HBO
“The honorable Enoch Thompson.” That’s how Nucky is introduced in the very first episode of Boardwalk Empire. If five full seasons of murdering, cheating the law, and cheating on his wife have taught us anything, it’s that he’s anything but: he’s the immoral Enoch Thompson, ruled by not so much a code as an endless pursuit for a nickel. Then a dime. Then a quarter. Then $2,364,120. Nucky’s been tainted ever since the day he tried to catch a sinking coin in the ocean.
Cut to black. While The Sopranos went with the ambiguous ending, Boardwalk Empire left with a definitive message: money and revenge and power, they rot the soul. Nucky lost his the day he gave Gillian to the Commodore, and it came back to kill him decades later in the form of Tommy Darmody, a boy who Richard tried so hard to keep pure. But Tommy was consumed by what Nucky did to his grandma, his father. Nucky wanted to leave, to travel to the future, where exotic women sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on blinking boxes, but he couldn’t, not when his past caught up to his present. Tommy’s final bullet even goes through Nucky in the same place where Jimmy was shot in season two.
(The “future” scene felt like it was from a different show, or maybe a David Lynch movie, but it worked as a meta commentary on how people are temporary, but TV is forever.)
Did Nucky deserve to make it through the show alive? No, probably not, and even he seemed to realize he wasn’t beginning a new life, he was ending an old one. Plus, if he hadn’t been shot, he was about to be arrested by a pair of IRS agents. His goodbye to his brother (again mistaking compensation for compassion), his last dance with Margaret (a tender moment that ends when there’s business to be done), his trip to see Gillian, reminiscent of when Tony Soprano visited Uncle Junior, a once-proud man decaying, in the hospital — Nucky’s beyond the surf line and pretty sure he’s not coming back.
The big difference between the two scenes is that it’s not Tony’s fault Junior’s there, at least not directly. But Gillian, who’s robbed of an organ the way Junior was stripped of his dignity? That’s on Nucky. Maybe he was never the most interesting character, and he certainly wasn’t the most charismatic, but what’s interesting abut the honorable Enoch Thompson, especially in “Eldorado,” was that he didn’t expect redemption. He hated himself too much to hope for forgiveness; he never felt like anything more than the son of a drunk who lived and died on the boardwalk when he could have been so much more.
At least his suits looked good. Let’s go through some of the other characters in this episode.