Boardwalk Empire Ending With Season 5

Cry us an ocean — an Atlantic Ocean! HBO announced on Wed. Jan 9, at its Television Critics Assn. press tour, that Season 5 will be the swan song for its hit series Boardwalk Empire. Series creator Terence Winter issued a statement: “We’re thrilled to get the go-ahead for a fifth season of ‘Boardwalk Empire.’ After much discussion with my creative team and HBO, we’ve decided to wrap up the series after such a great run and look forward to bringing it to a powerful and exciting conclusion.”

Unless we’re nuts, he got the go ahead for the 5th season months ago and said that first sentence back then. He evidently had no clue that he would have to wrap it up at the time or even after the 4th season ended because he certainly appeared to be contemplating a longer run in an interview with IndieWire.

Winter hinted that Season 4 was not the end of Gillian Darmody’s storyline, who has been on the show from Season 1; or that of Dr. Valentin Narcisse, introduced last season as Chalky White’s nemesis. Their war cost Narcisse his singer, his obsession, Daughter Maitland, and it cost Chalky his real daughter, Maybelle.

The biggest problem with the show is that there were always too many storylines going on at one time, too many real life gangsters involved in the Atlantic City doings — to the point where many viewers favored watching Al Capone scenes out in Chicago; or Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lanksy in New York.

There may be some who would like to see more of their favorite gangsters, but let’s face it — everyone knows what happens to the real-life gangsters. It’s the fictional characters on the show that have to be dealt with rather than leave people to wonder what became of them.

There’s Margaret Schroeder Thompson, Nucky Thompson’s estranged wife. Last we saw of her, Arnold Rothstein was moving her and her kids into better living quarters in exchange for insider information she could provide by virtue of her Wall Street job. It seemed like they were perhaps considering setting her up as Rothstein’s mistress. We know one of his mistresses committed suicide. Don’t think anyone wants to see that happen no matter how much they dislike Margaret. What would become of her kids if she dies?

And we must remember they are not going to have time to have their so-called “build-up” episodes.

They will also have to deal with Chalky White and Dr. Valentin Narcisse on the East Coast; Eli Thompson (a fictionalized version of Nucky’s brother) now exiled to Chicago where the fictional prohi turned Capone-crony, Nelson Van Alden now lives with his wife, Sigrid. They had set Eli’s son, Willie, up to become Nucky’s new protegee, and then we had Sally Wheet in Tampa who Nucky was going to run off with to Cuba before Eli killed Agent Knox.

Lotsa loose ends to tie up, apparently in a lot less time than Terence Winter initially thought he had.