What stopped it from being as good as The Wire and The Sopranos?

All the slow burn build up and none of the payoff.

Post your top three favorite characters and your bottom three
>Top
Richard
Luciano
Meyer
>Bottom
Gillian
Nucky
Margaret

I still loved it

Nucky just wasn't a strong enough character to carry the show alone. He worked very well with Jimmy, that's why season 2 was the strongest in the show's run. I also liked Jimmy's death, but after that they should have shifted the focus to Chicago and/or New York and Nucky becoming more of a side character, like they did with McNulty in the Wire for season 4.

He was so much fun
Black Doctor man just didnt compare

too much focus on muh gangstars

always had to have some big shit going down

>character talks in a slightly demeaning tone to Gyp
>The look Gyp gives them
You just know its gonna be top tier bants

agreed

nyahaha

terry winter blows.

Gyp Rosetti was so fucking based, i loved the scene where he fucked with the newspaper boy and you thought he was having one of his autistic rants again.

>You said this was today's newspaper, all this stuff happened yesterday!"

Buscemi isn't a leading man and he bulked under the weight of carrying a series.

The ending was rushed and season 4 wasn't quite as good as the previous ones.

This. Who the fuck wants to watch Buscemi make out with qt flapper girls?

Paz de la Huerta throwing used tampons on set, Pitt being an insuffrable asshole, skipping Eli/van Alden at the Valentine's Day Massacre, Rothstein dying offscreen, you know, the usual.

Anyone else really wished they put more time in on Chicago and New York? I'm really fucking sad we didnt get as much Luciano, Meyer and Capone as we should have

Terrence Winter
That it tried to be The Sopranos: prohibiton edition
Terrence Winter

Gillian was the best character. Not the most likeable one of course, but the best written.

Nothing, it was fucking incredible

Only thing that made it worse than the sopranos , but more different not worse IMO was the fact that Nucky wasn't explored as much as a character as Tony was

But then the side characters were very well developed too

I stopped watching when he bought the new house with the girl from the first season.

When shows start emphasizing the love life of the main character I lose interest quick.

kys

There was too much plot and some of it was stupid. Also this>The main character became a side character less interesting than many others.

pointless indulgence in pretty violence

it's a poseur show, less than peaky blinders, but still obviously enamored with its own reflection.

sopranos cared about character drama and had contemporary characters doing contemporary posing unlike boardwalk which had (how i see it) bunch of kikestein's diversity interns writing roaring twenties between coffee runs in west hollywood.

the wire was naive but simon believed in it and it showed.

two major changes in the show were caused by external problems (namely michael pitt being fired and the cancelletion) that stopped them from telling the full story they wanted to

at its peak it was easily as good as those shows, though, it's just a case of consistency. and it also has some of the best characters in tv history.

Yeah you're right. Same with Janice in the Sopranos, you're not supposed to like her I guess

Two completely different series.
One is about turn of the 21st century american families and man being lost in their new role of masculinity in society.
The other is about prohibition era gangsters.

Sopranos is much more comparable to Breaking Bad.

it declined hard when margaret left desu

>What stopped it from being as good as The Wire and The Sopranos?

besides the obvious thing like the showrunners abandoning it to make vinyl (what a great decision that was kek) it suffered at the end when it was 2 shows running biweekly; you had atlantic city stuff one week, and chicago the next week.

people began to to care about nucky anymore and just wanted to see the chicago story play out, or vice versa for other people.

>those horrible green screen shots of Nucky on the balcony during the final 2 seasons
What the fuck were they thinking

>this absolutely shit tier taste

>Buscemi isn't a leading man and he bulked under the weight of carrying a series.
bullshit. if you watched the show you would know the "weight" was spread across characters. he didn't dominate the show enough to fail in that role

Not quite sure, but cutting the Irish bitch's storyline entirely would have went a long way to making it better.

>the showrunners abandoning it to make vinyl
I will never forgive them for this. we missed so much juicy shit when they decided to fastforward to wrap up the show

>seasons waiting for Van Alden to be involved in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
>they fast-forward the show
>it never happens

>the wire was naive but simon believed in it and it showed.
what

bringing in al capone and not doing the valentine's day massacre is almost as bad as penny dreadful bringing in dr. jekyll but never getting to mr. hyde

>Have an entire season of Rothstein losing his luck and getting close to being out of the game
>Do a time skip that cuts his death ordered by Luciano

Charlie Cox not dunning the costume and doing justice.

naive in its portrayal of niggers

5th season was positively childish regarding themes

3>2>1>5>4
dont(DO NOT) try and dispute this

the effects took a nosedive later on, most of the show was greenscreen though

>naive in its portrayal of niggers
feel free to elaborate

Period dramas are a trash subgenre

T: Brit

Objectively correct.

>5>4
kill a shelf

Season 1 - Great
Season 2 - Great
Season 3 - Less serious, but still good
Season 4 - Lame
Season 5 - Shit

People rag on season 4, but it had the best Chicago plot of the entire series.

>real al capone
>height: 1,79 m
>21 years old

>boardwalk al capone
>ultra manlet
>played by a guy in his late 30s

are you implying 1,79 is not manlet?

5 was pure kino

>all those loose ends being tied up
>that build up to Nucky selling Gillian to the cunnydor

too humane

though it did have that one "too seasoned" scene. still, it leaned too heavily on nurture and disregarded nature near-completely.

Nucky was not interesting enough to carry the show post Jimmy. The only reason s3 was good was because of Gyp.

>muy cheeldren

Killing Jimmy.

>MUUH CHILDREN

HE AIN'T NOTHIN BUT A NIGGA WITH A DICTIONARY!

this. Capone getting in shenanigans with Van Alden and his Rise to power was pure kino.
I also really liked Eli's arc, him fucking Agent Knox' shit up was one of the best fights in tv-history along with the one in Deadwood...

>criticizing a show for not being racist enough

Because MUH CHEELDREN is literally the worst character in tv history

I agree with your underlying assumption, that genetics determine much or most of a person's character, potential, success etc. (And plenty of scientists agree), but I don't think The Wire was taking a position on that, and saying "blacks in Baltimore have it bad because of """the system""" and not because they're stupid."

I mean, the show was so overy and hamfisted with all it's themes, so that one would have showed like rotten veins on a junkie's arm.

steve buscemi is great actor, but he can't do lead roles well, he can't hold everything up by himself. he is a fucking great supporting actor though. nucky as a character just isn't as interesting as all the other characters around him either.

i think what would have worked better is have the same exact cast but focus on luciano as the main character. good actor, good character.

racism =/= genetics

i don't think wire had to take any sort of position, it's just that it tried to find humanity in daily nignog behavior while at the same time portraying working class in s2 in pretty realistic manner.

Thanks for a good Boardwalk Empire thread lads, they rarely ever get past 20 posts. Hopefully we can have another soon

>it's just that it tried to find humanity in daily nignog behavior
but here is humanity in it because they're humans?

yeah but written like white criminals

simply too rational for niggers.

which ones are written like white criminals exactly?

Terrence Winter was tapped out after season 2, and it's been a downward spiral ever since. Vinyl couldn't even be saved by what her face's tits

all of them except marlo

The Sopranos had one of the most in depth character studies put to film and dealt with extremely personal themes that had never been dealt with on tv before

The Wire covered a multitude of social problems and worked a massive cast of interconnected characters together perfectly. Again, groundbreaking content for television.

Boardwalk Empire had great production values, lots of fun supporting characters and one good rise-fall arc. That's really it. It was far less ambitious thematically and structurally it falls apart after Jimmy dies, so even those low ambitions aren't really met.
It's a solid gangster drama with nothing to elevate it.

>end season 4 with Margaret reintroduced into the story and connected to someone other than Nucky
>skip ahead and her new pal is dead leaving only moribund talks about their marriage with Nucky

i never watched sopranos from beginning to end but i've seen most of key scenes on youtube

that won't deter me from viewing it but it seems to me that it's a show that should have 50% less episodes, much like the shield.

so you're saying avon who is just a hood gangbanger is written like a white criminal?
or stringer bell who tried to act all smart in the hood, but then got scammed by someone smarter outside of the game.
not even going to talk about characters like bodie or d'angelo

The elevating elements are there, they are just invisible to all but the most sophisticated viewers on the planet, and what's so good about Boardwalk Empire is impossible to explain to somebody, because you're either smart enough to feel it first hand or you're not. I can confidently say that it's the best show of all time and that it will never be matched, but the upper art aspects of it are less accessible than plebbier shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men etc so it will never get the recognition it deserves, still it has the fanbase with the highest average IQ and that's not nothing.

Frank Capone was the best part about it for me. They managed to get me really attached to the character in such a short period of time. most underrated character that never gets talked about.

Baulked?

Ah wait that's just another "u" the yanks butchered from our language.

Focus was too scattershot with too many characters, not all of them so great.

Steve Buscemi's face.

It helps if the viewer is familiar with history or at least willing to do there own outside research while watching Boardwalk Empire. There are a lot of nods and references to historical events, some in your face, some subtle. But they go over the head of the average viewer who knows nothing about that time period, and lets not kid ourselves the average viewer today will not go out of there way to "research" the background context to a show, so BE will never be fully appreciated by the masses.

Unl

Even the worst character in Boardwalk Empire blows the best character in 99% of other shows out of the water. It makes everyone in Breaking Bad look like a meme for instance.

yeah, their dialogue, mannerisms and everyday conversation is far from niggerish. the reformed boxer is especially jarring in this regard.

this is how ghetto drug dealers act in reality

youtube.com/watch?v=i9kJJ9yhXNc

Everyone in BB was a meme to begin with

>knowing a few history facts makes a show patrician

3 words: Michael Pitt's ego

It certainly makes the show more enjoyable

You've probably never been to a black neighborhood. But it's not really that hard to sell drugs and keep it lowkey if you're not stupid. You don't need to be white to figure out how to set up a small drug operation. They weren't the fucking Mexican Cartels.

Never felt the feels I felt when Richard went..

no, that's a performer upholding the gangster rapper persona he created for himself. if we're basing arguments on youtube videos i'd like to show you this:
youtube.com/watch?v=0QbjELF-8kY
do the people in this video not show resemblance to characters in the wire?

Pitt dying in season 2 was essential for the quality of the show. He would have become a meme if he was around any longer.

yes! i like how he was the most disciplined of the brothers and always put little Al in his place. If things turned out different Frank probably would have been the chicago boss, he was more calculated and not as hotheaded as Al

But the quality dropped to shit after season 2.

What stopped this show from being as good as those three shows?

>Nigger-sympathizing Drama
>good
Omar a good boy he dindu nuffin'

To the plebeian eye. If they kept the Jimmy shit going it would have become yet another dragged out meme show. Instead the show ascended to being the greatest work of art television has brought us so far.

The final season looks like total shit in comparison to the first, but obviously they had to dial things back as the show declined.

Overall I think the writing just didn't hit the mark, doing the GoT thing of getting attached to characters then killing them really wore thin. Sopranos didn't do that all the time and you have some great long running characters. The main strength is the production values and quality actors, I think the show stands up on those two things.

Always hard to be the first of your kind. Also the writers enjoying a lot of really silly shit.

>yfw Winter cut his show short for Vinyl

too many main characters were uninteresting. if they could have somehow dropped nucky, jimmys mom, and muy cheeldren then the show would have been better

tut tut tut

It makes me so happy when I see all of the pretenders to the thrones of the Sopranos crash and burn. I imagine myself as Ralphe, entering the writers room of pleb tier shows like Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire at first I act all friendly and get them to tell me all about their shows, but then I just snap and start screaming and snapping pool cues over heads until everyone is either dead or they've fled the building.

Where do these shows get the balls even pretending to be high drama when they're like an autistic child's toy compare to the real GOAT.

it was rushed as fuck and the show was never the same, as much as you wanna prove the opposite so hard

Tbh, I thoroughly enjoyed BE all the way through, it was definitely not on the level of Sopranos, but it ticked a lot of the boxes for me.

Winter fucked up BIG time. Rushed the ending, cut the episodes and jumped to a $100 million dollar project that failed epically.

I was happy to see it stumble and then eventually fall into the realm of DOGSHIT.

Not even quoting Gladiator?

That's what I was wondering

mad men is in a league above boardwalk

>Hes a Jimmy fag fag

Mad Men is better than The Sopranos. get fucked.

And still mediocre at best when you put it next to the telekino king. Mad Men is possibly the second best show I've watched, but the gulf in quality between it and the sopranos is so large that I'd still sentence everyboard who has it as their favorite show to death.

Looks like memes back on the menu boys.

Compare "not great, bob" to "Watch it Chrissy" and you can see for yourself where you went wrong.

The Sopranos > The Wire > Mad Men >> Deadwood > Boardwalk Empire > Carnivale >>>>>> a literal piece of shit >>>>> several pieces of shit >>>> Game of Thrones > Breaking Bad

Rectfiy>The Leftovers>>all those shows

put breaking bad above carnivale and ill agree

those shows are both good but not yet proven.

>The Wire > Mad Men
In cuck town maybe

This is an okay list, though I would still keep Deadwood ahead of Mad Men (it just didn't hit it with me like the others even though I watched it all), and Boardwalk Empire isn't even as good as Breaking Bad.

>Boardwalk Empire isn't even as good as Breaking Bad.
This is video games
This is cheeto dust
This is hotpocket.
This is NON-NEUROTYPICAL.

Breaking Bad is some of the worst capeshit pornography ever shit out onto televison. B.E is at least "average". Breaking Bad is full on "video game" tier. Anybody who thinks otherwise has AUTISM.

I think it is very good not in The Sopranos, Wire, Deadwood, Twin Peaks tier but maybe one below it. Seasons 1-3 are excellent, 4 is mediocre and 5 is good but wayyy to rushed because HBO needed money for muh GoT.

If you'd put Boardwalk down a peg for having a mediocre season then you are a FRAUDKEK for giving Twin Peaks a pass as if the second season isn't all over the place in terms of quality.

...

...

...

youtube.com/watch?v=vw5pYWb-Ppc

There was a massive time skip that cut out the most interesting part of the prohibition era by far before the final season. That also meant losing AR who was probably the best acted character on the show.
Some of the characters had unsatisfying endings, especially Nucky and van Alden.
Nucky wasn't well written enough to be the lead character on a show with such a grand scale and ensemble cast.
Some of the story lines were out of place, especially the ones revolving around Nucky's family. The child actors (Teddy in particular) were poor and got far too much screen time for their talents.

Overall it's a 7/10 show that's well worth watching with some amazing episodes, but there's plenty of things holding it back from hitting the heights of some of HBO's greatest shows.

>Communist hero

explain this please.

The only person with Autism is the person who literally cannot understand why someone has a different opinion than them. That is classic autism / aspie type behavior.

i like how van alden went from a boring side character to one of the best in the show. also fuck jimmy the show was better without him

Pretty much everything involving Margaret was a waste of celluloid.

It has to do with his pose looking like a communist propaganda poster.

POST INCEST VID NOW!!!

Sops>>>Deadwood>>>>le who gives a fuck, fuckin plebs

The time skip ruined a lot of things, but the thing I'm most pissed off about is they never explained what happened to Julia and Tommy. Tommy just showed up. What the fuck happened to Julia.

Why would they pick two of the most loathsome people in Hollywood to work with?

If Jimmy in particular had a different actor, the show could have gone in better direction. He was written out because Pitt was too much of a cunt to direct properly.

ah, ok

But Pitt is a great actor, those rumors about him are still unsubstantiated.

Paz, they just needed the biggest whore they could find.

>Ah wait that's just another useless "u" the yanks dropped from our stolen bastardization of French and German language*

>Anyone else really wished they put more time in on Chicago and New York?
Yes, the rise of the Commission would have been an incredibly plot line stretched over multiple seasons, instead of awkwardly crammed into one.

Frankly a show about the rise of Luciano would have been more compelling than that of a fictionalized version of a side player like Nucky Johnson.

I can understand that anybody who likes Breaking Bad has that opinion because they are unsophisticated about television. That show is literal dogshit. The world is worse for it existing. Everybody involved in the production would be better off dead. You hate real televison if you don't want Vince Gilligan under the ground.

Margaret was a good character in season 1. She served her purpose of showing the plight of women, suffrage and their influence on prohibition and all that.

Everything after that was shit, season 2 with the church and hospital plotline was shit, season 3 i don't even remember, she was just there being mad at nucky, season 4 with rothstein was cute but pointless. season 5 ah fuck it.

Has anyone rewatched this? Is the quality still there on second viewing?

They really fucked up the Irish v Capone plot line. They completely omitted Bugs Moran, a guy who left Al Capone paranoid for the rest of his life. Deanie O'Banion was also poorly portrayed, the guy irl was crazy charismatic and had the absolute loyalty of his men. There's a reason Chicago became a blood bath after his murder.

>too much focus on the niggers
>general zod's plot went nowhere
>some of the most important stuff that era happened off-screen (rothstein's death for instance)
>shitty ending everyone saw coming from a mile away
>a literal cuckold plot

This show could have run 10 seasons no problem if Luciano and Lansky were the main characters.

Yes and Yes. I've seen the first 3 season about 5 times each, they still hold up for sure.

A bunch of pointless and boring plotlines. Remember that gripping season long storyline where Margaret was trying to get a hospital to pasteurize breast milk or something? So glad we got that instead of a satisfying Capone or Luciano arc. The show should have focused on what was good and cut out the stuff nobody cared about. For instance, everything with Gillian after Jimmy died.

The actor did a really good job but the writing was stupid. His entire character was him doing the "what am I a clown" scene from Goodfellas every episode.

I can't picture anyone else playing Luciano or Lansky after Boardwalk Empire. So they can't even make a show out of that stuff in the future without disappointing me.

The better question is why Cred Forums almost never talks about The Shield?

The guy who played Luciano in Bugsy was bretty gud.

Because it's pleb "entertainment"-core with some dated edge. Basically breaking bad tier but I will give it credit for having a better ending.

no

THIS TBQH. The Shield, Justified and Boardwalk empire are the trinity of Not-Quite-Good-As-The-MadMen-Sopranos-Wire-Trinity

That stretch in Season 2 is has some good parts, it's the James and Nadine shit that drags it down. But, episodes 1-10 and 17-22 are pretty great.

I liked them. They should get back together even though the three have been successful on their own .

>17-22 are pretty great.
Episode 22 is pretty great. The Windom Earle shit being acceptable is a meme only.

But Cred Forums is purest "pleb "entertainment" core" board.
I don't really get what you're implying here.

I am ideologically opposed to entertainment and I don't care how many "fun" enabling Cred Forumseddit pornographers come here. The authentic heart of Cred Forums will never change.

This board is elitist art antagonization. Sorry capeshit enabler.

>I am ideologically opposed to entertainment

>I am ideologically opposed to entertainment

>I am ideologically opposed to entertainment

"entertainment" is the jew fitted shackle meant to keep the white race docile.

Hello Cred Forums.

Nope, I'm Cred Forums.

How do you feel about this? I dont think I could have watched boardwalk empire after watching this.

You're a crossposting pleb board degenerate is the point.

I thought the flashback sequences in the last season were fantastic in making Nucky seem more grounded as a character.

Sorry. /lit/ here

1. Music is plebbier than film and HBO's good shows.
2. The handful of actual good shows aren't good because they're "entertaining."

Sometimes I wonder if you guys aren't just fucking around and actually mean what you're saying. It's gets kinda scary.

High points were New York with AR, Lucky, Meyer and Bugsy

i want a spin off show with that guy as bugsy. he nailed that funny psychopath thing down perfectly

What the fuck happened with that last season? I've never seen anything shit the bed that hard.

also euphoric

based lanksy

Smug fucking kid

scared someone doesn't share the same ignorant pleb opinions that you and suburban middle age women do?

What is Tommy thinking here?

The wife

Who else remembers that scene where Luciano and meyer talk to Masseria while he's partaking in bocce? Or the scene where that nigger stabs that cuck to death with a bottle in the neck? This show had some memorable scenes and was well produced, from the costumes to the furniture, etc.

best scene of the show coming through

youtube.com/watch?v=XKpA4Ge5Ldc

The first two seasons are good at least

it's in the same league as Sopranos though

>But Pitt is a great actor, those rumors about him are still unsubstantiated.
I don't know how you substantiate rumors but they were posted by the same scriptfag that had real scripts excerpts before every episode for a while. I don't see any reason to dismiss him as a source

>I got this one

>i never watched sopranos from beginning to end but i've seen most of key scenes on youtube

Jesus christ, just shut the fuck up. Why would you comment on the pacing of a show when you haven't even seen it? Give me a break, you're the biggest faggot ever, kys.

At its height, it was, but the last season was fucking garbage.