Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Thread - "Margate Sands" SEASON FINALE

This confused me. From Lucky Luciano's wikipedia:
Rothstein served as a mentor for Luciano. In 1923, after ruining his reputation in the criminal community with a botched drug deal, Luciano went to Rothstein for advice.
I assumed they put their spin on it or Lucky makes a fool of himself again and actually does go to AR for advice.
If you read the Terrace Winter Interview that somebody posted earlier you will see that he is trying to stay true to characters that are historic figures. Meyer and Luciano end up being business partners until Luciano gets deported to Italy when he is older and dies there not much later after deportation. Meyer eventually retires from being the "mobs accountant" and dies of old age
Lucky and Meyer never betray each other, problems sure but never a split.
I wonder if Richard knew that Gyp was going to be light on men when he stormed through the house? Richard had overkill, one-man army, quick scope, fast hands and lightweight perks lol
I think he was planning to hit that night regardless but was hiding out in the woods (or maybe in the house the whole time) watching and saw the men leave so he decided to strike then.
 
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The only actor who I don't like is the person who plays lucky. I just don't think he does a good job with that character.
 
The way they killed off Gyp was stupid, anti climatic and without any sort of vengeance which is a major undertone of this show.
If you've been paying attention from the first ep it was never personal for Nuck. He told Gyp it was just business when this all started and he stayed true to that in the end. He wanted to be conservative in the beginning and now he's trying to be ghost status. The only time it could've got personal was when Billie died but I'm sure Nuck realized just like that Broadway entertainer mentioned that Billie wasn't the first and she won't be the last. So all he had to do was take care of the problem. Things were going to be anti climactic once Harrow did his thing.


Listen to what Nuck says to Eli in the car at the end. It's clear he never had any real animosity towards Gyp, he was just an enemy that needed to die. Same way he killed that thief out in that house that stole his liquor.
 
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Next season will be Lucky and Meyer since AR is def gon go down for this. I really need Doyle's muffin cap peeled back. I don't see how dude survived this long. Interested to see if Chalky does get the club on the boardwalk.

Wonder if Harrow will return at some point and what will become of Gillian. Don't care about Margaret anymore, her story hit its peek imo

To those upset about how Gyp went out, look at it this way, son was a pawn in a sense. He wasn't a big time boss, he was a pawn so why should he go out like a boss when he wasn't?
 
Some of you need to spend five minutes and read Winter's interview a few pages back.. it answers a lot of questions and saves repeated questions.
Not having a final scene between torrid and Capone leaves a lot to be desired

And I hope that isn't the last of van Alden because that would be ridiculous

What happened with the attorney general too? After that guy shot himself that was it?

So Nucky committed an act of war when they took out all of massareia's men right?

Also the way I took it was that by next season's start rothstein will already be in prison. Why would that guy give up his own distillery tho
What guy? Nucky got it when he made his deal because it wasn't being used. Nucky gave it up because he was backed into a corner and had nothing else to negotiate with. Nucky responded to Masseria's act. If Nucky committed an act of war, then Joe was already guilty since he supported Gyp. Call it payback or justice or an act of war, however Joe wants to interpret it is on him.
 
Solid finale, no complaints from me.

Gyp was a great character, but he had to go and I'm not that disappointed how it happened. 

I'm glad to read how they're going to approach the historical accuracy, that answers a lot of future questions. 

Richard's rampage was excellent and the soldier to soldier talk he and the father had was a nice touch as well. 

Chalky survives and will get his club. Eli survives and will likely be Nucky's right hand man. Capone got his taste of blood and is back to Chicago. We'll see what they do with Margaret. I'm glad she had the abortion because an illegitimate baby could be a bit too much of a soap opera storyline and frees her up a bit. While Gillian has been terrible, her line to Nucky did help me sympathize with her because she referenced how Nucky made her go upstairs to the Commodore's room and basically sold her to him.

I'll come back after I think about it some more. A lot to process..
 
If you read the Terrace Winter Interview that somebody posted earlier you will see that he is trying to stay true to characters that are historic figures. Meyer and Luciano end up being business partners until Luciano gets deported to Italy when he is older and dies there not much later after deportation. Meyer eventually retires from being the "mobs accountant" and dies of old age

Interesting to see which historical figures start to play bigger roles in next season. Its obvious Capone is going to have problems with O'banion so we will definitely see more of Frankie Yale if they stay true to history. I wonder if they will give bigger roles to Peg Leg Lonergan and Bugsy Siegel. Also theres tons of new guys they could introduce like Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, etc.
 
Highlighted some portions that were particularly important.
Terence Winter interview about the season finale and what may come.
The first time we see Nucky this season, it's a classic gangster moment, where he orders the thief shot in the head, yet it's not until the last scene of it that he seems to fully accept it when he finally takes the flower off his lapel after he gets the "Are you Nucky Thompson?" What did Nucky learn? Has he finally accepted that this is who he is now?

I think the full realization of what it means to be a gangster finally sets in by the end of the year. The whole "half a gangster" thing sort of cuts both ways. You can't survive as a half a gangster. You can't be this public figure, glad-handing strangers all the time. You've got to start thinking about keeping it a little more low key. By the end of the year, I think Nucky has learned a lesson. He says to Eli in the finale, "I don't want anybody coming close to me that we don't already know." He's a different guy.

He wants to keep people at a distance, and yet there are a bunch of moments in last week's episode where he seems to recognize how insulated he's become. He doesn't know Chalky's phone number and knows nothing about Eddie, and he realizes, 'Hey, maybe this was a mistake. Maybe this is why I'm in so much trouble now, because I've been off dealing with Billie Kent and other things and not dealing with the people I work with.'

To survive in this new world, the people who have your back and who are closest to you, it might be a good time to sit down and have coffee with the help, you know. These are the people who his life depends on. There's some real moments of clarity there. It's like Chalky says to him: "You go without, and find out what you really need." You find out who your friends really are.  It's definitely a wake-up call to Nucky that maybe Eddie Kessler is somebody worth getting to know a little better.

Did the writing of this season feel different, not just because Jimmy wasn't around but because Gyp was a more classical gangster movie kind of anatgonist than some of the previous people Nucky's gone up against in past seasons? 

Every season has felt like its own completely separate movie in a way. It's all depending on what the circumstances are. It had its own challenges. Some of it was more fun, some of it was more challenging, some of it was difficult, but it's all part of the same piece, obviously. But each season, depending on the circumstances, just feels vastly different to me.

Even with the people who died last season, this is still a huge cast of characters, and now spread even wider than before. So Chalky was missing for the middle of the season, Van Alden tended to pop up every other episode, Richard was absent for a while and then very important at the end. How do you try to balance that out, in terms of having all these great actors and characters to work with, but who aren't tied in to what Nucky is doing every minute? 

That's always been the nature of the show, and always been one of the challenges of the show. On the one hand, one of the first rules of show business is "always leave them wanting more." We've got so many fascinating, compelling characters, and they'll appear and disappear for a while. The reality is, we just couldn't possibly fit, everybody can't have a storyline in every episode, there's not enough time in the hour. In general, we can't service every character in every episode as much as we'd like to. Some of our first drafts come in at 80 pages, and they have storylines that involve Van Alden or Richard, and we just have to pick and choose. It's really just a question of balancing the storylines over the course of 12 hours. After a while, it's like cooking a good meal: you add a little flavor here, or this there. You really want to get back to Van Alden, or see Chalky or Capone, but you don't want to just wedge them in there if they don't fit into the bigger story you're telling. I look at the season as one piece, even though it's broken up into individual episodes, or chapters of the book. They're all one big story. Samuel was a good example; we only saw him before in episode 2, knowing full well that he'd pay off in a huge way in episode 11. I knew he had a memorable enough turn in episode 2 that I didn't feel the need to have to go back and revisit him to remind people before 11 who he is and what he's doing. It's sort of like music. You plot it out and you hear the notes as they fall on your ear, and you go, 'This sounds right.' Once you're anticipating getting back the characters you really like, but sometimes it doesn't work that way.

You said that it's like a book, and David Simon used to always say that about "The Wire," and he says it now about "Tremé," and that you can't judge the story in episode 4 until you get to episode 12. 

That's what's challenging for us about the abundance of weekly recapping and people making these declarations about whether something makes sense or not, 'This felt like treading water.' Yeah, taken on its own, it might, but trust us that it's all part of a bigger piece. It's a cog in a much bigger wheel, and it will pay off. Things don't happen by accident, they're there for a reason. We're well aware of that. It's like reviewing a book chapter by chapter, and just saying it doesn't work.

Samuel was obviously one of those; when he popped up again to save Eddie's life, I said, "Of course." And we spent a lot of time with Margaret in the hospital on the childbirth class, and it seems to pay off with her having to get the abortion. 

Yeah, of course.

How much of a challenge is it to come up with stories for Margaret at a time when she wants nothing to do with Nucky. You've got Kelly Macdonald, she's a great actress and you obviously want to have her on the show, but how do you use her, given that she, in her ideal world, would run off to Brooklyn and never go back? 

Well, that's sort of what happened. The bigger question is season 4. We're already working on that. There are ways to integrate her character back into Nucky's world. So stay tuned for next September. It is a challenge. It's very similar to the challenge of writing Carmela Soprano. Realistically, this is an intelligent woman who is questioning what she's doing with this brute of a question, why wouldn't she just leave? Psychologically, sometimes people just stick in their situation even if it's bad for them. In the case of Carmela, it was increasingly challenging to have her complaining and have her in danger, and then the same thing with Margaret. You would think, "Just pack up and go." Then they're off your series, of course. But people do stay in relationships for all kinds of reasons. This season was a journey for Margaret, seeing the woman fly away in the plane, asking what's her journey, and she finds a cause that's worthy of her time and ambition.

The one thing I often hear from people is that they really really have liked it when Margaret has wound up playing Nucky's unofficial consiglieri. That's not a role she wants any part of anymore, though I suppose we got a little of it in the episode after the bombing. Can she get back to that place? 

Anything's possible. We're making up the story as we go along. If we wanted to take her in that direction, I guess we certainly could. She's certainly capable of giving advice, but I don't know if that really feels to me like who Margaret really is or who she wants to be.

Richard has become one of the fan favorite characters, and his rampage through the Commodore's house in the finale is one of the most memorable sequences of the finale, if not of the entire series. People keep waiting for the moment when he's going to go work for Nucky so he can become even more prominent. I know you love Jack Huston and this character, but what do you do now with him at this point? 

That remains to be seen in season 4. All of what you've said is true: he's a fan favorite, he's a favorite of ours. You do want to see more of him, you do want to see him and Nucky together, and we're well aware of that, and possibly that's what'll happen in season 4.

So let's talk about what was up with him in season 3. As with Samuel and Chalky, there was a time earlier in the season where we were visiting Richard and visiting Gillian, and not entirely sure what was happening beyond seeing them. And then later it became apparent how this tied in to everything else. At what point did you decide, "We're going to build up to a moment where Richard gets out every single gun he owns and starts killing everyone in sight"? 

Pretty much early on, we knew the resolution of the Gyp Rosetti story, a lot of different stories would be converging toward the finale. We knew Richard would factor into it, not in such a direct way that he's part of Nucky's gang; his story was going on its own trajectory, and those two stories would converge when Gyp ends up at the Artemis Club. We knew that fairly early on in plotting out the season. We also knew how frustrating it would be for some people in the audience where all they want to see is Richard take out his gun collection. For us, it was equally interesting, if not moreso, to see Richard as a person, and just see him fall in love and try to have a normal life, knowing full well that those guns are coming out. I knew people had just been waiting and waiting and waiting, and the anticipation had been building. He hadn't done anything violent in a while other than throttle Julia's father. And then the rampage, which hopefully people who are inclined to like that sort of thing will be satisfied with. I certainly was. Tim Van Patten did just a phenomenal job directing it, as did Jack performing it, and everyone else.

In terms of Gyp, sometimes the antagonists on "The Sopranos" would die at the end of the season, while at others they would stick around. Was there any thought to keeping Bobby Cannavale  around, or did you feel Gyp was too much of a mad dog and had to be put down? 

That's the challenge with all of our great characters who've died. They're so great. You want to keep them alive. But for me, the most satisfying resolution to looking at the season as its own book was that Gyp's gotta go, and in a way that's unexpected and powerful. He's just like a mad dog and just needs to be put down. If he didn't go in 12, you'd think he's gotta go in episode 1 of season 4, so what are we waiting for. The guy's gotta die.

Does Gillian die from the heroin overdose?

No. You're not the first person to ask me that. She does not.

So if she's not dead, then I imagine she is not going to be happy to find that her grandson has been taken from her. 

Probably not.

That certainly could have been an easy way to kill her off. Why did you decide not to?

I guess we just felt there was more story to tell.

What exactly is Nucky's play with Rothstein and Mellon and the Overholt distillery? 

Nucky realized if he held out enough bait for Rothstein to want to make a deal with him that he could get Rothstein to abandon Masseria. So the big thing Nucky had was the huge distillery, so he has Mickey call Rothstein and lay out some bait, "Nucky's got this huge distillery, would do anything to get out of this trouble." Rothstein says let's make a deal, and I'll get Masseria away. After Nucky gives Rothstein what he wants and Nucky gets what he wants, he calls Mellon and says, "You've got criminals in there, shut the place down," and Rothstein ends up with nothing.

Okay, so I want to be clear: this is Nucky abandoning the distillery, rather than finding a clever way to cut Rothstein out of it, right? 

No, he imploded his own deal.


Mellon didn't want anything to do with Nucky to begin with, and I assume he certainly wouldn't want to after this.

Yeah, I don't think they're friends anymore.

Why does Nucky have Capone take out all of Masseria's men rather than simply let them leave town abandon Gyp and go back to New York? Is it just part of the message he wants Tonino to relay to Masseria? That a show of strength would be greeted with respect rather than a desire to keep the war going?

It's both a show of strength to Masseria and a way to **** over Rothstein, who just convinced Masseria to pull his guys out of Atlantic City.

In terms of Rothstein, a question that's come up a lot from fans is your willingness or lack thereof to change history. Lucky got arrested on a drug charge around that time, and you worked that into the show. As the series moves further along, do you become any more willing to say, "Okay, I know these people are real and this is what happened, and this is how they died, but maybe for the sake of this fictional show, something else might happen"?

Not in terms of story points, like how Rothstein died and the basic circumstances surrounding it. Lucky's arrest is a good example. He did get arrested, he did give up his own heroin to get himself out. I took those basic facts and said, "What happened when they gave up the heroin? Who were those cops who arrested him? Were they dirty or clean?" Those were the things I played with in terms of the fiction of it. But the general timeline and historical points of their lives, I won't change. Luciano was arested in 1923 on a drug charge. If we were in that zone in our time frame, it had to happen. I won't ignore it.

Could a wiseguy just take over a town like Tabor Heights back in the day? 

Yeah, it actually happened. This is all based on a real incident in, I think, the Atlantic Highlands. It was basically a gang of bootleggers who realized this was a small Methodist town, quiet little place where nobody paid attention to anything, and it had its own beach access to the ocean. The whole thing culminated in a giant gun battle on the beach on, I believe, July 4, 1923, I believe in the middle of the day, with guys running into water with machine guns. That was the inspiration for this. We thought it was a great, forgotten historical story and we thought it would be fun to do.

I want to go back to the Billie Kent arc. He neglects a lot of his business while tending to her. How did that play into this arc of Nucky becoming more of a gangster? 

Based on the relationship with Margaret falling apart, he's back to his old ways, Billie is a young, fresh, sweet playful girl, and has a little bit of a sexy side. It's just Nucky taking his eye off the ball, fixating on her instead of his business. As he says to Billie, "I just want everything to run without doing anything." And that's not how the world works, and the gangster world. She has a different energy, and is really fresh and fun and sweet, and was a different way to go for him.

How much fun was it writing for, or simply watching, Stephen Root as Gaston Bullock Means? 

Oh, it was great. For me, the flowery dialogue, and the conniving, duplicitous, Foghorn Leghorn-ish flourishes of his dialogue was so much fun to write. He completely gets it and knows how to do that character to the limit. He was great. Exactly what we hoped for. He was a joy to work with. I've been a fan of his for a long time. Such a chameleon.

Is he available for season 4?

We certainly hope so.

Speaking of season 4, I'm excited to hear that both George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane will be writing for you next year.

Yeah, very excited to have them on board. We're just getting started.

How did that come about? 

"Tremé" was coming to an end, I've always been a fan of George's, and just put feelers out, and it turned out he was a fan of the show and had worked with Tim Van Patten before. So we spoke, we had dinner, and we just made a deal. Dennis Lehane, same thing, I think he'd been involved in "The Wire" to a small extent. It's sort of in the same universe, so we reached out to Dennis.

Who burned down the greenhouse? Teddy is playing with kerosene, but he blames a gypsy, and then when Gyp calls the hotel suite, he tells Nucky that the gypsy is calling.

A drifter. In Teddy's imagination, it spun out of control, and in a child's mind, you hear "Gyp," you make the connection. Teddy doesn't know what happened to the guy. For all he knows, that was the gypsy on the phone.

What did Lucky whisper to Masseria? Did he know more details about Nucky's assassination attempt than we thought he did? 

It's just that Nucky is going to move on you. Nothing specific. Just "Be on your guard."

How did you decide not to show the failed hit, and simply have Owen entering the steam baths, and the next we see him, he's in a box? 

We originally were going to show the actual hit gone wrong inside the steam baths. This was just a bizarre, fortuitous mistake that happened. The day we were going to shoot the steam baths, there was a problem with the location. It was a very old building in Brooklyn, and a plaster rosetta that weighed about 30 pounds in the vaulted ceiling, fell down and crashed about three feet from a crewmember. We had already shot the lobby scene and pulled the plug and thought, "We've got to rethink this," and in the discussions after this, I think it was Tim Van Patten who said, 'Do we really need to see this? Wouldn't it be better if we didn't see it?" And I thought about it and decided to wait to get the cut of the episode back to decide, and it was so much more powerful without knowing in advance, and we ended up leaving it. You almost forget in the episode, 'Oh, right, Owen's off doing that.' So many people were surprised he was in the crate. That episode on the set made the episode a little better, and probably saved us a little money.
 
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Vulture's interview with Terrence Winter

He talks about how far he'd like to go and his decisions about historical accuracy.

Boardwalk Empire  fans can rest assured, Nucky Thompson has gone over the edge and will be full-on gangster in season four. And as anyone who's watched Sunday's season three finale knows (and those who haven't should read no further unless spoilers aren't a concern), characters like Al Capone, Chalky White, and Richard Harrow are also becoming valuable allies for the man who really runs Atlantic City. To find out more about what's in store for the large cast of characters, we turned to the man who runsBoardwalk Empire, Terence Winter.

The slogan this season was that you can't be half a gangster — but it could have also been that you can't have half a protagonist.
I'm not sure I agree. What do you mean?

Nucky's finally becoming a whole person: He finally realized that he needs to actually care about the people in his life. He didn't know Chalky White's phone number. He didn't know that Eddie Kessler had a wife and children. He didn't know that Margaret had fallen in love with Owen. He had underestimated his brother Eli. He thought he was being political and astute about maneuvering relationships, that his understanding of politics elevated him above other gangsters, but all of his various alliances were borne of opportunity, not trust. He didn't have real relationships.
Then yes. In a broad sense, Nucky has changed. When the guy on the boardwalk says, "Hey, you're Nucky Thompson," Nucky doesn't answer. That's a very different Nucky from when we first met him. He's not a glad-handing politician anymore. He's had some clarity about what matters, who matters, and he's realizing it might be a good idea to have coffee with the people who are responsible for his life, and ask how their weekends were. When we say, "You can't be half a gangster," it's not just about shooting people. He can't be half a gangster in the sense that he can't be half in this life, or half pay attention. He has to pay attention to this business in a deeper way, which is odd for a guy who basically made his way up as a politician, which is supposedly based on personal relationships, but only in the most superficial sense: "What can you do for me?" That was all selfishness and opportunity. So when he says to Eli, "I don't want anybody coming close to us that we don't already know," he's outlining how he's going to do business in a different way, and I'm really looking forward to exploring that version of Nucky in season four.

When exactly does the season finale take place?
June of 1923.

In two months, then, Nucky's M.O. would have to start to change anyway, since President Harding dies in August of 1923.
Yeah. Unfortunately, that's going to happen off camera, because I don't know how interesting a guy dying in bed is. [Laughs] But [Attorney General] Harry Daugherty is still going to be in office for a while, although he's a vastly different incarnation under Coolidge, and that's when we'll time jump to in season four, in mid 1924, the late spring, when Coolidge is already firmly in charge. And by then, the corruption in office isn't a secret anymore, and Daugherty will be under a big spotlight. The Teapot Dome will be in the headlines, and that's going to affect his ability to shuck and jive, and that will trickle down to Nucky. That will certainly be one of many challenges he faces — some will be political, some will be criminal, some will be personal difficulties, but all of the things he'll face in season four will be different from the past, and they will be equally challenging.

But no Gyp Rosetti. Did you decide to end this season without a cliffhanger before you knew if Boardwalk  would be renewed for a fourth season, so it could serve as a series finale if need be?
You know, I didn't think about that. I'm always optimistic that we will continue, and I'm not a huge fan of cliffhangers to begin with. They always feel sort of cheap to me: "We're not going to tell you what happens to guarantee you come back next September!" If you tell a compelling enough story, people come back anyway.

Have you given any thought to how many subplots or characters you'll have in season four? Some critics felt like there were too many this season, many of whom would just vanish to the point where the audience would forget about them. Even Nucky couldn't remember who Chalky was [when he was concussed] ...
That's great how you put that: Nucky doesn't even remember Chalky. [Laughs] He didn't even remember Eli, either. But that's the nature of the show. We have such a huge cast, and so many different storylines going, so one of our rules is leave them wanting more. That way, when you do see them, you're happy they're there. Everyone's got their favorites — some people want more Al Capone — but there's no way to get them all in one episode. Some of the episodes are bigger than others, and sometimes we aren't as successful as when we drill it down to two people. It's like music, and we have to go with what sounds right. Or it's like cooking — a dash of this, a dash of that — and we're making a meal. But with so many characters, somebody's going to get disappointed every week, and there's not a lot to be done about that — unless we kill off half the cast. And that would upset a lot of people, too. I look at this as one big piece, like one big novel, and these episodes are but chapters of that novel.

You've said before you'd like to have six seasons. What's the bigger picture — the formation of the Big Seven, the gangster conference in Atlantic City, the beginnings of a national crime syndicate? Are all these subplots to serve a greater whole?
Hopefully we'll get to six, if not more than that. Six at minimum to be fully satisfied. And yes, if we get that far, I want to show the Big Seven. Nucky almost alluded to that in episode nine, that he was sort of thinking along those lines, so hopefully we'll get there, or even the end of Prohibition. So yes, I'm thinking of a bigger picture. Certain people will come and go, and minor players or certain people we meet along the way will come to prominence in later years. Even just this season, Chalky's future son-in-law had a minor story in episode two and then came back in a major way in episode eleven. In season four, Chalky will rise to prominence a great deal. And you know the history of 1924: Al Capone will take over Cicero and come into his own. It's the year he wages war with Dean O'Banion, and we know how that ends.

Will Van Alden be pulled into the North Side wars?
He'll be put in the middle of that. I'm a huge fan of history and it's certainly fascinating and rich to depict. But the challenge and fun of it is to mix it into that world, say with Van Alden and Dean O'Banion. I have a rule: I will not alter the basic history of a real-life character to suit our fictional needs in a big way. Lucky Luciano did get arrested in 1923 on a drug charge, and he did get out of it by giving up his stash of heroin, but the circumstances of that are fair game: What did they do with the heroin? Were the cops dirty? And Al Capone and Nucky Johnson were definitely friendly. There's a photo of them on the boardwalk together, that people dispute whether or not is real or part of a smear campaign, but they did know each other well. But it would be ludicrous by 1924, if during that time, he took a bunch of trips to Atlantic City, so for us next season, the Capone story doesn't go to Atlantic City a lot. He's got to interact with Nucky in a different way.

Was it really necessary to dwell on all of Van Alden's efforts to be a door-to-door salesman? Some of the detours — Van Alden selling irons, Margaret teaching sex ed — took a long time to play out. Some critics found the pacing too slow, the subplots too excessive.
Hey — if Van Alden going bananas on his boss was a sitcom, I would watch it every week! [Laughs] I'm sorry not everyone found that interesting. To me, it was worth all of that. Margaret, her story, and the whole birth control arc was a journey. We picked her up and set her adrift. She has all this money and no purpose, she finds meaning doing a greater good, and the ironic twist is that she finds herself pregnant. Where she goes beyond that, you'll have to tune in! But the thing is, what we're doing, these are all parts of a whole, and it all connects, whether you know it or not. It's not haphazard or random, and we're not going to abandon things that set up or add flavor or are part of a bigger piece.

Does any of the criticism ever help, though? Do you ever adjust the show based on critic response?
I tend not to read reviews; there's too much out there in cyberspace. I mean, they even recap Jersey Shore! [Laughs] I get it, they have a lot of space to fill up, but I've not done that, no. Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel. Obviously, this has to work episode to episode, but the endless analysis of every little thing? You have to watch the whole season, you know? You can't just pick out things randomly, and those that do, they don't understand that we're setting up something really big. I write the show the way we want to see it and I'm happy with what we put out.

What are the challenges of revitalizing the gangster genre, or introducing new types of characters to this genre?
For television? The latitude we have on HBO and the technology we have, we can do everything as good, if not better, than in a movie. We've done things as big and spectacular as feature films. The challenge is the genre itself, because there are only so many variations on particular themes, so we're really finding what's new and fresh there. There are only so many ways you can walk into a speakeasy and shake a guy down, so to find what makes it different is our big challenge as the series as the series progresses. Each episode that passes, that's one less episode we can do it that way, and the writers room gets harder and harder with each passing season. But that's the job.

So when you're writing a character like Gyp Rosetti, how do you make sure he's not like Joe Pesci was in Goodfellas?
He's Italian and hotheaded and violent, and people are going to make comparisons. Other than giving him a monocle, or other odd character traits, there's only so many different versions of a gangster you can do. If this were a western, it would be like horses. Of course, you see things that have been done in the other movies, but the trick is to make each character as fresh as you can. And people really responded to [Bobby]. I knew they would. If I was confident about anything, Bobby Cannavale in your movie or TV show is going to work.

Richard Harrow is a character we don't often see in this genre. That's pretty fresh — and a fan favorite.
But even Richard Harrow, somebody once pointed out to me, was a type of character in some other story or book. I don't remember which one, but something else referenced a guy like him, and I was completely unaware of that. I think he's unique for us, though. In some ways, he's a lone wolf, and even the people who know him can't know him completely.

He had the romantic relationship subplot, which may or may not be able to continue now that he's dropped a child on Julia's doorstep.
He's probably got a lot of explaining to do. I've found in my romantic life that showing up at 2 a.m. covered in blood is not a good idea. [Laughs] Chicks hate it when you do that. Take a shower at least. Wash the kid up. 

Gillian's not going to be too pleased with that custody arrangement, if she's still around.
Without giving too much away, she will absolutely be around.

Speaking of kids, what did you think about Birdwalk Empire
I love it! I have two little kids who watch Sesame Street  all the time, and for me, that was one of the best honors the show could have gotten, to be on Sesame Street. It was awesome. We even went and visited the set, which was cool, even though Big Bird was asleep when we got there. They sort of had him in storage. But it was great. Very flattering.

If you went on set for Birdwalk, did you also go on set for Wolf of Wall Street?
They've been filming at the same studio where we shoot the show, so I have. I was on the set for two different days. I got to see them shoot a sequence on a yacht, a big action sequence that will involve special effects, and I got to be there when Rob Reiner was shooting. It's always great to see a film you wrote come to life.

How much input does Marty Scorsese have on Boardwalk  these days, especially when he's busy directing a film like that?
You know, when he's directing a movie, he's completely in that zone, but I generally speak to him about once a week, usually on a Sunday night or a Sunday afternoon. That's when we catch up. He gives input mostly remotely, through e-mail and phone and intermediaries. But even if he's working on four or five things at a time, he has this amazing ability to focus and compartmentalize, and he remembers everything. Marty and I talk all the time, who we like, who we don't like, but he knows every actor who's ever lived and ever will live. He knows actors who haven't even been born yet. That's  how good the guy is.

What was his reaction to the Taxi Driver  homage a few episodes back?
You know, I told him it was coming, and that it was a blatant homage. I said, "I hope you enjoy it!" And he did. We also had a couple of Little Rascals  homages this year, and Three Stooges, but they were so subtle. The Three Stooges  one was a line, "Normally parties bore me, but not this one," which is a line Curly says right before he gets hit with a pie. I stole that for the New Year's Eve party scene. And then Little Rascals, that's when Van Alden's boss tells him, "Now George, be reasonable," which is from when Spanky's told, "Now Spanky, be reasonable," although I don't know if that qualifies. You were talking about highbrow cinematic references, and I'm talking about stuff I shouldn't even be confessing! [Laughs] Oh, and one more thing — when Harrow brings Tommy to the door, that's from the last shot of The Searchers, when John Wayne comes back. That's our little inside joke.

You're developing another HBO project with Marty, about the seventies. So if it goes forward, you'd have two period pieces on HBO.
Yes, yes. I think four or five might be the limit, though. [Laughs] It's taking place in the seventies, in 1973, the beginnings of punk, disco, and hip-hop, in New York City, the height or the depth of the craziness in terms of the crime and political corruption and a really interesting time to be in New York and in the music business. I can't stop thinking about fun cameos we could have, because it's the beginning of everything from the New York Dolls to the very early Ramones to Grandmaster Flash, the list goes on. We'd want to show CBGB, so maybe we'll probably rent the building and recreate it, so it can live, God willing, another ten years.  

How much of a gangster are you?
I could cheat on my taxes or something, possibly, write off a dinner that I didn't really have. That's about as far as I'd go. But gangster, or gangsta? Because that's a world of difference, from what I understand from the kids. [Laughs] I'm not really gangsta. Not at all. I just write about them. It's fun to pretend, at least on paper. But in real life, not so much.
 
Don't forget that everyone, including AR turned their back to Nucky, and Nucky calld AR out on it letting him know he wouldnt forget it, so he got him bac, he laid the bait and AR took it, thats what he gets, he knew if he wanted to he could have helped Nucky out from the breaks, he just didnt see anything in it for him.

This season did really well after killing of Jimmy, didnt think they woulda rebound from that.

Nucky is a simp though, :{ , he should have dimissed that bish, and laughed at her current situation, she did dude so wrong, yet he still wanted to take her back, not ganster
 
Some of you need to spend five minutes and read Winter's interview a few pages back.. it answers a lot of questions and saves repeated questions.



What guy? Nucky got it when he made his deal because it wasn't being used. Nucky gave it up because he was backed into a corner and had nothing else to negotiate with. Nucky responded to Masseria's act. If Nucky committed an act of war, then Joe was already guilty since he supported Gyp. Call it payback or justice or an act of war, however Joe wants to interpret it is on him.

The guy who told Nucky to use it. The person who called the prosecutor and told her to arrest Rothstein. Didn't he give it to Nucky to manage for him? I thought it was being used at the time he gave it to Nucky.

and I'm saying Rothstein made a deal for Massarea to pull his support away from Gyp.

so once that was agreed then to Nucky killed them all. So wouldn't Masarea be livid and take it out on Rothsteain and/or Nucky?



What about the person who was shooter in happy gilmore and the game show host in requiem of a dream? wasn't he the attorney general? His story is over with?


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"But [Attorney General] Harry Daugherty is still going to be in office for a while, "

I see i have to read what you posted :lol
 
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Some of you need to spend five minutes and read Winter's interview a few pages back.. it answers a lot of questions and saves repeated questions.



What guy? Nucky got it when he made his deal because it wasn't being used. Nucky gave it up because he was backed into a corner and had nothing else to negotiate with. Nucky responded to Masseria's act. If Nucky committed an act of war, then Joe was already guilty since he supported Gyp. Call it payback or justice or an act of war, however Joe wants to interpret it is on him.
The guy who told Nucky to use it. The person who called the prosecutor and told her to arrest Rothstein. Didn't he give it to Nucky to manage for him? I thought it was being used at the time he gave it to Nucky.

and I'm saying Rothstein made a deal for Massarea to pull his support away from Gyp.

so once that was agreed then to Nucky killed them all. So wouldn't Masarea be livid and take it out on Rothsteain and/or Nucky?



What about the person who was shooter in happy gilmore and the game show host in requiem of a dream? wasn't he the attorney general? His story is over with?
It wasn't being used because of prohibition, there's no way he could be associated with running it and risk getting caught. And yeah, he wanted Nucky to run it and they'd share in the profits, so Nucky screwed him over in a way. Joe would probably be furious, that's why Nucky said if he wants peace or he wants a war, then he'll oblige either way. Masseria has a right to be angry, but it's either take the L and you lost a few dozen men, or you go to war and lose a lot more.

The attorney general will still be in the picture, Winter mentions it in the last interview I posted.
 
Don't forget that everyone, including AR turned their back to Nucky, and Nucky calld AR out on it letting him know he wouldnt forget it, so he got him bac, he laid the bait and AR took it, thats what he gets, he knew if he wanted to he could have helped Nucky out from the breaks, he just didnt see anything in it for him.

This season did really well after killing of Jimmy, didnt think they woulda rebound from that.

Nucky is a simp though, :{ , he should have dimissed that bish, and laughed at her current situation, she did dude so wrong, yet he still wanted to take her back, not ganster

But you have to think Nucky wants to stay lowkey and keep people around him that he trust, so i guess going back to Margaret (she just cheated on you how do you trust her) is part of that, the women he usually gets with are in the limelight, and i think he actually likes those kids
 
But you have to think Nucky wants to stay lowkey and keep people around him that he trust, so i guess going back to Margaret (she just cheated on you how do you trust her) is part of that, the women he usually gets with are in the limelight, and i think he actually likes those kids
i really dislike Margaret, but I think she keeps Nucky grounded at times.
 
One thing I don't particularly understand is why Rothstein alienated Lucky and Meyer? What can you possibly gain from that move? With Masseria's entire crew gone, the two of them are basically on their own. Or was he not expecting Masseria to lose all his men?
He had to cut the heroin deal with Masseria to get him to pull his men from AC. AR didn't have much else to offer.

Great finale.

Yeah but, why screw over Lucky and Meyer? Those two have been under AR for so long, it seems like a bonehead move to screw them over for something that could've been solved by talking to them and working out a separate deal. For example, dude has 99% of the distillery, why can't he just buy Meyer and Lucky out? Why fake the whole cop situation just to snatch 50lbs of white from them? He could've paid them $100k for it and it would've been a fair deal. Hell, he could've paid more and still wouldn't be losing out on anything because the distillery would probably make that back in a week.

Just seemed really stupid for Rothstein to do what he did. As for Doyle, do you guys think he collaborated with Nucky to bring the distillery deal to the attention of Rothstein, or was he acting out of greed and will most likely get offed in Season 4 once Nucky finds out he was the one who consulted Rothstein?
 
Don't forget that everyone, including AR turned their back to Nucky, and Nucky calld AR out on it letting him know he wouldnt forget it, so he got him bac, he laid the bait and AR took it, thats what he gets, he knew if he wanted to he could have helped Nucky out from the breaks, he just didnt see anything in it for him.

This season did really well after killing of Jimmy, didnt think they woulda rebound from that.

Nucky is a simp though, :{ , he should have dimissed that bish, and laughed at her current situation, she did dude so wrong, yet he still wanted to take her back, not ganster

But you have to think Nucky wants to stay lowkey and keep people around him that he trust, so i guess going back to Margaret (she just cheated on you how do you trust her) is part of that, the women he usually gets with are in the limelight, and i think he actually likes those kids

There's a saying that the most loyal people you can get are those who used to dislike you and/or were your enemies in the past. By giving them a second chance to show their loyalty, they will never forget that. Case in point, Eli and his role with Nucky. I think the same might go for Margaret, although she's super whack IMO and should've been killed off.
 
One thing I don't particularly understand is why Rothstein alienated Lucky and Meyer? What can you possibly gain from that move? With Masseria's entire crew gone, the two of them are basically on their own. Or was he not expecting Masseria to lose all his men?
He had to cut the heroin deal with Masseria to get him to pull his men from AC. AR didn't have much else to offer.

Great finale.

Yeah but, why screw over Lucky and Meyer? Those two have been under AR for so long, it seems like a bonehead move to screw them over for something that could've been solved by talking to them and working out a separate deal. For example, dude has 99% of the distillery, why can't he just buy Meyer and Lucky out? Why fake the whole cop situation just to snatch 50lbs of white from them? He could've paid them $100k for it and it would've been a fair deal. Hell, he could've paid more and still wouldn't be losing out on anything because the distillery would probably make that back in a week.

Just seemed really stupid for Rothstein to do what he did. As for Doyle, do you guys think he collaborated with Nucky to bring the distillery deal to the attention of Rothstein, or was he acting out of greed and will most likely get offed in Season 4 once Nucky finds out he was the one who consulted Rothstein?

I believe AR told them not to get into the heroine business and they disobeyed hi,.
 
Itss made clear that nucky told Doyle to contact AR when he says 'big bait gets big rat.' Furthermore Doyle gains nothing from doing that without nucky knowing.

Did you guys pick up on Gillian talking about The Commodore while watching or read it somewhere. I was confused by that exchange.
 
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Why does AR set up Lucky in the first place? I understand its necessary for the deal he later makes but theres no explanation why AR wants to set up lucky
Rothstein is calculated and Lucky is not, he felt that isn't strategic enough to make moves like that, hence the "dog" metaphor and after Lucky blew up repeating "I'm in the streets all you do is sit behind a desk".
 
Dear Boardwalk Empire,

Please make the entire show about RIchard Harrow. That is all. Thank you,
-Zeph
 
Itss made clear that nucky told Doyle to contact AR when he says 'big bait gets big rat.' Furthermore Doyle gains nothing from doing that without nucky knowing.

Did you guys pick up on Gillian talking about The Commodore while watching or read it somewhere. I was confused by that exchange.
She was relieved to see Nucky and said  she “went upstairs like you said to, and the man, he did something very bad to me”

Which was in reference to the Commodore and how Nucky brought her to him and the Commodore raped her when she was just thirteen. It was the Commodore's old house so in her extreme highness, she was reminded of that.
 
Rothstein waited and played the best hand possible... he just didn't count on Nucky outsmarting him.

He told Meyer and Lucky to wait on the heroin and they took it to Joe. So now he has a chance to gain a major distillery from Nucky, make a partnership with Joe in the heroin business, and teach a lesson to Luciano and Lansky about obedience and patience. 

Meyer is one of my favorite characters and I've really enjoyed his portrayal. Keeps calm, thinks things through, and most importantly, he knows how to handle Luciano as best as anyone can. I really enjoy their partnership and it was interesting when I've read and studied about this time and even now watching the show.
 
I was watching Bad Boys 2 this past weekend and just realized that the guy who plays Van Alden was the KKK guy they locked in the car trunk while chasing the van full of john doe's.
 
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