a new “family” with her and Tommy (and Tommy’s newfound fortune) to take care of. Though Gillian seemed pretty cold, distant, and cruel to Richard, she’s also quite a lonely woman, and she may now find solace being close to the guy Jimmy was closest with. I dunno, but I think the setup for S3 is pretty outstanding.
They killed the one developed character that you could route for and left Eli and Ms Schroder alive. Yeah season 3 is probably a no watch.
Maybe it’s the mark of a good show, that so many of us feel like we have some investment in the characters. At first, I hoped (delusionally) Nucky only wounded him. Then there was that second shot — nope.
Going into season 3 the only story line I’m even remotely interested in is Van Alden’s
i loved it…kinda called it but loved it. this season was the rise and fall of jimmy…he was never supposed to be the boss. when he was in power he never mad any true decision himself. he died on his own terms, hated to see it happen but it needed to. there was no way he and nucky would be able to co-exist. love this show…waiting on jesse to kill walk now
@Mixhail My thoughts exactly. He was the one character on the show you could like beside Richard, and the most developed and rounded one. He had an arch he changed through the course of the show, where everyone else has pretty much been one dimensional. Top that with characters that are so annoying to watch like Agent Alden, Eli, and Ms Schroder and you lost me.
Well my Jimmy hipster haircut is now obsolete, that was a quick trend, now how will I stand out in Zucotti Park?
Yeah everyone’s talking about how Richard can seek his vengeance and this and that next year, but the dude is not a power player on the show, so whatever impact he has will be minimal in the grand scheme of things.
And they really did ruin Margaret this season. I liked her alot in season 1, but damn that girl waivers between sides like crazy and its way annoying.
Nikki Finke must be so confused about what everyone’s talking about.
Your move, Jersey Shore.
I dont know why everyone thinks Richard will take revenge instead of just going off into the woods to commit suicide.
Jimmy went out like a champ. Margaret has to become the yin to Nucky’s yang. He’s going full gangster and she’s going full Catholic. She seems to know when he’s lying, and that is going to be important moving forward, because Jimmy was the only other character who could do so. Next season I see AR, Eli and Owen getting killed off.
Let’s hope all the main characters on Luck are killed off in the second ep.
Wait…they also killed NED STARK??? Oh, crap!
Seriously, it had to be, though I was expecting Nucky to have Margaret whacked first. Turns out that would have been a genius move…
I really liked the ending, felt like the only honest way out of the arcs surrounding the main story. As someone mentioned earlier, the dog tags were a great foreshadowing. I anticipated the end of James when he told Richard he had to go alone, as if he was accepting the inevitable after doing the best he could to make things ‘right,’ along with Richard’s slow paced explanation to Jimmy’s mom about where he went. Showing up unarmed proves (to me, at least) Jimmy knew what was going to happen. I’m sure I was not alone in getting goosebumps with the trench flashback.
/deep exhale
Maybe I’m a mark for a period piece mob TV show, but Nucky shooting Jimmy felt a lot like the times Walt White took steps toward becoming the opportunistic gangster he’s become in Breaking Bad. Something about Nucky getting his hands dirty also made me think fondly of the big reveals in Season 3 of The Wire regarding Stringer and Avon. For the first time in several episodes, I felt a genuine fear and dislike for the Nucky character; he finally showed his fangs.
But most of all, I will miss Michael Pitt’s weekly performances immensely.
Josh- another way you could tell Jimmy knew he was going there to die: after Manny told him he would be getting his revenge, Jimmy responded with “Is that what this is?”
For me Michael Pitt was the main character. Going to be interesting to see where they go in Season 3. I just hope it’s not “Here’s Jimmy’s wacky cousin from upstate!” *in walks gangster Poochie*
It’s a great point they make in the HitFix interview about having too many characters. I think this is where True Blood lost its way – it created so many story arcs it stopped being believable (or as much as that show could be anyways), so when they started killing off characters it felt like housekeeping. Better to man up, resolve the story and move forward.
That is a massive problem with True Blood, but that show should have killed off loads of secondary and tertiary characters, specifically Tara. BE has killed loads of those type of players, but in this case Jimmy is a central one, it would have been like Ryan Kwanten dying at the end of season two – a character who was generally the best thing about the show (ware-panthers weren’t his fault).
Agree that Jimmy was arguably the best character…until I found out he was making sweet love to his own mother. The creepiness in that made me like him a bit less. Although, in his defense, his mom is a milf.
Shoulda been you, half the characters on the Walking Dead.
@poonT–technically, his mom is a mi actually did f.
I agree with Otto way up at the top. It’s good to have a show that has the balls to write themselves into a corner and deliver. I don’t know how many of you watch SOA but that ending was weak. This finale blew me away. Now it’s on winter and staff to write their way out of it so I’ll definatley tune in to see if they can. I loved jimmy as a character, but one of them had to go the way it all went down. We should’ve all known it wasn’t the guy in the opening credits, but it still was a shock they actually did it. That’s good writing, and season 3 will tell us if they can back it up. If they can’t, at least they took their shot, didn’t back off and try to explain it as “you don’t get it, this is a pulpy soap opera for dude’s.” I’m not sure where the fuck the go from here, but to me that’s the perfect season finale.
I’m mad about the death of Jimmy, but I understand why it had to happen – like when my dad used to beat me with the two by four with a nail in it. The show set it up so that really it was the only way to go. When the hit on Nucky failed, you knew there was going to be retribution for it. I’m glad the show’s creators didn’t cop out and give us some lame resolution. I’d like Harrow to be a bigger player in AC.
I’m also glad that shows in general now aren’t unnecessarily restricted by what actor is playing what character and allowing that to shape the story for them. Maybe HBO learned that lesson when they deviated so far from the Sookie Stackhouse novels that they didn’t pull that crap with Game of Thrones and now they said no, unfortunately the logical way for this to end is for this dude to get capped. Bravo, Mr. Winters.
I’m just happy that new favorite (barely edging out Richard Half-face and Chalky White) Manny Horvitz survived. If we had to choose, it was a choice well made!
When Manny Horvitz was introduced with that kick-ass monologue in the finale, I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. And it’ll be so sweet when Harrow puts the blade in his throat next season. I much preferred this end for Jimmy over the heroin-addict angle that I feared was coming after Angie was killed.
I’d like for this to open the door for a Chalky vs. Nucky battle. After all, it was Jimmy who delivered the Klan members to Chalky’s barn, and gave more money than requested to the suffering families. I’m sure Chalky will remember who ignored the politics and gave him what he wanted.
It won’t be long till Owen turns on Nucky, too. And I think Owen is pretty bad ass.
I’m just shocked that there is this much love for Jimmy. I thought he was easily the weakest part of the story. Well, a close second to Mrs. Schroeder, but still just annoying and pointless.