Salvaging “Boardwalk Empire”
I’ve been trying to figure out what my problem with “Boardwalk Empire” is; I think I’ve got it. It’s not the casting of Steve Buscemi as all-powerful city treasurer Nucky Thompson, as some of my friends have complained. Buscemi doesn’t have the swagger or presence of other gangster-types (including those on the show), but he ably fulfills the role of an inveterate schmoozer whose power derives from flattery, dealmaking, and condescending wit just as much as it does from wielding the threat of force. (Also, casting too often abides by certain conventions — e.g. a corrupt, larger-than-life politician must be physically imposing, loud, and rakishly handsome — when some of the best performances come from ignoring these rules.)
Instead, I’ve realized that my problem lies with the show’s core conflicts. “Boardwalk Empire” is filled with antiheroes — Thompson, Jimmy Darmody, a young Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, and all of Thompson’s cronies. Most of these characters are fine — well acted, given decent back stories and cutting dialogue, they behave with appropriate disregard for decency or the lives of others. They’re mostly all brutish, sexist, violent, and selfish to some impressive degree. But then there’s the matter of who opposes them: Margaret Schroeder, a beautiful, poor, good-hearted widow who belongs to the local chapter of the temperance league and sometimes reveals unexpected reserves of humor and courage; and Nelson Van Alden, an exceedingly pious, coldly patriotic federal agent charged with upholding the newly established Prohibition laws. As long as these two are set up to be Thompson’s foils — as they have been up to this point — then the show suffers. That is because, despite their obvious goodness, they’re entirely unsympathetic and, at times, cartoonishly self-righteous. They are the show’s chief advocates for Prohibition, a policy that, in 2010, can only be seen as spectacularly unreasonable and unsuccessful. The show made some meager early efforts to show why Prohibition was enacted — to stem violence against women, for one — and its relationship to the women’s suffrage movement, but it doesn’t go far enough, nor does it find some other novel way of treating the Prohibitionists as interesting, winning, or otherwise charming characters. It’s as if the dice have been loaded in favor of Thompson and his objectively awful, corrupt cronies. It’s far too easy to root for them when they’re opposed by Schroeder and Van Alden, especially when there’s no conceivable reason to want the latter to succeed. Do we really care if the feds knock over some distilleries, arrest Thompson, and turn Atlantic City into a dry town? Obviously not, and yet that is the dichotomy — Thompson/Gangsters/Boozey Glamor v. Van Alden/Schroeder/Temperance — that’s been put in place.
There is some hope for the show — at least from a critical perspective (it was picked up for a second season after its $20-million pilot got fantastic ratings). At the end of the most recent episode, Schroeder turned on Thompson, causing his alcohol-soaked St. Patrick’s Day party to be raided by Van Alden’s agents, which, in a surprising move, led to a late-night sex romp between Thompson and the usually chaste Schroeder. Schroeder now may have to decide to overlook Thompson’s corruption, or Thompson may try to exercise some sexual power over Schroeder, who is not likely to be a timid mistress (yeah, we’re talking about Steve Buscemi as a lothario, but go with it). In either case, Schroeder’s inherent goodness has been compromised, pushing her into a murkier area of conflict and closer to Thompson.
The preview also seems to set us up for more gangster-on-gangster violence (particularly with Darmody, Capone, and the rest of the Chicago storyline), which is really where the show should go. (I have a hard time believing that the burgeoning tiff between Thompson and his brother lasts very long; they need each other too much.) Because despite Michael Shannon’s stellar acting, we have no reason to root for his stone-faced federal agent character — unless he veers towards corruption, in which case, he’d fit right in. And sadly, the rest of the female characters (Jimmy’s mom, Jimmy’s quasi-wife, Paz De La Huerta’s ridiculously overacted mistress-character) are shallow, without agency, and (sometimes literally) stomped upon by any man around them. All of this makes for what seems like authentic period realism — as with “Mad Men,” the show emphasizes the era’s racism and sexism, often to an obnoxious degree — but such impassioned verisimilitude threatens to kneecap the whole project.
1 Notes