I keep writing and rewriting a post about "The Office," and here "Boardwalk Empire" comes and makes my point for me.
Ok - I was a late convert to "The Office." (And, before we go on, I mean the show that airs every Thursday night in the country where I live. As far as I'm concerned, clarifying that you "like 'The Office,' but only the U.K. version" is an even bigger "I'm a raging douchebag" identifier than referring to your drink as "SoCo." Moving on.) Frankly, my former supervisor was so freakishly similar to the Michael Scott character, even in name, that watching the show was just too painful. But eventually my Ed Helms crush won out, and "The Office" became must-see viewing.
This season has been lackluster. (No, not because Steve Carrell left. Grow an original thought.) I think every TV show gets to the point where the audience knows the characters so well that we watch just because we love spending time with these people, and I really do love all of these characters. But lately I've been thinking that the issue with "The Office" is that this particular group has been together for so long that it's becoming harder and harder to find stories to tell about them. You know that relationship where you just start having the same fight over and over for 27 years? That's "The Office" right now.
Perhaps it's because I've recently changed jobs myself, and so every day is an awkward comedy of learning to relate to a whole new set of quirky individuals... but "The Office" needs to lose some people. Yes, I know I just wrote one paragraph ago that I love all these characters, but that doesn't change the fact that some of them need to go. Yes, it will suck, but doesn't that happen in real life? Even as we constantly come to know new people, we drop others from our orbit. The only place where this doesn't happen is on TV shows past their fifth seasons, which just keep adding and adding characters.
Which is why I want to pat the writers of "Boardwalk Empire" on the back. Throughout tonight's second season finale, I was worried that we'd lose one or more of my favorite supporting characters, just because the story was headed that way. And "Empire" does have some brilliantly written characters, and an excellent cast. I started watching it because of Steve Buscemi and Michael Shannon, but I kept watching because of Kelly MacDonald and Shea Wigham, both of whom I've loved in everything I've ever seen them in. I was convinced that Wigham's Eli Thompson in particular was not long for the show, and I was preemptively mourning his loss. He's just so fun to watch.
Well... not wanting to spoil anything here for an episode that just aired an hour ago, I'm just going to say that "Boardwalk Empire" impressively wrote off a major - as in top of the credits - character. It did so in a way that was (at least for me) a total surprise, and yet that made perfect sense in retrospect. It wasn't just that this character didn't have many more places to go dramatically; it was that, looking back on everything that's happened in the last two seasons, what happened in those last 10 minutes almost seemed inevitable... but only when looking back.
And the best part is that I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next. The writers just blew the story wide open in the best possible way; they're like kids who just got a $10,000 shopping spree in FAO Schwartz, and I can't wait to see what toys they bring home to play with.
"The Office" is very different from "Boardwalk Empire," but its writers could learn something here. Murder your darlings. Don't get attached. Tell the story, however it affects those actors you really like hanging out with every day.
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