ReWatch?

fisherk

So I just started watching along with a million others because Amazon just added Boardwalk to the Prime offering. I was all excited to watch and then listen to the podcast but noticed you only started with season 5(or4?)
Any thoughts to going back and covering the early seasons?

A_Ron_Hubbard

Probably not. I was really excited we got to do the final season, but the interest in the podcast was very limited. Less than 10% of the traffic we get for The Walking Dead, which itself is less than a third of the traffic we get for Game of Thrones. It certainly DESERVES a full treatment podcast, but it's a tough argument to make from our pocketbook's perspective. What I might talk Jim into is doing a season recap for each season, so we rewatch each one and then do a 1-2 hour overview.

Dee

Maybe a forum rewatch is in order! I recently rewatched it with my daughter, but this is one of the few TV shows I could sit through over and over.

aberry89

It's amazing how little popularity this series garnered. It's easily one of HBO's top five shows. How can it be that good, and have so little people tuning in???

Dee

I find that quite a few people I've tried to get into it think it's boring, and I do think it takes about 5 episodes to really get clear on all the political mechanations and who is what to whom. But those people suck and have no stamina so boo to them.

FlashGordon

I'd be up for doing a forum rewatch.

I do understand why people struggle with it though, I loved the show and i'd compare it to the wire in terms of , relatively slow moving, complicated with many characters & politic machinations, but it never reached wire status for me personally, despite loving it, but I think it being set in the 20's/30's created a bit of a barrier for some people.

A_Ron_Hubbard

A forum rewatch is a fucking great idea!

Tyler_Durden

I know a good few people who usually like the same shows that I do who bailed very early on Boardwalk. Can't say there is a uniform reason given but generally they don't seem to have liked the pace of the show in the first few episodes. I loved it, one of my favourite all time shows (not a hugely popular opinion)

Travis

I haven't seen Boardwalk Empire yet, but I've been meaning to and a forum rewatch sounds like a good excuse to start. Plus it's as good of an excuse as any to get off my ass and get proactive about stealing my parents' HBOGO password info.

Frakkin T

A.Ron.Hubbard said:

Probably not. I was really excited we got to do the final season, but the interest in the podcast was very limited. Less than 10% of the traffic we get for The Walking Dead, which itself is less than a third of the traffic we get for Game of Thrones. It certainly DESERVES a full treatment podcast, but it's a tough argument to make from our pocketbook's perspective. What I might talk Jim into is doing a season recap for each season, so we rewatch each one and then do a 1-2 hour overview.

Wait you get 3 TIMES the listeners for GOT than TWD? That is insane! I must be the only person on the planet not watching that show

Clareto

Without spoiling anything, was the ending to Boardwalk Empire satisfying? I watched season one a while ago, but never got any further, and wondering whether I should.

broomperson

Very satisfying. I consider season 5 the worst, but 2, 3, and 4 are up there with the best of the best. The tone of season 5 is a bit odd but I like the way they wrapped it up. They knock the pinultimite and the finale episodes out of the park. @clareto

Dee

@Clareto I found it very satisfying - it brings a lot of threads to a close and circles back to explain a lot about some of the main characters. I don't think it could have ended any better, to be honest.

Clareto

Thanks @broomperson and @Dee ! Better get started then

A_Ron_Hubbard

Yep, Game of Thrones is very good. Even guys that don't like fantasy, such as Bill Simmons or, obviously, my main man Jim, get down on it. It's a Medieval The Wire, in a lot of ways, minus the cultural importance.

Garthgou81

I'd love a forum rewatch. This is an excellent show. Ideally we'd get a Bald  Move treatment, of course. But, yeah, if you had that few listeners? Its a hard argument to make. Those were some great podcast episodes though! So kudos for at least touching on this series.

I still find the final season a bit of a conundrum, but I also really love it. The finale is among the best I've seen. Really stellar stuff.

DaveyMac

Boardwalk is a show that I should love. Stellar cast with great performances and characters. Fascinating time period with really impeccable set and costume design. Interesting, complex story. But even with all these things there was always something about it that just kept me at a distance and I've never enjoyed it on the level of a lot of my favorite shows.

I watched it week to week while it was on, but I was rarely excited to see the next episode. And I don't think it has anything to do with the pacing, for me at least. I'm very patient when it comes to tv shows and movies and, as long as the characters and performances are compelling, I can roll with slow plotting/storytelling. I guess I just felt like none of the characters ever had any fun and it always felt a bit one-note to me in terms of tone and atmosphere. I'm not saying I wanted a comedy or anything, but I just felt like everything was so serious all the time.

I was also disappointed that my two of my favorite characters (Margaret and Rothstein) kind of got short shrift towards the end. I can't falt the showrunners for that though, when they were juggling so many more important characters.

I'm not trying to shit on the show or anything. I do like it quite a bit and it is definitely worth a watch.

EDIT: Not that anyone cares, but I'd just like to retract the criticism I made above about none of the the characters ever having any fun. Upon further reflection and actually thinking about the show again, I realized that that criticism is not only poorly conceived and shallow, but not even accurate. I was just trying to take a stab at why I don't love the show when all the ingredients are so great. I still can't figure it out.

Also, apologies for wasting space on a re-watch thread when my comment had nothing to do with re-watching the show.

GredalBee

I just binged season one and it's really good.  I kind of agree with @DaveyMac that it has all the makings of a great show, but something is holding it back a bit? The next few seasons seem to have higher praise, so maybe it will really grab me then.

Garthgou81

Season 2 is probably the high watermark of the series. Thats not to say the others aren't great. Season 3's "big bad" is incredibly fun to watch. Season 4 seems like an all-out war with Nucky thrown in the middle. Season 5 is a weird on because of the truncated season, but it really wraps everything up and the more time I spend with it, the more I like it. Also the finale is very haunting. You have some great stuff ahead of you. Its one of my favorites, but it it rough around the edges here and there. They spared no expense on the production, it looks like a million bucks!

aberry89

It really hits it stride in season two and three, once the young gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone start to come into their own. I am not a person particularly  interested in gangster stuff, so on the fact alone that it completely captured me with its characters and story is a marker of it's quality. 

@GredalBee

A_Ron_Hubbard

I think season 3 and 4 are the peak, but I suppose it's what you think about Harrow.

Garthgou81

A_Ron_Hubbard said:

I think season 3 and 4 are the peak, but I suppose it's what you think about Harrow.

Thats true I find the the relationship to between Nucky & Jimmy to be pretty essential to the show, hence my love of Season 2. And I do like Harrow--I need to rewatch I guess, because I just had a hard time with his character for a few reasons. I don't dislike him whatsoever, I guess I just always wondered where he fit in to the whole story, as oftentimes he seemed side-lined doing his own adventures until the plot needed him.

GredalBee

I was wrapping up season 3 when I encountered some kind of HBO On Demand glitch.  "Margate Sands" and most of season 4 won't download.  So I'm stuck right where Capone joins Nucky to take down Gyp, but I have no idea how it will end until HBO/DirecTV fix the glitch.  FML.

But the show is pretty great now.  All the main players are great and stakes are high.  The Billie Kent plot was grading like Shae in GOT, but at least they ended it sooner.  I also remember hearing about how weird the show gets, and I hope that shit ends after season 3.  I don't want to see Gillian spend season 4 trying to fulfill any more Jimmy or Commodore fantasies.

Garthgou81

I always really liked Billy. I thought she added a lot to the show and was very charming. I am not sure I buy her going for Nucky, but I can forgive that. I never thought the show got weird at all. If anything, it stays pretty much the same as far as tone goes. The only outlying example of when they switched it up is Season 5, where they played with some flashbacks.

jluzania

Finally watching this show. Damn, it's good. Damn, the end of season 4 made me cry. Damn, I'm sad I only have four episodes (and four podcasts left) before I'm done.

Garthgou81

jluzania said:

Finally watching this show. Damn, it's good. Damn, the end of season 4 made me cry. Damn, I'm sad I only have four episodes (and four podcasts left) before I'm done.

Oh its super good! I was at first very hesitant about the truncated season 5, but they did what fit the story and it worked. I find that final season, and final episode to be really, really haunting.

Dummy

I guess I need to watch season 4 again because I honestly felt like that was its low mark. The Chaulky/Daughter stuff was wholly uninteresting to me, and I just never liked Sally. I also spent all this time thinking Richard was a badass, only to see all the killing finally catch up to him. It's an interesting character arc, but It just reminded me of when a superhero loses their superpowers. Still, BE at its worse is still better than 95% of shows at their best.  

Dee

I loved S4. Richard was always a bad arse, but I believed that the point of his tragic end is that he wasn't a superhero. He was fallible and he made a mistake. He still remains my most favourite TV character ever and I'll always love this show for him, if nothing else. His story was perfection from start to finish - they never put a foot wrong with him.

S5 seemed like it was going to be a disaster at first, but the casting of the younger versions of characters was so spot on and the circling back to the moment where Nucky sold out Gillian to get ahead all those years ago after it had been frequently alluded to but never really spelled out was just amazing.

I've been trying to get my brother into it - he usually follows my recommendations but he watched four episodes and said it was boring. I have been nagging him for months to keep going as I know once Richard turns up and he and Jimmy get going, and things start moving with Al etc. he will be all in. DAMN IT, ALEX - JUST WATCH IT! (He doesn't read this forum so I'm just doing Old Man Yells At Cloud now).

aberry89

I am rewatching season 4 right now too...weird.

It's a bit of a mixed bag. A mixed bag of some premium, premium stuff, but a mixed bag all the same :)The Nucky storyline is kinda uninteresting that season, and man, I couldn't given less of a shit about the storyline with his nephew. But it's really more about Chalky anyway, which I really enjoyed because he's a top favorite for me. The charachters of Narcisse is also, just incredible. Jeffery Wright, who played him, just KILLS it, i love, love that actor.  And to see Narcisse play off Chalky and Chalky's right hand man, Dunn,  is great. 

That season deals a lot with how those three men are defined by their race in uniquely different ways, and how that defines how they see themselves in the world. Historical shows can be a bit scarce when it comes to people of color, so it's nice to get a big chuck of the story devoted to them. 

Boardwalk is gem, it shouldn't be missed. It stands up there with the best drama series HBO has ever produced, which for me are - Angels in America, Deadwood, Rome, The Leftovers, The Wire and True Detective. 

 

Garthgou81

The show is quiet and patient which I get turns some off. Especially folks wanting to just see gangland violence. But without the slower pace and character moments, the violence has no point or meaning. I think most people on this board get that, but getting other people into it can be a chore. Oh well, I agree it stands as one of the greats. I think Season 2 stands a bit above the other seasons, but my opinion on that could change depending on the day.