'Boardwalk Empire' season finale review

But the finale also stunningly caps a season that began brilliantly, sagged in the middle and charged breathlessly to the finish line the last three episodes. "Boardwalk's" third season occasionally was caught up between competing stories -- like that romantic aside between Margaret Thompson (Kelly Macdonald) and Nucky's muscle Owen Sleater (Charlie Cox) -- whose dramatic meaning (or relevance) never became fully clear until these past few weeks. But in the meantime, some of those stories felt more like padding than real meat. The third season also was positioned as an amend to fans angered by the end of the second -- though in hindsight, Jimmy Darmody's (Michael Pitt) death also served as a rite of passage for Buscemi's Thompson (and Buscemi), as well as the series itself.

Until then, "Boardwalk" was almost reluctantly, hesitantly, a gangster yarn. Any such reticence had to be shed this season with the arrival of Cannavale's Rosetti, who strode this stage with all the brutal swagger you'd want (and expect) from Nucky's wiseguy nemesis. Meanwhile, Sunday's violent convulsion will pretty much leave you with only one question -- how the hell to top all this?

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