Boardwalk Empire is a HBO period crime drama created by Terence Winter and starring Steve
Buscemi, set in 1920s prohibition era Atlantic City. The show follows many real life historical
crime figures, such as Al Capone, Charlie Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Joe Masseria, and
is based on real life events. It also has many fictional characters, such as Nucky Thompson,
loosely based on political figure Enoch Lewis “Nucky” Johnson, and Jimmy Darmody, Nucky’s
protégé.
Now the proper title of this video is why did they kill off Jimmy Darmody so early,
but since that’s a huge spoiler, I chose not to mention the name of the character in
the title. On one hand, it’s been years since Boardwalk Empire finished so you’d
hope you can talk about it openly, on the other hand the show is not as popular and
well known as, say, The Sopranos, The Godfather, Goodfellas etc and I’m sure there’s a
chance many of my subscribers haven’t seen this show so I didn’t include Darmody’s
name.
This is my first video analysis of Boardwalk Empire, but I have actually reviewed seasons
2, 3, 4, and 5 on the channel, so check them out if you’d like.
Jimmy Darmody, played by Michael Pitt, is the son of political giant Commodore Kaestner
and showgirl Gillian Darmody. At the time of his birth, his father was 54 and his mother
only 13. It was Nucky Thompson who made the arrangement, at the request of the Commodore.
A World War I veteran, Jimmy returns to Atlantic City in 1920 in season 1and shows clear signs
of post traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in the war. Jimmy eventually goes
to work for Nucky as his driver and bodyguard, and the two share a close relationship. Some
might say Nucky was a second father to Jimmy, and Jimmy has deep rooted resentment for his
own father, the Commadore. However, he reconciles with his dad and becomes deeply hurt and enraged
when he discovers it was Nucky wo arranged for the rape of his mother at the hands of
the Commadore. This leads Jimmy to align himself with his father to betray Nucky and take back
control of Atlantic City from him.
Aside from Nucky, who is the clear protagonist of the series, Jimmy is the closest thing
to a main character the show gives us. We spend a lot of time with him, and learn of
his troubles and issues, both externally and internally, and season 2 only expands on this,
with him sinking deeper into alcohol and heroin addiction after numerous stress-inducing events,
including the murder of his wife. He agrees to put out a hit on Nucky after being pressured
by his mob allies, which fails, he attacks his mother after she makes passing comments
about his deceased wife, and in the ensuing scuffle he ends up killing his father. Before
this, Jimmy had taken over his father’s operations after the Commodore suffered a
stroke, meaning he was forced to navigate his way through the murky Atlantic City underworld
without the cunning and wisdom of his father.
Jimmy makes himself enemies in all directions, and flashbacks highlight to us a disturbing
past, where disturbingly he had a drunken sexual encounter with his own mother. He tries
to make amends with Nucky, and the two work together temporarily and Nucky calls his protégé
to tell him he has kidnapped an enemy of Jimmy’s, so he can come and kill him. However, Jimmy
is aware that he is being lured into a trap, but willingly goes to his own doom. During
an ominous meeting with Nucky, Jimmy tells his former mentor that he truly died during
the war, and then shockingly, Nucky shoots Jimmy dead. It’s an astonishing end to season
2, and many fans expected Jimmy to carry the show and be our anchor. He was a complex character,
deep, troubled, interesting and sympathetic, but season 2 stunned fans by bringing his
story to a bloody end.
So why did the showrunners choose to kill Jimmy so early in the life of Boardwalk Empire?
Why didn’t they continue his story deep into the series?
Well interestingly, Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter said he had always planned
to kill Jimmy off in the series, but did not think it would happen so soon. The original
plan was to actually have Jimmy survive season 2, but the storyline was forced to change
when Dabney Coleman, the actor who portrayed the Commadore, began receiving treatment for
cancer during filming. In order to accommodate this, the Commadore was given a reduced role
with him having a stroke in the series and Jimmy essentially replacing him, becoming
the leader of the rebellion against Nucky. The further the writes got into the process,
the more they came to realize that the only logical conclusion to the story was for Nucky
to kill Jimmy.
The decision for Jimmy to be killed off was made at the beginning of season 2. Winter
has said:
I always knew he would die at Nucky’s hand. In plotting Season Two, it became clear that
if we were going to tell this story honestly, it was going to happen at the end of the year.
He was such a huge character, and we love Michael. It was one of the hardest decisions
I’ve ever had to make as a writer.
The idea was to try and push things to their absolute limit, even if it makes it difficult
for yourself and your writing team. If you take things to their logical extreme with
the situation we created, Jimmy has betrayed Nucky, he tried to have him killed. You want
to be honest about the storytelling. In the pilot, Jimmy told Nucky: "You can’t be half
a gangster anymore." We wanted with the first two seasons to follow that trajectory, where
he goes full season from being the guy who doesn't want to get his hands dirty to actually
pulling the trigger himself. And what's the strongest version of that? To pull the trigger
on the very guy who told him, “You can’t be half a gangster anymore." It's like, "Guess
what? You’re right. I can’t. And here’s me now fully becoming a gangster.” Anything
short of Nucky doing it himself wouldn't feel real, it wouldn't be real. And it would be
a cheat for us to say, "We want to keep our beloved character Jimmy Darmody alive.”
Winter wanted the audience of Boardwalk Empire to be misled, to think that Nucky and Jimmy
would reconcile and there would be a happing ending to the duo’s story. He said:
I wanted them to think right up to the very end that Nucky is going to forgive him and
take him back. It was a really hard decision. You’re sort of blowing up your own show,
in some ways. Now we’re back in the writers room trying to figure out where we go from
here without Jimmy Darmody.
Personally, I never really had a problem with Jimmy being killed off at the end of season
2. When I started watching Boardwalk Empire, I came to see a prohibition era gangster drama
with all the real life bootleggers and bandits, like Capone and Luciano, I didn’t watch
the show to follow fictional characters banging their moms. Don’t get be wrong, Jimmy was
an interesting character, but I felt people like him were necessary in the beginning as
anchors and bridges between the far more interesting real life characters, who had yet to reach
their primes in the story. Once the trajectory of the storylines concerning the likes of
Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano got going, Jimmy wasn’t really needed. In fact, his
inclusion during infamous real life plot threads could have caused the series to face a backlash
for shoe-horning a fictional character in historical events. I also thought Darmody
was getting outpaced by characters around him and the fact that he constantly made mistakes
and made numerous enemies, his story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
Interestingly, there have been rumors that Jimmy was killed off because the actor who
played him, Michael Pitt, was difficult to work with and a hot head on set. He was fired
by his agent in 2011, the reasons cited that he was “really difficult on set and otherwise”.
This has been denied by Terence Winter, who has said that this rumor was “absolutely
not true” “Michael is a total professional” he added, “He’s intense, of course, but
I don’t think you can do that job without being intense.”
Interestingly, Terence Winter has said that it was difficult to tell Pitt that his character
was going to be killed off. During the conference phone conversation where the revelation would
be made, where executive producer Martin Scorsese was present, Pitt’s phone connection kept
on cutting out as he was in upstate New York on a fishing trip, and after several attempts,
the ever busy Scorsese had to get back to work and it became clear they couldn’t tell
Pitt softly that he was to be killed off.
“Marty was like, ‘Let me just e-mail him.'” Winter said “I said: ‘We can’t e-mail.
We have to have this conversation.’ But we couldn’t get him back on the phone. So
ultimately, I felt horrible, but I had to send him an e-mail: ‘I don’t want you
to get the script and read this, but you sort of knew where this was going.’ He was totally
fine with it.”
Reportedly, Pitt requested that his character be killed in the worst way possible. Winter
recalled:
Joe Pantoliano made that same request on Sopranos - He said, ‘I love being on this show, but
if you have to kill me, please take me out with a bang.’ We said, ‘Done.’
In terms of Darmody willingly going to his death, Winter has said:
He’s so emotionally damaged. I don’t think Jimmy ever expected to come back alive from
World War I. I think he probably left for the war hoping he would die and was surprised
he survived. He’s been a walking dead person ever since we’ve met him. He’s come back
and gone through the motions of a person trying to make his way in the world, but ultimately
becomes resigned to his fate. He gets manipulated into this run against Nucky, who was his mentor,
and really the only father figure of any meaning that he has. The plot failed and he knows,
as a good solider, he’s going to have to fall on his sword. He fully knows what he’s
walking into at the end. He’s not armed. He says goodbye to his son. He basically gives
Richard Harrow permission to not come with him. He knows he needs to be punished. The
circumstances of his life have unraveled to the point where he’s willing to accept his
fate. And psychologically Harrow is prepared to respect that as a soldier.
If you’d like to see more videos on Boardwalk Empire, let me know in the comments below,
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