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Season 5, Episode 8: ‘Eldorado’

But he grew old —

This knight so bold —

And o’er his heart a shadow —

Fell as he found

No spot on the ground

That looked like Eldorado.

— Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado”



So we come to the end, my friends, which takes us right back to the beginning. This series finale is titled “Eldorado,” and like the first episode this season, it is gilded, to subliminally deliver the more obvious message of the dangers of greed.

We begin with a shot of clothes on a beach, a cigarette case, a lighter, a pair of shoes, the surf lapping gently at the pile. We see Nucky’s bare feet and naked back as he walks into the surf, like the boy who dove into the sea in that first episode searching for gold coins. Is it a baptism of sorts? Is he committing suicide? This episode has barely even begun.

Nucky (Steve Buscemi) swims out, past the breakers, farther and farther. Just like the Golden Man – El Hombre Dorado, from which the legend of El Dorado is taken. It was the name used by the Spaniards to describe the native Colombian chief who, covered in gold dust, dove into a lake as part of a tribal ritual. It was the promise of the gold in the mythical empire of El Dorado that propelled the conquistadors toward the continent.

We flash back to Nucky (Marc Pickering) as a young deputy sheriff walking along the boardwalk. He stops at the Corner Hotel and makes his pitch to the Commodore (John Ellison Conlee) for being the new sheriff.

The Commodore is spouting his lessons once again and tells Nucky that it’s what you leave behind that counts. “That’s the only thing that anyone’s ever going to know about you,” he says.

Nucky, always obsequious when it comes to the Commodore, says he must be proud of what he’ll be remembered for. But the Commodore contradicts him. “For what? Wooden hotels? Rolling carts?” These are things that one bad storm will easily wash away.

The Commodore asks if he has children, and Nucky says one is expected. “Children get in the way,” the Commodore says, dismissively. “In the end, we do what we have the nerve for, or we disappear.”

Nucky says he’s been loyal, that he has kept his mouth shut about the you-know-what. The fact that the Commodore is a pedophile.

“Are you threatening me?” the Commodore asks.

A teacher with a half-dozen little girls – in golden crowns – interrupts and asks if they can recite for the Commodore. The pedophile is thrilled. Ick.

“Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me,” they recite, from “The Secret of the Sea” by Longfellow. “As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.”

We cut to Joe Kennedy (Matt Letscher) meeting with the Mayflower Grain Corporation board and Senator Wendell Lloyd (Michael Siberry). Remember him from Cuba? Senator Lloyd is telling them that the word on the hill is that repeal of prohibition is not going to happen. The board members are clamoring to sell their stock at 33 and 1/8, the highest it’s ever been. But Kennedy is trying to talk them down, saying that Hoover is out and F.D.R. is in.

“It’s Roosevelt, boys,” Kennedy says. “Prohibition’s over. You can take that to the bank.” He asks them to hold steady for 24 hours while he sorts things out.

In Capone’s office, lighted by a golden chandelier, his lawyer is trying to break it to him that he’s going to prison for $2 million in unpaid taxes. On Capone’s desk is a line of golden elephants with their trunks up – a sign of prosperity and good luck. But Capone’s luck has run out. He has 24 hours to turn himself in to D’Angelo, whose real name was Malone (rhymes with Capone!). “An Irishman,” Capone says. “That’s what hurts the most.”

Capone (Stephen Graham) is telling the lawyer to do his job, “to make some calls, grease some palms. Deal with it, for Christ’s sakes.”

Back in Luciano’s digs – the newly built Art Deco Majestic apartment house on Central Park West and 72nd Street – the luck is still holding out. One of the scantily clad molls walks around in shiny gold high heels. There’s a bouquet of bright yellow flowers beside the gold-painted fireplace. Lansky (Anatol Yusef) runs down a list of all the mob bosses who are being invited to their meeting. Bugsy (Michael Zegen) jokes, “Are those types of cheeses?”

While another moll gives Luciano (Vincent Piazza) a manicure, he reminisces about the old days, having a meeting years ago in Atlantic City. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m with the big boys now.’ Now look at us.” Luciano’s droopy eye seems to be getting droopier with every episode. He says that anyone who’s not on board with the new organization is a goner: Waxey Gordon, Dutch Schultz, Dr. Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright).

“All about moving forward, ain’t it?” Bugsy says.

At Connors and Gould, Margaret’s firm, an angry Kennedy barges in to her gold-wallpapered office. A golden ticker sits on her desk. “You’re shorting my firm’s stock — you and your husband,” he says to Margaret (Kelly Macdonald), who’s dressed in a very groovy purple suit. “Which of your clients is twisting the arm of Senator Lloyd?” he asks.

“I have no idea who that is,” Margaret says.

“Your husband does, and he’s trying to screw me. I prefer to do the screwing myself.” Ha!

Kennedy then realizes it’s Margaret who’s shorting the Mayflower stock. “You’re the mastermind,” he says.

“All I know is what I read in the papers,” she says.

He says the plan won’t work, that his partners will stay the course. But she tells him the stock has fallen nearly three points in the last hour. His partners are selling in increments, behind his back, she says. Margaret suggests he sell as well.

“Unload your entire position and then sell short along with my client.” She tells him to open an account under an assumed name. “Cash out in one. Sell short in another.”

“I need to call my broker,” he says. Margaret pushes the phone toward him.

Flash back to Nucky returning to find Mabel’s bloody garments on the floor. Mabel (Maya Kazan) is sitting toward the back of the house, her hair wet, a yellow shawl on her lap. She’s had a miscarriage. Nucky is trying to understand what’s happened and wants to call the doctor. “A mishap,” she says. “It passed quickly. No need for the doctor.”

“Is the baby all right?” he asks.

“Not a baby,” she says. “Just a mishap.”

Nucky is terribly worried about her and kneels before her, apologizing for not being there when it happened.

“I work for this,” he says. “Everything. For this. I love you. I disappoint you whatever I do, don’t I?”

She touches his head lovingly but doesn’t answer.

Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. It’s his brother, Eli (Ryan Dinning). “Ma needs you,” he says.

Back in Margaret’s office, all hell has broken loose. Mayflower stock is falling fast. Kennedy is eager, but Margaret insists that “it hasn’t found the bottom yet.”

Fights break out. People are punching each other. A golden light shines through the office partition.

“This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Mrs. Thompson,” a strung-out Kennedy says. Margaret is nervous as well. She watches the price drop further and further, marked on a chalkboard above everyone.

At 3 and 1/4, she summons a broker and commands, “Close these short positions in Mayflower.” While the broker makes the call, they wait anxiously.

Three things are difficult to understand in this world, Kennedy says. The work of the bees, the movements of the tide and the mind of a woman. But she has a comeback, as usual. (I love Margaret and will miss her dearly.) “Think about the things you want in life and then picture yourself in a dress.”

They get the thumbs up from the broker. “You’ve just made some money,” Margaret tells Kennedy.

“Then let me shake your hand,” he says. Her palms are sweaty.

“There’s a lot we can do together,” Kennedy says. Wink, wink.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she says. “Come see me during office hours. The firm would love to have your business.” Ha.

In Capone’s house, where the walls are all painted a golden yellow, his wife, Mae (Marcella Lentz-Pope), is fretting about what’s to come. A reporter stopped by from The Tribune and asked a lot of questions.

He tells her not to worry. Then goes upstairs to see their partially deaf son. The kid is about 12 years old now and is sitting on his bedroom floor reading about Lewis and Clark.

“I may be going away for a while, Sonny,” Capone says. “I did some bad things, and now I’m in trouble.”

This kid has the saddest face in the history of sad faces. “I will help you,” he says, tearing up. So sad.

“You can’t help me with this,” says Capone, who’s also tearing up. “You need to listen to your mother.”

Stephen Graham is my favorite actor on this show. He is astounding. He is making me cry over the thought of Al Capone, a cold-blooded, maniacal killer, going to jail. “Be a good boy. Remember all I did was for you. To leave you with something better and that can’t be for nothing.” Now we’re all in tears. Capone, the kid with the saddest eyes in the world, and me.

When the kid puts his fists up, echoing an earlier episode when Capone was trying to teach him to fight, I really lose it. Capone comes and hugs him. I’m down for the count. (For all you Capone fans out there, Sonny was born with congenital syphilis and, after brain surgery, was left partially deaf. As an adult, he changed his name to Brown, to disassociate himself with his father, and died in 2004 at 85.)

We cut back to Margaret, dressed in a very snazzy orange frock. She’s at Nucky’s empty apartment in the Eldorado, which is about 20 blocks north of the Majestic. This luxury two-towered Art Deco Central Park West building was just finished in 1931. (It’s been the home of Sinclair Lewis, Alec Baldwin and Moby, among other celebrities.) But Nucky is selling his place.

Margaret finds Nucky on the balcony. A golden curtain shimmers behind her. She tells him he’s done well — $2,364,120. She tells him that for her 1,000 shares, she earned $29,925. Not bad for a day’s work

When she asks him for advice on what to do with all that money, he answers: “I was a bellboy. Carried people’s bags. First time I was tipped a nickel, I thought the world is a marvelous place. But a dime would be better.” Then a quarter. Well, you know how it works.

“My circumstances have changed,” he tells her. “There are things I won’t do anymore. You understand that, don’t you?”

“There is what I know, what I suspect and what I don’t think I should ever hear,” she says in that lovely brogue. Margaret could recite her grocery list and it would sound like poetry.

“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” he asks, genuinely.

“It’s not in your nature,” she says. “All you did was offer. I’m the one who took.” (If only Carmela Soprano could have been so wise.)

A song comes on the radio, and they dance, cheek to cheek, in the empty apartment. But before they can kiss, a real estate broker barges in to show a couple the apartment. As the couple look around, Nucky and Margaret exchange a most longing of longing looks.

Back down the road a bit at the Majestic, murder plans are being made. More gold curtains hang in the background.

“Two shooters in public,” Luciano says, “so people know.”

“I want it all cleaned up before the meeting,” Lansky instructs Bugsy.

Whom are they talking about? Who’s gonna get it now? Nucky? Narcisse? Johnny Torrio?

Back in A.C., Nucky is walking down the boardwalk with a big paper bag, looking around him as if he expects to get shot any second. A woman in a golden harem costume approaches and says, “Do you know who I am?” He guesses she’s a genie. She says she’s from the future and has a message for him.

“The only way to knowledge is through experience,” she says. Sister, we know all about it.

She takes him over to a booth and pulls open a purple crushed velvet curtain and tells him not to be afraid. It’s dark inside. But something is lighting up. Is Nucky dreaming? And suddenly, it’s clear what’s before him. A television. A little post-modern inside joke from Terence Winter and his pals. You and I, lucky viewers, are firmly planted in the future. The future’s name is premium cable. Will Nucky invest his new-found fortune in the television industry?

We flash back to Nucky arriving at his parents’ home. His mom, Eleanor (Erin Dilly), has a black eye from his dad, Ethan (Ian Hart), who’s drunk again, practically passed out in the back yard with a shotgun. Nucky starts yelling at him, and Ethan points the gun. After a tense minute or so, Ethan breaks down.

“You weren’t going to tell me,” he cries. “I’m going to be a grandfather, and you don’t want me to know. Is that what you think of me?”

He hands the gun over, and as Nucky is taking the shells out, Ethan throws a punch. A fistfight ensues, which Nucky wins.

“Touch our mother again, I’ll give you what you deserve,” he says.

But Ethan has the last word. And it stings. “Wherever you think you’re running, we’re always gonna be right here.”

Back in his current-day A.C., Nucky knocks on the door of a crummy building on the boardwalk above a cigar shop. Next door is Silver’s Bathhouse (enough gold!)

Eli (Shea Whigham) answers the door. Nucky is holding that giant paper bag. What could be inside?

It seems there’s some sandwiches and some Cokes. Paint supplies sit behind them in this dingy little room. Yellow paint cans, of course. And containers of some household product called Gold Dust. Golden letters on the window behind their heads advertise tools and household supplies. But right behind Nucky, as he talks, we can see only two gold letters. And they spell out TV.

Nucky tells Eli about his swim in the ocean. “First light — haven’t done that in 45 years … farther than I ever dared as a kid. ‘Keep going,’ I thought. ‘Keep going until you can’t turn back.’ That’s where there isn’t any choice. You don’t know where that is. You don’t know until you pass it. And then it’s too late.”

“You never wanted to be here,” Eli tells him. “Not from the start.”

Nucky tells him they won’t be seeing each other again. “And I think that’s best. Don’t you?” he asks.

“What am I supposed to do with myself?” Eli asks.

“Aren’t you done with me telling you?” Nucky complains.

He tells him to go home. But Eli is afraid his wife won’t even open the door for him.

“If you don’t try, you’ll always regret it,” Nucky says.

“How come you got to be the wise one?” Eli asks.

“Because you needed me to be.”

It’s now that I realize there has been so much silence in this episode, more than any other before it. It’s giving us time to reflect. To think about what’s come before. Jimmy and Gillian, crazy Gyp Rosetti, Capone and his deaf kid, Van Alden and the baptism gone awry. I feel as if I’ve been through as much as Nucky and Eli.

“Little brother,” Nucky says as he leaves. And they hug it out.

Eli goes over to the paper bag. What’s in there? Is it a gun? A statue of the Empire State Building? Gwyneth Paltrow’s head? Ahhhh. It’s money, of course. Lots of it. Fistfuls and fistfuls.

And underneath?

A shaving brush and razor. The tools for Eli’s future.

We make a nice cut to Capone checking his scarred face in a compact mirror on his ride to the courthouse. The inside of Capone’s car is a golden hue. He sticks a cigar in his mouth and gets out, smiling. There are golden panels on the courthouse facade. The press crowds around, asking if he’ll beat the charges.

“You hear they’re making a movie about me?” he laughs and poses for the cameras.

Who will take care of business while he’s away, they ask. He answers he has 500 men working for him, who will all be stranded “if this ship goes down.” At the top of the courthouse steps are D’Angelo (Louis Cancelmi) and his partner. Capone stops smiling for a moment and tips his white hat.

At the Majestic meeting with Luciano, the ceiling is amber. A golden mural and golden column shine in the background.

“Our friend from Chicago couldn’t make it,” says Luciano to the mobsters gathered around his table. “We wish him well.”

“Pay your taxes, fellas,” one of the gangsters says.

“This table, its round for a reason ’cause nobody sits at the head,” Luciano instructs. “There’s no boss.” There are seven bosses, a commission, made up from the five families in New York, plus Buffalo and Chicago. “Nobody gets made unless we all approve,” Luciano explains. “Your way of doing things, it’s over. If it’s good for business, it’s good for us.” Jews, Irish. No point in limiting their opportunities. “The future is ours, boys,” he says, and they toast, with glasses of golden Champagne.

Dr. Narcisse walks out of a church after giving a sermon, his fans gathered around him and complimenting him. “One generation passeth away, another generation cometh … the sun rises and the sun goes down,” he says. And just then, two gunmen – Luciano’s guys – pop up and start shooting. Jeffrey Wright does a terrific stumbling death scene. But just to be sure, a gunman returns and shoots him one more time. For good measure.

At Gillian’s mental hospital, Nucky is being led in by the scary matron (Mary McCann), who says that they usually don’t tell patients they’re getting a visitor. It creates an expectation that can lead to difficulties. But Gillian (Gretchen Mol) is an exception.

“She’s a model girl, so we let her know she would be having a visitor,” the matron says. “She’s been preparing all day.”

Gillian is seated on a white wicker chair, in a pink-and-white checked dress, looking like the adolescent in those flashbacks. Nucky leaps right in and wipes away any hopes she might have of escape.

“Whatever you want, whatever you think I’ll do, that won’t be possible,” he says. “You were very clever. You made a bargain. You saved your own neck. That’s more than other people can say.” Gillian is not responding. She’s playing with a ladybug crawling on her fingers.

Nucky flails around in a one-way conversation. “I’m not someone you should look to for help. I’m leaving here. Starting something new. I won’t be back. You’ll have your own room inside, that’s been arranged. If you get yourself out, there’ll be money in a trust account. Don’t write me. Don’t try to find me. Don’t look for anything else.”

Gillian won’t fight back. But she’s tearing up

“You want me on my knees?” he asks, desperate for some feedback. “I won’t do that. The past is past. Nothing can change it.” Is he trying to convince Gillian or himself? Remember your Faulkner: The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

“What do you expect of me?” Nucky pleads.

Gillian is still looking at the bug. “They’re called ladybugs. But how can you tell which one’s a lady?”

The matron comes back over. She asks if Gillian enjoyed her visit.

“Oh yes,” she says, graciously.

She moves to get up, then doubles over. “It’s a bit tender,” Gillian says, holding her abdomen. Oh no. They’ve already done the hysterectomy! Nucky was too late.

“Dr. Cotton will give you something,” the matron says.

She puts out her hand to Nucky, and he looks alarmed. But then he helps her up.

“There’s still graciousness in the world,” she says, and walks away.

We cut to the Old Rumpus, where even the showgirls are dressed in glittering gold undergarments. Nucky walks in and says he’s here for his things. In his bedroom, with its brown and golden shimmering wallpaper, is an empty suitcase. He looks through a desk drawer and pulls out a book stuffed with documents and insurance policies. (Is Mickey’s in there?) But it’s not the policy he’s after. It’s the postcard from Mabel from when they were kids. He turns it over and reads it. And the phone rings.

It’s the manager from the Ritz. “I have a situation that needs your attention.”

In another flashback, Nucky is on the crowded boardwalk. King Neptune is making his way down in a small parade, children wearing golden crowns. The Commodore is on the porch. Gillian (Madeleine Rose Yen) is one of Neptune’s attendants. Nucky spots her. She runs, but he catches up with her.

She asks what’s happened to his face. (His eye is blackened from the fistfight with his dad.)

“You’re not the only one who doesn’t like where she’s come from,” Nucky says.

“You have Mrs. Thompson,” she replies. “You’re going to have a family.” She asks him to just leave her alone. “Mrs. Thompson said you want to be good, but you don’t know how.”

Jim Neary comes and fetches Nucky and says the Commodore wants him up on the porch. This young Nucky asks Gillian – with his best Buscemi impersonation – to stay for a moment. Please. He tenderly touches her arm.

Back to current-day A.C. The manager is telling Nucky that the guy they’ve caught is a polite kid. A pretty lousy thief. He’s talking about Joe Harper (Travis Tope), who’s being held in the hotel basement. Nucky springs him.

Flashback again. (They’re coming fast and furious now, headed for an awful collision of past and present.)

The Commodore demands Nucky’s badge. They argue. “I don’t have faith in you,” the Commodore says.

“I served you. I’ve waited. I’ve kept my mouth shut.”

“You think you deserve something for trying hard. Through me and from me, that’s all there is.”

Cut to Nucky lecturing Joe Harper on the boardwalk. He asks where the $1,000 is that he gave him.

“I’ll earn it back,” Joe says. God, he sounds just like Jimmy. Oh. My. God. He sounds just like Jimmy. It is suddenly dawning on me. …

Joe says he’ll work at the club.

“The war’s over,” Nucky says. “The other side won. I can’t help you. Go back home.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Then go find one. Make one. Do without one. Don’t take it out on everyone else.”

Nucky sticks money in the kid’s top jacket pocket.

Joe takes the money out and rips it up.

“O.K., kid. You showed me. Good luck. You’re gonna need it.”

Flashback to Nucky, devastated, walking off the Commodore’s porch. He’s walking away. Walk, Nucky! Keep walking! But Leander walks up to him. “There is a youth the Commodore wishes to place in service,” he says.

“What’s that got to do with me?” Nucky asks.

“The task is entrusted to the sheriff,” he says, showing him the badge.

Nucky looks up at the porch, and the Commodore is staring over at him, then turns his gaze to Gillian, who’s still standing on the boardwalk, waiting for Nucky to come back.

“You understand this is an act of charity,” Leander says.

But this is the moment. The moment that Nucky talked about earlier in the episode, the event that this whole damn show hinges on, without which the future – for Jimmy, for Gillian, for Nucky, Eli and everyone in their orbit – would have been so very different. Without this moment, there would have been no bad Nucky perhaps. And certainly no Jimmy. And no Richard Harrow. This is the pivotal moment that will seal their fate. Our fate of sitting here in TV land, witnessing it all.

This is that point, the one you don’t see coming until it’s right in front of you and you have to make that snap judgment, the one that will change your life forever. “You don’t know where that is. You don’t know until you pass it. And then it’s too late,” Nucky told Eli about swimming too far out.

And you know that Nucky is about to swim past that point of no return. Trading Gillian for his future life of crime. And gold.

Back to the present, Nucky is walking along the boardwalk and notices a sign over one of the buildings, featuring King Neptune. A bunch of drunk students (Princeton boys, with the orange P on their sweaters) are making their way down the boardwalk and run smack into Nucky. One of them is reciting a Robert W. Service poem about – you guessed it! – the gold rush.

Our lesson, fellow premium cable watchers:

“I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it —

Came out with a fortune last fall, —

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn’t all.”

Flashback to Gillian, standing on the boardwalk. “Is something wrong?” she asks Nucky. “Do we have to leave? Can I go down to the beach?”

“You wanted to sail around the world,” he says to her mournfully.

“Don’t you?”

Flash ahead. Joe is standing behind Nucky. “When Mee-ma talked about you,” he says, “I couldn’t tell if it was love or hate.” Mee-ma? “Grandma,” he says.

Flashback. Nucky tells Gillian that there’s a man here who’s very rich. “He’s offered to help us both. Would you like to meet him? I promise I’ll always look after you.” He puts his hand out to Gillian.

“Who are you?” Nucky asks Joe Harper.

“Tommy Darmody.” Gasp!!!

Tommy (not Joe Harper! It was a Twainian made-up name!!!) pulls out a gun. And he shoots Nucky twice. Nucky falls and puts out his hand.

Young Gillian puts out her hand.

Tommy shoots Nucky in the face, the bullet neatly piercing his cheek. He’s still alive. Dazed but alive. Detectives grab Tommy and show their badges to Nucky and say something inaudible about taking him to the hospital.

And now Nucky is swimming under water as a boy, from that first scene from the first episode this season. He’s chasing the gold coin. And finally he catches it. And we fade to black.

The end of a small, gilded masterpiece.

Questions and talking points for those of us who now have nothing to do on Sunday nights:

So is Nucky dead or alive? I vote alive. But then again, I was sure Tony didn’t get rubbed out in that last scene of “The Sopranos.” Call me an optimist.

In real life, Nucky was not shot. He died in 1968 at 85 at the Atlantic County Convalescent Home.

Capone went to prison at age 33, where he was diagnosed with syphilis and suffering from cocaine withdrawal. Neurosyphilis ate at his brain until he was released in 1939 and found to have the I.Q. of a 12-year-old. In 1947 he had a stroke, then contracted pneumonia and died of a heart attack just after his 48th birthday.

The Majestic, Luciano’s luxury apartment building, has been the home of Milton Berle, Conan O’Brien, Walter Winchell and Marc Jacobs. Vincent (the Chin) Gigante, the mobster who later wore his bathrobe and slippers on the streets of Greenwich Village, shot Frank Costello in the lobby back in 1957, but Costello lived. When he delivered the shot, Gigante said, “This is for you, Frank,” which caused Costello to turn his head, resulting in a mere scalp wound.

Maybe we should all rent Louis Malle’s “Atlantic City” next week and get together to chat …

Helene Stapinski is the author of “Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History,” a chronicle of New Jersey crime and corruption.