The third season of “Boardwalk Empire,” which premieres Sunday, September 16th, jumps forward in time to 1923. The characters have grown harder, the hustle is more competitive, and soon they are all going to have to deal with the extent of their action’s consequences.
In one of those, “we have no new material to show you so we’re going to recut the stuff we do have” type of preview, HBO tells us that “you can’t be half gangster.” That will be a dominating theme for the duration of the season that Executive Producer Terence Winter calls, “the night before the morning after; it’s basically the big party before the hangover.”
Particularly exciting is the addition of Bobby Cannavale’s Gyp Rosetti, a temperamental new antagonist in Thompson’s world of boot-legging. If the show, as its creators say, is going to reflect the more violent nature of illegal liquor trafficking, then Rosetti, Capone in Chicago and rest of the storylines on the Eastern Seaboard (Lansky, Luciano, and Rothstein)will provide plenty of opportunities for rampant badassery. And if they can achieve that, while still keeping the character development chugging along, this season will be quite the entertainment one-stop.
