Boardwalk Empire Might Be the Anti-Jersey Shore

In my travels around the internet, I’ve heard a number of people ruefully murmur that HBO’s heavy-hitters in the dramatic series arena, namely Big Love and True Blood, have jumped the shark. Hopefully, their new series, Boardwalk Empire, which will premiere Sunday, September 19th, will revive things over there.

The series comes at an interesting time. New Jersey seemed to be largely ignored in recent pop culture, at least since The Sopranos ended. But in the past year both Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey blew up, bringing terms like “guido,” “guidette,” “GTL,” and “prostitution whore” into the lexicon. The state’s pop culture image went from being some place tough to some place…full of jokers.

Boardwalk Empire takes us back to Atlantic City’s seedy heyday during prohibition in 1920. Steve Buscemi is Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, the town’s treasurer and crooked as a question mark. Nucky not only controls the above-ground financial operations of the city, but also the illegal stuff, particularly the illicit sale of alcohol in the resort town’s clubs and hotels. But with those wacky things like “plot” and “writing” and “acting” and “talent,” it will be a welcome relief from the aforementioned carnival-esque depictions of New Jersey.

I will admit to being most excited about Michael K. Williams, aka Omar from The Wire, role on the show as Chalky White. Indeed. But director Martin Scorcese also has my interest piqued.

I wonder, though, if New Jersey’s tourism board is getting nervous about this most recent suggestion that the state has always been this super corrupt place. Perhaps they’ll try to get a show on HGTV or something…”Gardening in the Garden State: No, Really, It’s Very Nice Here and We’re Not All Involved with Organized Crime or Spray Tans.”