Season 1

Enjoying what I've watched thus far. The 20s feel like a place I want to be. Everything is fun and bright. And then you know, check the fuck out before the late 30s come around. I do find myself in a Sopranos place occasionally where I'm like "Wait, who the fuck are you?" Lots and lots of characters where I'm not always positive if they're important or not. There's a lot going on.

Nucky is quite charismatic, I enjoy Steve Buscemi. Also, love Al Capone, that shithead friend of ours. He's a big scary bull that charges into rooms, but also he is funny. Jimmy scares me. He feels like our Christopher character and I just think of how Christopher ends up. Sitting on dogs and getting whacked because of how much of a fuckup he is.

New insult: "X probably doesn't even know about the League of Nations..."

Loved the ending song of the season "Life's a Funny Proposition After All". Apparently the original is by George M. Cohan.

Season 2

Jimmy made me wanna scream throughout this season. Him and his mother. His sociopath mother. We were all screaming when that scene happened. The runway towards his death was well-laid and at that point not unwelcome. Even if I thought he was a useful foil to Nucky.

I was very surprised where we've gone with Margaret. I was totally expecting her to be a Carmella character, but with that signing away of the land, it seems like she may be the next villain? Dunno how that'll work, given she and Nucky are married now. But I don't really see us coming back from that.

I did quite enjoy the plot element of Nucky giving the Commodore faction exactly what they wanted, knowing full well that pit of vipers would collapse in on itself the moment it had the run of things. Very fun to watch.

Review

This show became real trash after season 2. We did watch all of it but I felt very little reason to write down any thoughts as we were journeying through it. The writers led this show directly off a cliff because of two main reason in my mind.

First, everything's so goddamn dark. There are no wins and no levity. Everyone that is fun either dies or suffers. There is never any justice. The Sopranos has monsters but there is justice in the world and they tend to get got in the end. We started making predictions based entirely on "what's the literal worst fucking thing that could happen?" And so so often we were right on the money. It's just so fucking grim. I was actively telling Nucky to just walk into the ocean and kill himself because he has no legacy, no friends, no reason to even be doing anything. Why do we kill Patricia Arquette? Like literally what purpose does it serve?

The other big issue with Boardwalk Empire is that events and people's actions are so contrived. We stop doing an actual character drama and set up ridiculous scenarios where people do things because they have to do things to move along the plot. We have a character who is a terrifying paladin played by world-class actor Michael Shannon. What do we do with him? Have him do the things that would naturally come to his character? Maybe work his way into Capone's empire and take it down for God? No, let's make him a sniveling worm for 4 seasons because we can't figure out what to do with him. Because his inmate character attributed directly conflict with where we want the plot to go. Just to name one example. Or why in the fuck is Eli allowed to live after fucking over Nucky twice? He betrays Nucky once, goes to prison. That makes sense. The natural thing is for him to either learn not to do that again. Or if he does, then he's gotta die. But he doesn't. Because we've decided we want him to be a miserable drunk in season 5. Again, thing into this grim shitty show.

I really hate that Nucky died from stepping on a rusty nail. Why did Rusty Nail kill Nucky? He said something along the lines of the Whore of Babylon always talked about how horrible Nucky was and how he destroyed their family. But...no. Rusty Nail didn't like Whore at any point. By the time, and after, Richard saved him - Rusty Nail was actively afraid of her. Whore was in a nuthouse after that point so they never would have interacted. I guess she could've sent letters theoretically, but Richard's wife and sister didn't even know Whore so I don't really think they would have facilitated a random nut communicating with a child. Why did he dislike Nucky at all? It's not even like a told but not shown situation. There was just like no impetus for it at all unless I totally missed something? Was just something I was thinking about.