This Season of "Boardwalk Empire"!

[Worf101]

All I can say is "WOW". Sex, violence, more sex and more violence... a little instrospective character development... more sex and gobs o' violence! Nekid wimmens, nekid (and aroused) mens. Everything but the kitchen sink. Great season thus far.

Worf

[Smokey]

All I can say is "WOW". Sex, violence, more sex and more violence... a little instrospective character development... more sex and gobs o' violence! Nekid wimmens, nekid (and aroused) mens.

What the hell kind of review is this :D

[Worf101]

Short and to the point there was bad weather a comin'. Folks comin' down from the hills needed food and shelter!

Worf

[dean_martin]

This season has been gruesome in a good way, but Buscemi did some of his best work in the last episode. The Rosetti guy is nuckin' futts. Michael Shannon/Van Alden has some competition in the weird/crazy department for sure.

[markw]

Well, now that it's over, a few observations on the finale:

1) It was great to see Richard Harrow unleashed finally. You knew they had to eventually. You don't keep him around for his good looks.

2) Say bu-bye, Arnold. Nucky, the master manipulator, always comes up smellin like roses. Just when you think he's down and out, he turns two adversaries against each other and walks away calmly brushing the dust off his coat.

3) Al Capone is one sleazy, deadly mo-fo. It was good to see him in action here, but I don't think anyone really trusts him, and I can't blame 'em.

4) It was good to see Nucky and Chalky "officially" bond.

5) I would like to have seen Nucky take out Gyp myself, but you can't have everything. I think Gyp deserved a better, or at least more satisfying, death than they gave him.

6) What, no update on Val Alden in te finale? I loved his turning to "the dark side" story line.

7) I hope they keep Steven Root around. He's one of my favorite character actors.

[Worf101]

Yep it was a great finale. I agree Mark, Mr. Harrow was/is the real deal. I actually liked the scene at this girlfriends house VERY much. It was good to see Harrow reconcile with her Father. "You don't come home like this." I think the ole man'll go to bat for him now and they'll wind up married.

Gillian's either dead or a stone Junkie now. She'll be Nucky's guilty responsibility until he finds out she set him up, then she'll follow her son to the grave.

Gyp got what he deserved a knife in the back from a confederate. He was a mad dog, as likely to bite friend or foe. A man who pistol whipped a priest while robbing the church. A better fate? Are you chittin' me? What he go was too good fer him.

I too wanted to find out what wazzup with former agent Alden. That wasn't fair. Happy to see Mrs. Thompson gone. Her whinging and hand wringing was getting on my nerves. Like Carmella in "The Sopranos"... stop whining already, you're the wife of a violent/evil man, you've blood on YOUR hands too... get over it already!

Great season.

[markw]

I really wanted to see Nucky go postal on Gyp for blowing up Billie kent.

As for Gillian, I think she survived. If not, she would not have woken up and, trust me, one shot will not an addict make. I musta missed when she set Nucky up...

[Woochifer]

Wanted to reply much earlier, but I've been playing catch up all season long and didn't want any potential spoilers from this thread.

My impression of the 3rd season is "What series is this?!" I liked the previous seasons because of the interconnected stories involving Nucky and Jimmy, and Nucky's constant teetering between his respectable facade and the dirty works that pay for all that sheen.

This season went all gangster all the time. Nucky taking Jimmy out in last season's finale pointed to the series going in this direction, but I didn't expect this huge a shift in the entire feel of the series. Rather than the glamorous parties and society pretenses, the 3rd season was much grittier. Just the seediness of gangsters doing gangster stuff.

Great stuff seeing the shifting alliances, and Nucky getting over on Rothstein (who in turn had screwed Lucky and Meyer), and getting into a marriage of convenience with Capone and Chalky. After the events of last season, and earlier this season, now you got Nucky going full circle with his little brother. The machinations between the warring factions, and Nucky trying to maneuver his way around everything, was the strongsuit of this season.

If there was a weak link in this season, it was Gyp Rosetti. Yes, he's crazy, he's dangerous, he's into weird sex, he's a bad mofo. But, I thought the character crossed the line into cartoonish buffoonery too often. Take it down a notch, make the character more believable, and that would have made for a more compelling adversary.

The biggest disappointment in the series continues to be the criminal underutilization of Van Alden. Yes, he's crazy too, but I feel his conflict. I knew from his moving to Cicero (Al Capone's stronghold) last season, that his storyline would eventually merge with the Capone story. And when he crossed paths with O'Banion (Capone's real life arch enemy and the intended target of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), I thought things would really heat up. But, Van Alden getting flipped by Capone for selling bootleg Norwegian booze was kind of an anticlimactic fizzle. And we also find that Van Alden's "wife" might be even crazier than him! We'll see next season if Van Alden's story can better utilize the Capone vs O'Banion gang war angle.

The Harrow story was done well. I liked how he tried to inch his way back into a normal life, only to find himself dragged back to what he does best -- killing everything in sight. Killing is in his nature, but unlike the gangsters, Harrow has to have some moral justification. The pretense of protecting Jimmy's son gave him the license to go Terminator on Gyp's gang.

I was glad to see Gillian elevated to regular status last season, and her understated cunning always makes for great entertainment (and Gretchen Mol's easy on the eyes as well). Just when I was getting creeped out by her seducing that bumpkin who happened to look like her son, we find that she was merely scheming to graft his dead body over to the morgue so she could obtain a death certificate for Jimmy. Cold. Then she tries the same thing on Gyp, only to get OD'd on heroin herself. I think she'll be back. Too many unresolved lines with Nucky remain.

At the end of last season, I saw the series focusing more on the gangster stories, and obviously the series did exactly that. But, I also thought that Mrs. Thompson's land "donation" to the church would loom much larger than it actually did. She did some manipulations of her own (and carried on with Slater), but her storyline kinda fizzled out by midseason.

With this season finale, you got Nucky and his brother basically vowing to shrink their trusted inner circle and go underground. What it means for the plotline, I have no idea. Does it mean that Nucky will no longer maintain any legitimate business interests? Will he just disappear from public view, and just ride the tidal shifts between the different gangland alliances? Obviously, the secondary storylines involving the different gangster factions are heating up. Otherwise, lot of question marks about some of the more prominent characters.