Continued from Boardwalk Empire Season Overview Parts 1 and 2

Since it’s apparent the season starts in 1931 after a seven year leap through time and presumably ends the same year, it’s been striking people’s curiosity as to how Terence Winter will bring his incredible series to a logically satisfying conclusion along with its artistic integrity; in tying all these disparate stories together, both for the fictional and historical figures.

Al Capone’s story for instance is expected to come to a close with the famous tax evasion trial, brought up by the efforts of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Jim True-Frost) in order to get a conviction for not just Capone’s liquor distribution but many other following atrocities during his reign as Chicago’s bootlegging kingpin.

At the same time it has been anticipated as to how Winter and his crew will wrap up the show as one whole coherent narrative and meditation on America’s soulful and flamboyant yet nefarious and brutal past, the various effects it has had over the people of the era, and how the show’s major themes on loyalty, greed, gender, race, faith, and existentialism have a role in transcending the characters and their lives by series end.

On top of that I do believe there is a good number of viewers looking forward to finally see the comically sly bootlegger Mickey Doyle (Paul Sparks) meet his hilarious end.  If he were to meet some form of demise I’d probably remember him as the most gifted interloper to have walked the face of the earth.

But all in all, the show’s most prominent character is Nucky Thompson.  His experience in managing both functions of a politician and gangster, and how much of a tortured man he’s become based on his melancholy childhood, his tragic early adulthood, and the foreboding of an uncertain future with the Great Depression in tow and the upcoming repeal of Prohibition, sets the foundation.

However considering that Terry Winter’s fictional depiction of Enoch Johnson is as a criminalized politician and gangster of transgressions ranging to the full extent of major vice over the years, it shouldn’t surprise fans that instead of fully retiring and riding off into the sunset with Tampa speakeasy proprietor Sally Wheet (Patricia Arquette), he would somehow be incarcerated or killed off, regardless of the man’s historical account of indictment in 1941.

The writers for sometime now have established the idea pretty well that there is not meant to be a permanent moral center to the story and world, but rather to set up the natural and more believable causes of each character’s inevitable circumstance, whether they’d be facing annihilation or seizing opportunities to survive as well as have the writers contribute a more elaborate story to a surviving character.

As Season 5 progresses, I hope to see all the major players of the series complete their historical journeys in going out with a big bang the way The Wire and Breaking Bad did, and not with a somewhat anticlimactic or open-ended finale with other great shows like The Sopranos and Dexter.

On a scale from 1 to 10 I’d so far give Boardwalk Empire a 9.6.  I do believe it should go down as some of the best quality television for years to come.

The series is TV-MA for strong adult content and graphic violence. Season Premiere was September 7th on HBO.  Seasons 1-5 are available on HBO GO while the complete Fourth Season is now in stores.