TV Review: Boardwalk Empire’s Season Finale and the First Episode of Luck

Last night, HBO served up a special one-two punch of dramas you were either excited by or bored with depending on who you are. It was the second season finale of Boardwalk Empire followed immediately by a special sneak preview of the first episode of their new drama Luck.

Let’s start with Boardwalk Empire. I’ve often been frustrated by this show’s extremely slow pace, great supporting cast with more interesting characters than their are interesting things for them to do, and Steve Buscemi’s completely cold lead character. That last one especially has bugged me this season as Nucky has been on the ropes for most of it, but the show hasn’t given us sufficient reasons to care. More than ever, he comes off as whiny, nagging, not as crafty as the show would have us believe (we keep hearing that Nucky is a strategic genius more than actually witnessing it), and just generally unlikable. I love anti-heroes on television–I consider Breaking Bad’s Walter White the most likable character on TV because he’s so real–but there’s just something missing about Nucky Thompson.

Nucky isn’t particularly smart. He doesn’t come from a place that makes his actions all that fascinating (in fact, he’s a fat cat). His elite WASPiness eliminates any of the quirkier aspects other anti-heroes might have. And then of course there’s the fact that so few people like him, virtually all of his friends and relatives were plotting his downfall this season. Having actually watched the show, it’s not hard to see why. I guess it’s not just that Nucky is a lousy, unlikable person, it’s also that he’s not very interesting. Buscemi’s annoyed portrayal makes Nucky seem more inconvenienced than truly riveting or tragic.

Well, last night’s season finale didn’t correct any of that but at least it fixed the pacing problems. The season finale and the episode before it finally kicked the show into high gear with murder, betrayal, incest, and a new direction for every major character. Several members of that great supporting cast are finally getting things to do, and the season finale ended with (major spoiler) Nucky executing his former protege Jimmy in cold blood after Jimmy had saved Nucky’s life. It was blatantly obvious that Nucky killed the only person that truly loved him, and that even liking Nucky is becoming downright impossible.

Then there was HBO’s new drama Luck, which is set on a horse race track and follows around the various schemers and dreamers that circle it. I think the show made a tactical mistake in giving 60 percent of the pilot episode to this quartet of loser gamblers and would have much rather seen the more interesting Dustin Hoffman, who’s only in a couple scenes. I’m a little worried that Luck will get lost in the world of racetrack gambling (some of the lingo in the episode is hard to decipher if you aren’t into gambling) and go the way of HBO’s overrated, jazz-lovers-only Treme and make a show about an insular world that is hard for the uninitiated to get into. Still, I’m willing to give this show a second chance, especially once the excellent Michael Gambon shows up as a sophisticed but shady British gambling tycoon.

Supporting Scene Stealers: On Luck it’s too soon to tell but Dennis Farina seems the most likable so far…and on Boardwalk Empire it’s hard to say because there are so many. There’s Chalky White (the black leader of Atlantic City having troubles with the KKK), a young Al Capone, a gangster WWI veteran with only half a face, and many others. Still, I would chose Michael Shannon’s Nelson Van Alden, a rigidly religious but secretly weird prohibition agent that is a walking embodiment of America. Van Alden casts scorn on everyone around him but remains oblivious to his own misdeeds, you’d call him a hypocrite except that you know he truly believes everything he’s saying.