Boardwalk Empire Finale: We Waited All Season For This?

**SPOILER ALERT**

Last night’s season 2 finale of “Boardwalk Empire” has generated some strong reactions from fans, as Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) was killed at the end of the episode by Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi). The plot twist rivaled the death of Ned Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” as one of the bigger TV surprises of 2011, though in this case the twist seemed forced and out of place.

Many fans are upset, as Jimmy was a popular character. He was a tortured soul who was an integral part of the storyline through the first two seasons. That said, I’m not bothered that the writers decided to kill him off, but I wasn’t very impressed with the way they got to this point.

Season 2 revolved around the many troubles faced by Nucky Thompson. Nothing was going right for him, and Jimmy joined forces with his father with the encouragement of his bizarre mother (Gretchen Mol) to try to take back control of Atlantic City from Nucky. From the beginning it was clear that Jimmy wasn’t cut out to be a boss. He was indecisive and didn’t have much business sense. Next to characters like Al Capone (brilliantly played by Stephen Graham) and Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), Jimmy looked like a naive kid as he bumbled his way through a bunch of failed deals. When it came time to kill off Nucky, Jimmy didn’t have the stomach for it, though he reluctantly went along with the plan when pressed by the real gangsters and Nucky’s brother Eli.

Yet Jimmy and fellow war vet Richard Harrow (Jack Huston) never hesitated to use violence violence against others, like scalping a foul-mouthed rich guy who ridiculed Jimmy and struck him in the face with his cane as his business ventures went south. Jimmy was an enforcer, not a leader.

But there was something deeper going on, as Jimmy was fighting all sorts of demons, from his troubled childhood to his relationship with his mother to his experiences in the war. The writers tried to convey this throughout the season, and frankly it wasn’t very fun to watch. You wanted to root for Jimmy, but the wild swings in his behavior made little sense.

All of this strange behavior became easier to understand in one of the final episodes when we had a long flashback to Jimmy’s time at Princeton. The episode seemed like a waste of time until we saw the scene where Jimmy’s mother has sex with him at the end of a drunken night for both of them. Gretchen Mol’s character was always a little creepy and this took the bizarre relationship to another level. Jimmy then quits Princeton and joins the army, and the war experience finished him off on an emotional level.

Yet this entire setup leads to a moment where Jimmy lets Nucky kill him without a fight as explained by showrunner Terence Winter in a recent interview:

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Boardwalk Empire 2.1 – Welcome Back to Sodom by the Sea

Greetings, all, and welcome back to Prohibition-era Atlantic City. Since the Season 1 DVD set of “Boardwalk Empire” has yet to emerge, I have to admit that my memory on what went on when last we saw Nucky Thompson and the rest of the gang isn’t as fresh as it perhaps ought to be, so I’m hoping that your recollections are similarly imprecise. If not, then lord knows I’ll hear about it, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed and just dive right in, shall I?

The first sight we see this season is a bunch of kids running through the surf, picking up…a bottle? I think it was a bottle. Maybe it’s just because I was watching the episode as an advance screener, but it was so damned dark that I honestly couldn’t tell exactly what they were picking it up. But, hey, it’s a show about running bootleg liquor during Prohibition, so a bottle makes about as much sense as anything else, and I’m going to take a similar stab in the dark and presume that what they’re moving onto trucks in the next shot is crates of the same stuff. Basically, the whole segment is intended to give us a quick look at what all of the usual suspects are doing nowadays, and it looks for the most part that they’re still doing about the same thing they were when we left them. Nucky’s still enjoying the 24-hour party while Margaret remains at home, Jimmy’s busy handling the transport of product to Chalky White, Eli’s recovering from his wounds, Agent Van Alden’s with his wife, and…hey, wow, look how much more energy the Commodore’s got! Amazing how reinvigorated one can be when they stop ingesting poison, huh? Unfortunately, it isn’t long before all of the joviality is replaced by tragedy, with Chalky’s operation being abruptly machine-gunned into oblivion by a bunch of KKK members. Pretty horrifying stuff, and although Chalky manages to make it out alive, he’s rightfully pissed about what’s gone down. (At least he manages to take one of his attackers down before they drive away.)

Nucky and Margaret may be making this relationship work, but it’s clearly having a toll on the kids. After pulling an all-nighter, Nucky arrives to find Teddy ensconced under the dining room table, refusing to go to school because he’s been so traumatized by the nuns, but Nucky talks him out by sharing his own past educational experiences, leaving the adults to enjoy a bit of tense conversation amongst themselves. It might’ve shifted into a little bit of loving, but thanks to the nattering of the children, Nucky bails out, leaving Margaret understandable frustrated. Uh-oh, Teddy, you’re in trouble…

Looking in on Angela and Jimmy, it’s clear that Angela’s still an emotional wreck after losing out on the lesbian love of her life at the tail end of last season. She might be trying to put on the façade of family happiness, but there’s misery dripping from every word out of her mouth, and she obviously has no tolerance for Jimmy’s mother, Gillian. Speaking of which, how incredibly creepy was it when, apropos of nothing, she announced that she used to kiss Jimmy’s wee winkie once upon a time. Talk about your awkward revelations. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Capone’s still got a chip on his shoulder when it comes to people perceiving him as Johnny Torrio’s lackey, as evidenced by his reaction to George Remus, whose ridiculous tendency to refer to himself in the third person completely confuses Capone. Remus submits a plan to help Torrio do an end-run around Nucky Thompson, which Torrio accepts, quickly passing the buck to Capone on the matter of informing Nucky that his services will no longer be required.

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