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Constructing and Inventing Historical Characters: Boardwalk Empire

Terence Winter, the showrunner of Boardwalk Empire, was an avid follower of Deadwood, but he knew from the beginning that he wanted his new historical show to be different from David Milch’s western. “I was a big fan of Deadwood,” Winter explained, “but once I found out that all those people were real, the first thing I did was Google everybody.”¹ After searching the web and discovering the fates of many of Deadwood’s main characters, including Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane, the experience was partly ruined for Winter. “Whenever Al Swearengen would get into trouble, I’d say, ‘Well, I know this guy doesn’t die until the 20th century, so he’s going to be okay.’ And then I said, ‘Fuck, I shouldn’t know that. And I bet David Milch doesn’t want me to know that.’”² Winter decided to construct and invent characters whenever possible in Boardwalk Empire to prevent viewers doing just what he had done with a show he loved—jumping the gun and taking the jeopardy out of the series.

In his choice to populate the historical narrative with fictionalized characters, Winter had a great deal of freedom from HBO, a network known for its lack of interference. He was working on The Sopranos as a writer and executive producer when HBO approached him with Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, by Nelson Johnson. The book explores the history of Atlantic City, New Jersey, from the 1850s to the present and focuses on key figures that had a hand in shaping the resort town over the decades. According to Winter, HBO simply gave him the book and said, “Find a series in here.”³ A blank check to create without constant oversight from network executives is a trademark of HBO’s approach to producing original content that continues to draw creative talent. Given the loose parameters of his task, Winter quickly ruled out anything contemporary, feeling it would be “too close to Tony Soprano’s world,” with both shows being based in New Jersey and concerned with criminals and corruption.⁴ Winter settled on the 1920s, the period “that most struck his creative fancy” and which he also felt would intrigue audiences.⁵

Winter inhabits Boardwalk Empire with three character types—real historical figures, characters inspired by historical figures, and completely invented characters—but it is the fictional characters that clearly dominate in an effort to circumvent what Winter felt was one of the pitfalls of Deadwood. The central character in the series is Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, the treasurer of Atlantic City, based loosely upon the real-life Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, who features heavily in Johnson’s book. The show follows the ups and downs of Thompson’s political career and affiliations, his personal relationships, and his progression as a gangster. As his invented protégé, Jimmy Darmody, tells him in the first episode, “You can’t be half a gangster,” an idea that continues to be a major theme throughout the subsequent seasons. While the show is grounded in Atlantic City, Thompson also negotiates with real gangsters in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. While viewers can “cheat” by finding out the histories of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Arnold Rothstein, the fates of Thompson, his family, his business associates, and his enemies largely remain a mystery, as do the fictional relationships between Thompson and the real-life gangsters. The balance of character types on the show is evidenced by looking at the main cast listed in the opening title sequence and the characters they play. Of the fourteen actors named in the season 1 opening credits, only three play historical figures, while four play characters inspired by historical figures and the remaining seven actors play fictional characters, a balance that remains constant over all five seasons of the series.

It is through characters, as well as the sights and sounds of a TV show (see chapters 1 and 4), that audiences engage with history. In Boardwalk Empire, as in most mainstream film and television production, it is the characters that motivate and drive the narrative.⁶ Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White explain that characters’ “wishes and fears produce events that cause certain effects or other events to take place; thus, the actions, behaviours, and desires of characters create the causal logic of a film narrative, whereby one action or event leads to or ‘causes’ another action or event to follow.”⁷ It is the characters who react to historical events, who are shaped by historical circumstance, and who instigate change. The characters move the cause-effect chain of the narrative forward. Therefore, TV’s ability to include a range of characters and spend an extended period of time with them is crucial when it comes to engaging with history on-screen. The main characters (and some supporting characters), each crafted with a fleshed-out backstory and desires, have the potential to develop storylines that engage with historical issues.

Characters, then, are essential factors in developing narrative and are also central to attracting and maintaining audience engagement. “Characters constitute a major entry point into our engagement with narratives,” writes film scholar Murray Smith; “we look for characters; we sort major from minor characters; we seek to establish the goals and desires of such characters and we project and anticipate their destinies.” While most viewers will recognize that characters are “artificial,” they will still think about and respond to them as if they were real people.⁸ Audiences may even develop parasocial relationships with certain characters, a type of relationship that is completely one-way between a viewer and a media figure. The viewers feel like they know the character and respond to and think about the character as a real human being.⁹ Parasocial relationships are generally associated with an unhealthy or pathological attachment to characters, but as Jason Mittell points out, these relationships should “instead be viewed as an active, participatory facet of media consumption, with fans choosing to engage with a media text and extend its reach into their own lives.”¹⁰ Character construction is an important area to explore, as characters not only propel the historical narrative but are a key source of interest and investment for the audience that can make viewers think and care deeply about the past.

Of course, the construction and development of characters can vary greatly depending on the type of show on which they appear. Episodic television shows, epitomized by the sitcom, often tell a self-contained story within the show’s time frame; serials, epitomized by the daytime soap opera, develop overarching storylines that require audiences to have prior knowledge of previous episodes.¹¹ Characters in episodic series, argues John Fiske, often do not develop or grow from episode to episode and “only appear to have life in each episode,” not the “dead time” in between. Characters in serials, on the other hand, have narrative arcs that flow across episodes, and they “appear to live continuously” between shows with memories of prior events.¹² Viewers invest in the characters differently on the two types of shows; while repetition and familiarity are key to characters on sitcoms, audiences look for depth and progression in serial characters.¹³ The characters in Boardwalk Empire fit into Fiske’s latter category; their actions in one episode have consequences that ripple across subsequent episodes, and storylines continue between weekly installments, leaving the viewer to piece together what has happened to the characters in the time that has elapsed.

Multifaceted historical characters in TV dramas like Boardwalk Empire result from both the longer running time of serials and the TV industry’s willingness to experiment with characterization—along with audiences’ openness to it. Postnetwork quality TV serials are celebrated by critics and viewers for crafting complex and engaging characters. These characters are generally three-dimensional and, more often than not, can be classified as “difficult”: “unhappy, morally compromised, complicated, deeply human.”¹⁴ Wholesome, likable heroes and one-dimensional bad guys, while not missing from TV, have certainly lost favor in preference to antiheroes. Media critic James Wolcott writes that TV characters, particularly those on cable, “acquire dimensions, depths, personal flaws, moral failings, and discordant quirks that seem integral and variable, not pinned on like prom corsages. They’re given enough time to sit and stew, to mull over the next move, a luxury seldom extended to movie characters.”¹⁵ There is simply more time to first establish the character, the background and motivations, and for that character to evolve in a way that appears feasible and organic to the audience.

HBO did not invent complex and difficult characters, but it has excelled in crafting and filling its original programming with them. Looking back over his twenty-plus-year career, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler identified the “complicated hero” as a defining part of the HBO model, although he recognized that the company inherited and embraced the trend from network writer-producers such as Steven Bochco.¹⁶ Arguably, as a subscription service, HBO can push the boundaries on character construction even further than its network antecedents. As Anthony N. Smith notes, broadcast “networks’ primary reliance on advertiser support has typically ensured that characters’ failings have their limits,” whereas the lack of advertiser influence on HBO’s characters removes any such constraints.¹⁷ Boardwalk Empire’s main characters, be they real, invented, or a mixture of the two, are exemplars of the postnetwork quality TV character traits; they are captivating, charismatic, and deeply flawed, and, importantly, they have time to develop over the seasons.

Despite the centrality of character in narrative, only a relatively small body of relevant scholarly literature exists, although since the 1980s it has become an increasingly popular subject. Disciplines such as literary studies, communication studies, film and media studies, psychology, and philosophy have produced “rival theories” for understanding and analyzing the concept of character.¹⁸ One of the key debates centers around realist and structuralist approaches. Henriette Heidbrink succinctly sums up the opposing views: “There is a long ongoing debate between ‘humanistic’ positions [the realist approach] on the one hand that deal with characters on a mixed basis of phenomenology, hermeneutics and textual analysis, and on the other hand so-called formalists, structuralists and semioticians that hold the view that characters should be addressed as signs, semantic components (semes), ‘bundles of differentiations’/paradigms, words, sentences, or more generally, textuality.”¹⁹ Such theoretical debates generally take place within the realm of academia, not in “everyday talk about characters.” This chapter takes a similar approach to characters as that of Smith, considering characters in a more “traditional sense,” wherein they “are treated as fictional analogues of human agents, basic constituents of representation embodied in a vast array of specific modes of characterization and purposes of representation.”²⁰ As he notes, this basic concept of character forms the basis of understanding and discussing narratives. Jens Eder also appeals for openness and flexibility when looking at film (and, one can speculate, television) characters. “What is the most important, the most decisive feature of film characters?” he asks. “The answer might well be: their variety and multilayeredness. The central feature of characters in general does not exist; depending on the question asked, different features may turn out significant.”²¹ The questions asked in this particular chapter involve the representation of historical characters on-screen, the potential of each character type as a vehicle for history, and the consequences when a narrative contains all three. It assesses the depth and complexity of the characters on Boardwalk Empire, concentrating specifically on how historical discourse is embedded into the fabric of the characters and presented to the audience. Band of Brothers, Deadwood, and Treme all include what can generally be termed “historically complex characters,” but what makes Boardwalk Empire a prime case study for the issue of characterization are the three clearly delineated character types.

Each of the three sections that follows focuses on one of Boardwalk Empire’s central characters, each representing one of the main character types: historical figure, partly based on a historical figure, and completely invented. The three chosen characters all occupy critical and central roles on the show but are by no means the only subjects that could have been chosen; they do, however, work well as exemplars of each character type. The first section looks at Capone (played by Stephen Graham), considers issues of historical accuracy, and situates Boardwalk Empire’s representation of the infamous figure in relation to other popular representations over the decades. The second centers on Thompson (Steve Buscemi) and the confluence of history and invention. It deals with how and why changes were made to the life of the real historical figure and the implications for what Smith calls alignment and allegiance. The final section focuses on Darmody (Michael Pitt) and the practical construction of character, along with the capability of completely invented characters to convey historical information.

Reinventing the Ultimate Gangster: Al Capone

“I could never invent an Al Capone,” Terence Winter conceded. “Or I could, but it would be a lot of work. Or an Arnold Rothstein. These are very colorful, very three-dimensional people who already existed. I’m starting with them as fully formed human beings as opposed to starting with a blank piece of paper. So a lot of the work is already done for me.”²² Capone and Rothstein are two of the historical figures on Boardwalk Empire, along with Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Johnny Torrio, and George Remus. As well as these real-life bootleggers, the show incorporates a host of political figures, including Attorney General Harry Daugherty, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, and President Warren Harding. But it is the gangsters—Capone, Rothstein, Luciano—who are the most recognizable to audiences and who occupy more central roles on the show. Winter knew that he and the show’s other writers would have to follow their well-documented paths and not stray too far from the history. In this sense, the “biggest challenges are the historically accurate characters” because with these figures there are the “least amount of parameters.”²³ These characters provide events and milestones that root the show in a specific place and time and attract an audience that is drawn to these familiar figures.

The writers did not rest on their laurels by rehashing the same old Capone seen in countless films and TV shows; instead they present viewers with a new multifaceted version of Capone and use his ambiguous underworld history to their advantage. While he is a well-known legend, there are many gray areas in his life, giving Boardwalk’s writers the chance to mold and shape their own unique character to fulfil the needs of the narrative. Indeed, Capone offers a prime example of how Robert Rosenstone’s concept of true invention can be employed when constructing an on-screen character. Changes can be made to a real historical figure in the service of the larger TV narrative—and in the service of the on-screen characterization—without radically altering or compromising the historical discourse surrounding the figure. Furthermore, the starting point of the series, along with its extended running time, allows for the creation of a more nuanced Capone character. Rather than appearing on-screen as an easily recognizable pop culture version of Capone, Boardwalk Empire’s version evolves slowly as the character signs that make him the familiar figure build up. Viewers are provided with a more detailed and fully rounded interpretation of Capone, one that considers aspects of his career and personal life rarely found outside of published biographies.

Boardwalk Empire is only the most recent show to bring Capone to life on-screen; he has been reincarnated on film and television for decades, often appearing as a one-dimensional villain. Many of the underworld protagonists of the classic gangster films of the late 1920s (Lewis Milestone’s The Racket, 1928) and early 1930s (Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar, 1931) are associated with the figure of Capone, even though they do not share his name.²⁴ Scarface (Hawks, 1932) is the film from this period most closely linked to Capone, and while elements of the story are fictionalized, including names, locales, and the personal life of Capone (in this film called Tony Camonte), the film clearly charts his well-known rise, culminating in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone continued to be reincarnated on both the big and small screen throughout the twentieth century, but his most high-profile appearance was in Brian De Palma’s silver screen remake of The Untouchables (1987), in which he was played by Robert De Niro.²⁵ The Al Capone presented in De Palma’s film highlights many of the problems that biographers such as Robert J. Schoenberg have identified with the Capone seen in popular culture. Not only are the documented facts stretched almost beyond recognition, but Capone himself is a caricature, a one-dimensional thug bordering on insanity who ultimately shows no development or growth from the earliest representations that appeared in the twenties and thirties. “Capone’s story is actually so little known,” biographer Schoenberg contends, “that moviemakers have shown no compunction about ludicrous inventions and liberties with the facts, confident that audiences would not know enough simply to laugh at them.”²⁶ Consequently, he has become a myth, an illusion, “a larger than life symbol of evil,” in the popular imagination.²⁷

The extended format of the television series, as well as the starting date of Boardwalk Empire, means that viewers are presented with a more complex, and at times new and unknown, portrait of Capone. By the end of its run, Boardwalk had five seasons to develop its Capone character.²⁸ Roberta E. Pearson and Máire Messenger Davis posit that the “difference between the narrative structures of series television and the feature film” may account for differences in character construction and development between the two media. “The one-off feature film has to rapidly establish a character’s defining traits,” they explain; “television can accumulate defining traits in a more leisurely way across episodes, but must also maintain character consistency over a much longer narrative arc.”²⁹ For a historical character such as Capone, it means that more elements of his personality and history can be incorporated, rather than his appearing fully developed, or worse still, as a stereotype of how people expect Capone to behave and act. Also, while a number of viewers may be familiar with the general histories of the real gangsters, by starting the show in 1920, Winter had an opportunity to present viewers with new representations of these oft-depicted lawbreakers. In the early twenties, Capone, Luciano, and Lansky were working beneath well-respected and established gangsters and were virtually unknown to the general public. They were “gangster toddlers,” and audiences are not as familiar with these earlier incarnations.³⁰ After over eighty years of appearing in film and television, Capone is an established screen character, so Boardwalk Empire engages in a balancing act: exploring and adding new dimensions to his character while fulfilling viewer expectations and endowing its version of Capone with character traits already linked to the historical figure.

Capone’s character is developed and revealed slowly over the seasons in both subtle and obvious ways. Externally, Capone adopts the costume associated with the classic gangster figure. Laura Beshears explains that “the image of the Prohibition-era gangster, rising through the criminal ranks in his three piece suit, fedora, tie, overcoat, and polished shoes, has become ingrained in the collective American consciousness.”³¹ At different points throughout season 1, Capone adds a new piece of the uniform, signifying his growth and development from a driver to a figure of authority. When we first meet Capone in the pilot episode, he is unrecognizable (apart from his scars), dressed in a sloppy suit and page-boy cap. By episode 12 he has completed his physical transformation; he stands alongside his mentor, Johnny Torrio, in his suit, overcoat, and fedora. These external changes are not merely superficial; they “become markers of other changes in the character’s social and personal sense of self and ability to evaluate others.”³² Although Capone’s transformation from young hood to up-and-coming gangster is relatively straightforward, other narrative strands related to Capone’s character are more complex and require the audience’s full attention to puzzle out the significance. When Capone and Darmody first meet, the subject of World War One arises and Capone claims he fought as part of the Lost Battalion. Initially there is nothing to contradict Capone’s story, but as season 1 progresses, his account comes under suspicion. Each time Capone references his service and the scars he received courtesy of the Germans, Darmody responds in a subdued, unconvinced manner. Finally, in episode 6, Darmody makes it clear he does not believe Capone’s war story and challenges him to play “five finger fillet,” a knife game played by soldiers in the trenches. The audience is misled: what was initially stated in episode 1, and what could have been another defining character trait of Capone (as service in World War One is for Darmody), is revealed to be untrue. Instead, this lie exposes another historically accurate dimension of his character: that Capone self-consciously worked to create a certain image of himself and that what he said could not always be taken at face value.

Boardwalk Empire provides an arena where both new and previously established aspects of Capone’s character and history can be displayed side by side. In a single episode viewers get to see both the violent and intimate sides of Capone and the private and public spheres he occupies, one of which has rarely been accurately portrayed. In episode 4 of season 3, Capone is seen at home with his family as well as with business associates at the Four Deuces (a saloon and headquarters of the Torrio gang). In particular, Capone interacts with the overweight Jake Guzik, who makes collections for Torrio and passes the money on to Capone. Guzik and Capone share an easy relationship, and while Capone jokes about Guzik’s obesity and lack of personal hygiene, he does so without malice. While making a collection at another bar, Guzik is first taunted and then savagely beaten by a man named Joe Miller. Upon seeing Guzik’s swollen and battered face and hearing what happened, Capone promptly heads to the same bar, picks on Miller, and beats him to death in front of a room full of patrons. Capone showers the body with money and tells those around him to “pay for his funeral.” This scene, though sensationalized, is based on a real incident and illustrates Capone’s violent temper, a facet of his character that audiences are likely to be familiar with.³³

A largely unseen side of Capone is presented in a narrative that parallels the Capone/Guzik/Miller storyline. Capone’s wife, Mae, and his son, Sonny, have both been introduced in earlier episodes, and Sonny’s hearing problems have already been established. For Winter, Sonny’s deafness was a fascinating detail about Capone’s life, and as he points out, “I don’t know that it’s ever been depicted or even mentioned in any movie about Capone.”³⁴ Capone’s home life is often either absent in films, as in The Untouchables, or completely fictionalized, as in Scarface.³⁵ In this episode Capone discovers that Sonny is being bullied at school and encourages him to fight his tormentors; however, it becomes clear that Capone’s son is not the type to fight back, bursting into tears when a practice boxing session with his father becomes too much. Rather than pushing the boy, Capone stops and tenderly embraces him. At the very end of the episode, just after he has beaten Miller to death, he wakes Sonny up when he arrives home and plays the song “My Buddy” on the mandolin while his son places his hands on his vocal chords and feels the vibrations of his father singing. Here, a different but also documented side of Capone is portrayed: his role as a loving and devoted father.³⁶

Al Capone tenderly embraces his son.

The two Capone storylines complement and work in harmony with one another, with both revolving around bullying and Capone taking frustrations from one area of his life out on another. It is a narrative contained within that one episode; neither strand is revisited in subsequent installments, and these isolated incidents do not shape the major storylines of season 3. This narrative is, however, a character piece that continues to flesh out and reveal the figure of Capone. While the details of Capone’s history are debated by his biographers, they generally agree on the type of man he was. He could be warm, charismatic, and generous with friends, family, and acquaintances, but he was also a shrewd and ambitious businessman with an imposing physique and lethal temper. In scenes consisting of just eight minutes of one episode, the two differing sides of Capone are effectively presented to the audience.³⁷

As historical figures go, Capone offers an unusual and potentially advantageous set of circumstances; given the invented and ambiguous nature of Capone’s known history, there is a lot of room for interpretation for the writers of Boardwalk Empire. As J. E. Smyth argues, the underworld of 1920s Chicago “was a world where nothing could be proved, where truth was occluded by contradictory tales, where no one saw what happened, where police, judges, newspapermen, and, by implication, popular historians all told lies. Capone and his colleagues simply defied the tools of historiography.” Early biographers and historians of the period such as Fred Pasley and Walter Noble Burns faced unique challenges while researching their subjects. Smyth says these men realized that their area of study “left few opportunities for traditional research and definitive conclusions. Their work ignored footnotes and bibliography, quoted word of mouth, presented multiple perspectives on a single event, admitted gaps and unknown information, and mixed facts with metaphors.”³⁸ Capone himself played a part in his own invention. Unlike Torrio, Capone embraced being a public figure and cultivated a positive public image, appearing at public events and establishing relationships with members of the press. Capone presented himself as a misunderstood businessman, a loving family man, and a philanthropist. Edward Behr describes Capone as a “sophisticated operator” and a “superb media manipulator” who was able to convince respected members of the press that, although he may have engaged in the illegal liquor trade, he did not believe in violence and was often unjustly fingered by the police for crimes he did not commit.³⁹ There are many aspects of Capone’s history and criminal career that remain unknown and shrouded in uncertainty, which gave the writers of the show the opportunity to sift through the numerous interpretations and choose which version worked best to advance the show’s narrative.

This potential is embraced from the pilot episode and sets the groundwork for how Boardwalk Empire will develop the real historical figures and employ them in the narrative. The first episode details the shifting power dynamics of the Chicago crime syndicate with the murder of the current boss, Big Jim Colosimo. There is no consensus on the murder of Colosimo, and Torrio and Capone’s possible involvement in his death. Torrio, Colosimo’s business manager who ran his brothels and gambling establishments, was a gifted businessman who saw the opportunities that Prohibition provided and the money that could be made from bootlegging. While Torrio was keen to move into this new area, Colosimo was wary and content with the profits generated from prostitution and gambling. Colosimo was assassinated on May 11, 1920, in the vestibule of his beloved café, shot to death by an unknown assailant. Over the years many biographers have addressed Capone and Torrio’s potential involvement in the assassination. According to Schoenberg, both Torrio and Capone were directly involved in the murder; Torrio had “consulted his rising young lieutenant, Capone, on the choice of the right man to do the job, and then left him to make the arrangements.”⁴⁰ In this version Capone chose Frankie Yale, a gangster whom he had worked for as a teenager in New York, to be the trigger man. John Kobler presents a similar scenario to that advocated by Schoenberg, although Laurence Bergreen challenges the notion that Torrio or Capone was involved.⁴¹ Bergreen does identify Yale as the killer, but discounts the idea that he was hired by Torrio or Capone. He instead suggests that Yale’s actions were driven by his desire to move in on the Chicago vice trade.⁴² Bergreen also disregards a rumor that surfaced years after Colosimo’s murder that Capone himself had hidden in the cloakroom of the café and pulled the trigger.

Winter ultimately chose the most popular explanation and account of Colosimo’s death, one that would also help advance the narrative by quickly establishing two ambitious characters in Torrio and Capone. Throughout the first episode the reasons behind the hit on Colosimo are slowly revealed. As Capone and Darmody, both currently drivers, wait outside while their employers conduct a meeting, they too discuss business:

Darmody: You guys going to get into the liquor business too?

Capone: Colosimo says no, too much heat from the law, says there’s enough money in the whorehouses.

Darmody: But you don’t agree?

Capone: Well, I’m Johnny’s muscle, who gives a fuck what I think?

Darmody and Capone soon devise a plan to hijack a carload of liquor. This is a completely fictional event, but is crucial to the major storylines that will progress throughout season 1. It is also important in advancing and explaining the Torrio/Colosimo/Capone narrative. Capone drives the hijacked liquor to Chicago, where he is met by a delighted Torrio, and it is clear that despite Colosimo’s misgivings Torrio is forging ahead with his bootlegging plans. Yale is also present when Capone arrives, and we see him again a few moments later, poised behind Colosimo with a gun pointed at his head. The clear implication is that Torrio wants to get into the liquor business and so hires Yale to take Colosimo out, following the scenario that Schoenberg and Kobler present in their biographies. Because of the ambiguous nature of underworld history, there is no way of definitively stating that Boardwalk Empire was accurate or inaccurate in its depiction of this event. Gangster history, typified by Capone, often lacks conclusive facts and is based upon supposition. In some areas, including the date of Colosimo’s death, the history presented on-screen is clearly inaccurate, but Winter felt it was acceptable to take artistic license “because the spirit of why he was killed was correct” and, ultimately, “it didn’t matter really that it happened a few months later.”⁴³

While all the details of Capone’s history may not be correct, it was crucial to Winter that the show stayed “true to the spirit of who the people were” and what happened. “I’m not going to kill Capone off in 1925,” Winter explained. “He had his rise through the ranks in Chicago, and being, basically, the king of that world and I won’t deviate from that.”⁴⁴ Staying true to the spirit of the period applies to all three types of characters on Boardwalk Empire. For the real historical figures, that means capturing the personalities of the gangsters as closely as possible, even in invented scenarios.⁴⁵ Although Winter’s statements about staying true to the spirit of history are quite broad, his ideas are closely aligned with Rosenstone’s concept of true invention. History on-screen, Rosenstone contends, “cannot exist in a state of historical innocence, cannot engage in capricious invention, cannot ignore the findings and assertions and arguments of what we already know from other sources.”⁴⁶ Staying true to the spirit of Capone essentially means that the writers did not violate the discourse of history—either by radically altering Capone’s documented record or by presenting him in a completely contrary fashion. The writers used what has been written and reported about Capone to inform how the character acts and responds to situations.

The general trajectory of the gangsters’ careers and the major documented events of their lives must be adhered to; however, Winter was willing to play around with timelines and relationships in order to work within the format of the show and advance the story. Traditional written history, too, is concerned with more than just the accurate plotting of time or chronicling of events. What distinguishes history is the “self-conscious organization of arguments, interpretations, or narratives,” which we can see taking place in the construction of Capone’s character, regardless of the shifting of some dates.⁴⁷ Colosimo’s death came in May 1920, not January 1920, when the pilot is set, but in terms of the show’s structure it needed to be included in that first episode, when the major figures of each city—Thompson and Darmody in Atlantic City, Capone and Torrio in Chicago, and Rothstein and Luciano in New York—were being established. It would not have served any purpose to include Colosimo in a few more episodes only to have him killed off and be left with the same dynamic after the delay.⁴⁸ True invention is also practiced in designing Capone’s interactions with the completely invented characters and those inspired by historical figures. Capone and Torrio did not have the friendly relationship with Nucky Johnson that is depicted in the show, although at times they did journey to Atlantic City and did at least know Johnson. Winter stated, “I have the license then to say, ‘OK, I know these guys knew the real Nucky. They did spend time there.’ I can then comfortably create fictional relationships for them with people who they may or may not have known.”⁴⁹ The fictionalized relationships keep the storylines unexpected, one of Winter’s key goals when creating the show. And, by “staying true to the spirit” of Capone when crafting these storylines, the show continues to convey information about him. Capone’s sense of humor, for example, is showcased throughout season 1, often during encounters with his invented friend Darmody.

The treatment of Capone in Boardwalk Empire shows that it is possible to take a familiar figure, one even as exaggerated and distorted as Capone, and present an original and engrossing representation on-screen.⁵⁰ The writers have clearly engaged with the vast and varied literature on Capone and used the information, both well-known and little-known, to craft their character. To agonize over the historical accuracy of events and details—the date of Colosimo’s death, Capone’s involvement in Atlantic City in the early 1920s—is reductive. Achieving historical accuracy when dealing with real 1920s gangsters is problematic for any form of history. What is important is that the writers have been successful in realizing Winter’s wish to stay true to the spirit of the historical figure and to ultimately leave viewers with a historically accurate impression of Capone: his personality, his temperament, his career.

Between Fact and Fiction: Nucky Thompson

At the center of Boardwalk Empire is Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, the crooked treasurer of Atlantic County with a penchant for flamboyant suits. Thompson is based on Nucky Johnson, one of the key figures that appears in Nelson Johnson’s history of Atlantic City. Nucky Johnson was an exceptionally colorful character who lived an extravagant life and associated with a vast array of notable political and underworld figures. Indeed, Thompson’s most significant historical contribution to the show is in the connections he has to a wide array of personages, an element of his character that is based directly on Johnson. Winter and his writers would have been hard-pressed to create a more distinctive and well-connected character, so it is unsurprising they decided against inventing a character from scratch for the lead. However, Winter chose to only loosely base his character on Johnson and transformed him instead into Nucky Thompson.⁵¹ Thompson, and this character type more generally, occupies a hazy middle ground, somewhere between the real figure of Capone and the invented character of Darmody. Many of the details and circumstances of Johnson’s life are mirrored in his on-screen manifestation, but there are also a number of differences and elements of his life that have been sensationalized. “I didn’t want to be married to the real guy’s life story,” Winter explains. “I wanted to take our Nucky into places that the real Nucky Johnson might never have gone—emotionally, violently. I also didn’t want to sully the real person’s reputation in case he has family. That wouldn’t be fair.”⁵² Basing the character on Johnson meant Winter and his writers could borrow heavily from the real-life figure—his personality, career, acquaintances—but could freely manipulate the character to fit within the quintessential gangster mold while also endeavoring to generate and maintain audience investment through character alignment and allegiance.

Unlike Capone, Nucky Johnson had not appeared in film and television shows prior to Boardwalk Empire, nor has he been the subject of many written historical works. Although a national figure in his own time, Johnson was relatively unknown in the twenty-first century, at least before the show aired. When prepping for the series, Winter would go to Atlantic City and informally ask people if they knew who Nucky Johnson was. “Almost nobody knew,” Winter remembered. “We realized early on that he’s sort of an obscure historical character.”⁵³ He has of course made appearances in a number of texts, including Nelson Johnson’s book, as well as others that focus on Atlantic City and 1920s and 1930s gangsters such as Paulino “Skinny” D’Amato. Since the airing of Boardwalk Empire, a new biography of Johnson, by his former lawyer, Frank J. Ferry, has also been published.⁵⁴ Nucky is generally represented in a consistent fashion across these histories; he is described as a smart, savvy politician whose rule in Atlantic City was absolute and who was equally influential in the underworld. Alongside his eventual downfall, there are two key events that are often referenced, both of which he played an instrumental role in organizing: the creation of the Atlantic City Convention Hall and the meeting of organized crime bosses in 1929. Ultimately, though, for a general audience Nucky Johnson does not carry expectations and the baggage of the other historical characters.

Even though Johnson may not be as well-known as Capone, his life was no less extraordinary. As Nelson Johnson explains, “For nearly 30 years, Enoch ‘Nucky’ Johnson lived the life of a decadent monarch, with the power to satisfy his every want.” Johnson was ambitious and sought power from an early age. He was sheriff and secretary to the Republican County Committee before he became county treasurer in 1913, a position that he held for almost thirty years. While in this post Johnson reorganized and revolutionized the graft and protection system in Atlantic City and became a powerful force in New Jersey politics. He made sure to meet every job applicant who sought to get on the Atlantic City public payroll, especially police, to make sure they understood the system before they signed on to the job. Johnson had a dual identity; he “was the most powerful Republican in New Jersey, who could influence the destinies of governors and senators, and a racketeer, respected and trusted by organized crime.”⁵⁵ His town was awash with liquor during Prohibition and, unlike other major cities, it was not confined to speakeasies and private clubs. It was out in the open, a fact that drew tourists and conventioneers to the resort town and inspired the admiration of established gangsters. He ruled from the ninth floor of the Ritz Hotel and was known as a man about town, throwing and attending the biggest parties, more often than not with a young showgirl on his arm. Johnson won the hearts (and votes) of Atlantic City residents, Black and white alike, by always helping out in times of need with food, coal, a job, or perhaps the loan of one of his personal automobiles when there was a funeral. His reign came to an end in 1941 when he was sentenced for tax evasion after a four-and-a-half-year investigation by federal authorities.

The incredible life of Nucky Johnson provides a substantial base or “skeleton” for Nucky Thompson that is built upon from week to week and season to season. The basics of Johnson’s life—his job, connections, residence, and even dress sense—form the basis of Nucky Thompson in season 1. Johnson owned over a hundred suits in rich tones such as lavender and chocolate, and kept warm in winter in a full-length $1,200 raccoon coat.⁵⁶ His trademark was a fresh carnation pinned to his lapel, “a sartorial flourish that remained his signature til the day he died.”⁵⁷ Thompson’s luxurious wardrobe is clearly modeled on Johnson’s. Week after week, Thompson wears elaborate three-piece suits in contrasting patterns, colors, and textures, and the carnation features prominently, even in the opening credits of the show.⁵⁸ Like Johnson, Thompson is the treasurer of Atlantic County and has a strong presence in Republican politics. He socializes and brokers deals with Frank Hague, the mayor of Jersey City, Senator Walter Edge, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty, just as the real Nucky did. According to Jonathan Van Meter, “no political boss in America ever wielded as much power in one state as Nucky Johnson did in New Jersey,” something that audiences certainly get a sense of in the show.⁵⁹

The key benefit of basing Thompson on Johnson is Johnson’s connection to high-profile underworld and political figures. Audiences are “aligned” with Thompson, as he is at the center of Boardwalk Empire’s character constellation. Murray Smith describes “alignment” as “the process by which spectators are placed in relation to characters in terms of access to their action, and to what they know and feel.”⁶⁰ In the opening minutes the viewer follows Thompson from his speech at the Women’s Temperance League meeting, where he condemns alcohol, to Babette’s Supper Club, where he organizes his ward bosses for the bootlegging business. Throughout the episode main characters are generally introduced as they come into contact with Thompson. As both the episode and the season progress, it is not only Thompson that the viewer is aligned with, but it is largely through him that new characters are introduced and multiple attachments are made. He hosts a dinner meeting in the first episode between the crime bosses of New York and Chicago, which is where the viewer is first introduced to Rothstein, Luciano, Colosimo, Torrio, and Capone. From this initial meeting in Atlantic City, the scope of the show expands, incorporating storylines in New York and Chicago.

This access to an array of characters is arguably Thompson’s most important historical contribution. His historical value lies not in the insight he gives into one historical figure (as does Capone’s character) or into a larger group (as does Darmody’s) but from the connection he provides to other characters. Nucky Johnson’s extravagant career and ties to both the political system and the underworld provided a basis and inspiration for the inclusion of different elements and figures in 1920s society. Many historical topics are incorporated through the inclusion of the rich array of characters, real and invented, with which viewers become aligned, including Darmody, Capone, Rothstein, Margaret Schroeder, Esther Randolph, and Chalky White.⁶¹ The inclusion of the invented character Margaret, for example, brings in issues surrounding immigration, women’s health, and suffrage, while historical figures Harry Daugherty and Jess Smith provide insight into how machine politics operated. Viewers’ knowledge of and engagement with the 1920s are limited to what each character brings to the show and are consequently heavily centered on Prohibition, bootlegging, and the underworld. But in many subtle ways the characters are so diverse that Boardwalk Empire manages to be more than simply a gangster show or, when thinking in terms of history, a 1920s gangster compendium.

Nucky Thompson (center) meets with the heads of the Chicago and New York crime syndicates.

Nucky Johnson even serves as the starting point for more than one character on Boardwalk Empire. Chalky White, the leader of the African American community in Atlantic City, is an analogue to Thompson. Winter was interested in incorporating African American characters after reading about the crucial role Black individuals played in the creation and maintenance of the seaside tourist resort. Nelson Johnson touched upon their role in his book and followed up with a more focused study of the Northside and Atlantic City’s Black community.⁶² “There really had to be somebody in charge of that community that was probably similar to Nucky,” Winter explains. “There was probably one guy who ran that town, that side of town, the way that Nucky ran his side of town, so I invented Chalky.”⁶³ Thompson and Chalky share some characteristics as well as a strong bond on the show. While Thompson serves as benefactor to Atlantic City citizens, Chalky occupies a similar position in the African American community, and it earns him their loyalty and respect. Throughout season 2 the viewer learns that Chalky looks after his people by providing them with food and money, and when he orchestrates a strike of the city’s Black hospitality workers, the workers oblige him. Even Chalky’s costume is designed to mirror Thompson’s. He, too, wears luxurious suits in rich and contrasting tones and patterns, as well as fur-trimmed coats, but instead of a carnation boutonniere, his signature style is a brightly colored bow tie. “He is to the Atlantic City African American community the yang to Nucky’s yin,” costume designer Lisa Padovani elaborated.⁶⁴ The use of Nucky Johnson as an inspiration for more than one character on the same show opens up intriguing possibilities and highlights the potential and flexibility of this particular character type.⁶⁵

For all of these reasons—Johnson’s eccentric character, high-profile connections, and potential to serve as a starting point for more than one character—it is clear why Winter chose to base his lead character on Johnson. But it is also crucial to understand how and why Winter and his writers departed from the historical figure. Changing Nucky Johnson to Nucky Thompson allowed the writers to use what they wanted of the real figure while freeing them up to radically alter aspects of his life. Many of Thompson’s relationships on the show are completely invented, including his relationships with Darmody and Margaret. Nucky Johnson did not have an Irish mistress whom he later married, and while he did know and associate with many of the historical gangsters, such as Capone and Luciano, he did not have close relationships with them in the early 1920s. Arguably, the event that really separates Thompson from his historical counterpart takes place during the season 2 finale. In this episode he shoots and kills Darmody, his former protégé. Darmody himself is of course a completely fictional character, so it is impossible for this particular event to be based on fact. But, as far as the historical record shows, Nucky Johnson never shot or killed anyone. He was undoubtedly corrupt and involved in numerous illegal endeavors, but there is no evidence he engaged in violent acts. “By making him Nucky Thompson, he’s Nucky, but he’s not Nucky,” Winter explained. “Our Nucky can do anything and veer off into any direction. That’s much more freeing creatively, for myself and my writers.”⁶⁶ Many of the changes and additions to Nucky’s history serve to shape him into a readily identifiable gangster figure.

It is in part because Thompson is an “inspired-by” character, rather than a historical figure, that radical changes can be made to his character without jeopardizing the wider historical integrity of the show. Boardwalk Empire charts Thompson’s evolution from corrupt Atlantic City politician, a character element rooted in history, to fully-fledged gangster, an aspect that is almost completely invented. While Johnson has been called a racketeer and was an associate of known gangsters, he himself cannot be described as one.⁶⁷ A racketeer is “a person who engages in dishonest and fraudulent business dealings,” while a gangster is “a member of a gang of violent criminals.”⁶⁸ With the advent of Prohibition, Thompson and his associates recognize the possibilities for making more money, but it will essentially be business as usual, although on a bigger and more profitable scale. He is initially unwilling to “get his hands dirty” and, in the pilot episode, berates Darmody for hijacking Rothstein’s carload of liquor and acting rashly. While Darmody appears unperturbed at the violence carried out during the hijacking, stating the need to make sure there were no witnesses, Thompson is clearly not happy that he “killed four fucking guys.” Whether his concern is moral or simply because of the headache it is causing him is up for debate. “I could have you killed,” Thompson threatens Darmody after learning of his reckless actions. “But you won’t,” Darmody replies. “Look, you can’t be half a gangster, Nucky, not anymore.”⁶⁹

Winter and his writers take Johnson’s criminal activities as a starting point but exaggerate and invent many aspects so that his character more clearly fits into the classic gangster mold. For Thompson to become a fully-fledged gangster, he must prove himself willing to engage in violent acts and thereby display one of the important signifiers of the gangster genre.⁷⁰ Thompson has skipped over the apprenticeship stage of gangsterdom, a position Capone and Darmody clearly occupy in season 1. For Thompson to become a gangster, he too must take up the gun to prove to himself and others that he deserves his position of power, not only in the fictional world he occupies but for the audience as well. Thompson must be able to hold his own against the legendary figures of Capone and Luciano if he is to remain the center of the show. The night Darmody is brought to Thompson to face his death, he looks around at Thompson’s men and asks, “Who’s going to do it?” Thompson surprises both Darmody and the audience by taking out a gun and shooting him twice after much hesitation. The man who had told Thompson he could not be half a gangster anymore is the one who enables him to cross that line. Promotional material for season 3 played heavily on this, with one advertisement showing Thompson, gun in hand, standing above a prostrate body, with the tagline “You can’t be half a gangster.” Thompson lives up to his “full gangster” status in the season, not being content to let others carry out violent acts for him. In episode 4 he shoots a young bootlegger in the back of the head at close range, in part because he stole from Thompson’s outfit, but also to show his men that he is the boss, as he feels his authority waning. But for Thompson to earn his place as an equal amongst the exulted antiheroes of the postnetwork quality TV serial, he cannot simply be a one-dimensional gangster.

The addition of violence to Thompson’s character facilitates the need for further changes to ensure that viewers can ally with Thompson and also to make sure he fits comfortably in HBO’s pantheon of “complicated heroes.” Thompson bears a striking resemblance to HBO’s quintessential complicated hero and fellow televisual gangster, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. Murray Smith has attempted to answer the question of why Tony Soprano is such an appealing, attractive character to audiences when they are well aware of his violent, brutish actions. Smith comes up with a variety of suggestions, but the one he favors is that viewers can sympathize with the character because he is, at least partially, a moral character. Tony displays anxieties, vulnerabilities, and frustrations that viewers can identify with, as well as a moral code, “and the idea of family is central to that moral code.”⁷¹ Thompson’s character is constructed following a similar blueprint. His relationship with Margaret and her children, Teddy and Emily, balances the “business” side of Thompson and creates a more rounded character. Thompson presents himself as a father figure to Teddy and Emily after the death of their father and treats them with the kindness and respect he never received from his own father. After Emily contracts polio in season 2, Thompson spends time with her, helping and encouraging her to walk on her crutches. Of course, the truth is that the two children are fatherless thanks to Thompson, as he was the one who ordered their father dead. But, like Tony Soprano, though the means may strike the audience as immoral, his motivations are often moral. Thompson only decided to do away with Hans Schroeder and pin the season 1 hijacking and murders on him when he found out Hans had beat Margaret so badly she ended up in the hospital and lost the baby she had almost carried to term. Thompson is both criminal and righteous; his invented relationships and interactions create a rounded, partially sympathetic character.⁷²

These inventions encourage the audience to become allied with Thompson. “Allegiance” is a term that Smith adopted in his scholarship on character in film. He is critical of the fact that alignment—which he defines as viewers’ “spatio-temporal attachment and subjective access” to characters—is often conflated with allegiance.⁷³ He argues that allegiance is distinct from alignment and that the former refers to the “business of assessing a character’s attitudes, traits, and actions, a process that results in a more or less sympathetic or antipathetic attitude on our part toward a character.”⁷⁴ Once allegiance is established, viewers respond emotionally to the actions of characters and the situations they are placed in. Viewers’ sympathies are not only determined by “external factors” or “real world attitudes” but by the “internal ‘system of values’ in the text.”⁷⁵ While Thompson would be reprehensible to many if judging his actions by an “external standard of morality,” within the text and in contrast to other characters he appears in a more sympathetic light. For example, in season 3, while viewers may have lost faith in Thompson after his actions in the season 2 finale and reassessed their opinion of him, the introduction of violent sociopath Gyp Rosetti helps place Thompson in a comparatively positive position on the spectrum. Allegiance does not have to be limited to one character; indeed, in Boardwalk Empire, viewers are likely to become allied with more than one of the numerous characters, and this may take the form of perverse or partial allegiance.⁷⁶ As characters are key to keeping audiences tuning in week to week, crafting characters that generate allegiance and keep viewers invested in the narrative is of central importance. The inspired-by historical character gives writers the freedom to manipulate historical figures to fulfil these requirements.

Boardwalk Empire, while a historically conscious drama that aims to capture the sensibility of the Prohibition period, is first and foremost a gangster show. Winter identified a fascinating historical figure in Nucky Johnson but recognized that he was not suited to fronting a gangster series. Changes would have to be made to transform Johnson from a racketeer to a fully-fledged gangster and leading man. That Nucky Johnson was changed to Nucky Thompson demonstrates that Winter was aware he could not invent freely with a historical figure and that, in crafting this transformation, he would need to make some sort of distinction between the two. The changes made to Nucky Johnson—his invented relationships, his increased gangster involvement—do not inherently impact the on-screen history negatively. Through the simple act of changing Nucky’s last name, Winter gave himself the freedom to not have to worry about “staying true to the spirit” of the real Nucky and the license to invent a character that both fulfilled genre expectations and remained historically conscious.

Inventing a Historical Character: Jimmy Darmody

Vying for the role of main character in seasons 1 and 2 is James “Jimmy” Darmody, Thompson’s protégé, surrogate son, and eventual adversary. The storylines of the fictional characters account for a substantial portion of the show and are often used to connect and flesh out the stories of real historical figures and characters based on historical figures. Darmody has significant contact with both Capone and Thompson and also brings with him a cohort of other fictional characters that are directly related to him in the character constellation—Angela, his girlfriend and later his wife; his son, Tommy; his mother, Gillian; and his friend Richard Harrow. Though Darmody is fictional, a great amount of research went into crafting the character, and through him significant historical issues are addressed and presented to the audience. The defining element in Jimmy’s character construction is his service in the Great War. For Winter, it was an important historical issue to include on the show, as he felt that most Americans were largely ignorant about World War One and the impact it had on those who fought. “World War One is sort of this forgotten period of American history for people of our age nowadays,” he explained, especially when compared to the attention World War Two receives in popular culture.⁷⁷ The Great War makes up only one layer of Darmody’s character—there are many other elements at play—but it serves as an example of how fictional characters can successfully explore historical issues. Jimmy is as much a “historical character” as Capone, and his presence in the narrative imbues the past with a sense of contingency and uncertainty.

Unlike with Capone, and even Thompson, Winter and his writers started with a blank piece of paper with the character of Darmody. To build and sustain an engaging three-dimensional fictional character, several basic components are necessary. Firstly, a character must have a well-developed backstory and history, as it is often this backstory that will provide the motivation, or the push and drive, of the character. This is the second aspect: the character must have a goal or a desire, something that motivates action. Finally, the character must experience some sort of change or transformation over the course of the story—not remain static and unchanged in the eyes of the audience.⁷⁸ The character that is created on paper is expressed in the narrative through “signs of character” crafted not only by the writers but by the actors; the art, makeup, and costume departments; and the promotional and marketing departments. As Richard Dyer explains, signs of character are “the signs that we as viewers latch onto in constructing character” and include audience foreknowledge, name, appearance, objective correlatives, speech of character, speech of others, gesture, action, and mise-en-scène.⁷⁹ It is through these signs that viewers come to know and understand characters.⁸⁰

Darmody demonstrates that when historical events form the foundation of a character’s backstory, that character has the potential to meaningfully highlight and engage with historical issues. Like a character’s personality, this history is “not something given in a single shot.”⁸¹ Small pieces of information are revealed by the characters themselves and those around them. As Roberta Pearson points out, characters develop depth and complexity as biographical details are accumulated episode by episode, resulting in “highly elaborated characters.”⁸² Over the first two seasons of Boardwalk Empire, scenes involving Darmody build up a picture not only of what life was like for American soldiers during the Great War but also of the tribulations they faced when they returned stateside. The viewer first meets Darmody when he collects Thompson from the Women’s Temperance League meeting, and as he waits he listens to Thompson’s story of how, as a boy, his family was so poor he was forced to kill and eat rats. “In the trenches we ate dog meat once, but rats!” Jimmy exclaims afterward. The first words out of his mouth allude not only to his service but also to the hardships he suffered, and indicate that this history is key to the character. In virtually every episode Darmody’s time as a soldier is discussed or alluded to; by the time he dies, the fragments of memory have joined together to reveal the full impact the horrors of the war had on him.

Darmody is by no means the first World War One soldier turned gangster in popular culture. In fact, it is a common trope of pulp novels and gangster films of the interwar period. In the 1930s, just as revisionist histories began to appear that reconsidered America’s role in the Great War and its effect on postwar society, Hollywood, too, explored similar issues. “References to the Great War, foreign conflict, and the troublesome lives of returning veterans” were not unusual in films of the 1930s, according to Smyth. Journalists, novelists, and filmmakers “emphasized the veteran-gangster connection,” particularly in the 1930s.⁸³ There were, of course, variations in the formula from text to text. In Armitage Trail’s pulp novel Scarface (1930), the central character is a hood before he goes to war, and he resumes his life of crime on his return. His time in the army in a machine gun company has better trained him “in the fine art of murder.”⁸⁴ On the other hand, Eddie Bartlett in The Roaring Twenties (Walsh, 1939) enters the army as an ordinary citizen and fights admirably. Upon returning home, Eddie realizes that he has lost his job to men who did not fight, and he struggles to make ends meet. While moonlighting as a cab driver, he gets drawn into the bootlegging business and flourishes until the repeal of Prohibition. In this sense, Darmody’s personal backstory is not unique, as there is already a well-established precedent. What separates Darmody from earlier filmic representations of gangster veterans is the detail and depth given to his war service.

The historical record was a crucial source when constructing Darmody’s backstory; consequently, his actions in the present and his reflections on the past provide insight into American soldiers’ experience during World War One. His involvement in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne offensive forms the basis of his backstory. The American offensive at Saint-Mihiel took place in mid-September 1918 and was followed later in the month by the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which lasted more than six weeks. On a number of occasions Darmody tries to explain what he saw and did during the war and the effect it has had on him. Before he has one of Torrio’s rivals in Chicago killed, he opens up to him about what it was like during the war. “It’s almost impossible to describe the horror. It’s a living, waking nightmare,” Darmody confesses. He vividly recounts the story of a German soldier he shot who became entangled in barbed wire and cried out in pain and called out for his mother for days before he died. Although invented, Darmody’s experiences and the ways he describes them mirror the reminiscences of frontline servicemen in the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. One soldier from the latter campaign remembers advancing through barbed wire as part of the second wave of an assault when machine gun fire opened up. We “lay waiting to follow them, horrified by their dying screams. . . . The next few minutes were among the worst of the war for me as we lay helpless to aid, listening to our friends being torn to pieces by gunfire.”⁸⁵ While Darmody’s experiences are not representative of all American men who participated in the Great War, his character highlights some of the traumas faced by the 40 percent of American troops that served in combat roles.⁸⁶

Even Darmody’s body is shaped by his World War One service and becomes a vehicle for history. The physical disability displayed by Jimmy is a constant reminder to the audience of his service in the war and serves as a sign of character. The limp is part of the actor’s performance, and also part of the appearance of the character. Jeremy Butler breaks down Dyer’s category of appearance into three subsections—face, body, and costuming. Butler suggests that the build and physique of characters has the potential to indicate elements of their character.⁸⁷ In the case of Jimmy his build is unremarkable; he is a young, slender, fit-looking young man. His limp, however, disrupts this otherwise healthy appearance. Many men who fought suffered from a variety of disabilities and handicaps, both mental and physical. Beth Linker estimates that by mid-1919 approximately 120,000 soldiers had already passed through the US Army’s rehabilitation program.⁸⁸ Darmody’s limp is noticeable from the first scenes he is in, but it is not until episode 4, when he and Capone go for their suit fitting, that the web of scars on his leg is clearly visible. Due to the pain it is causing him, he visits an army hospital a few episodes later. He explains to the doctor that the first surgery was done at a field hospital outside Verdun and was followed up by three more at Walter Reed in DC. It is at this army hospital that Darmody meets Richard Harrow, a sniper from the war who, like Darmody, is physically wounded, although his injures are much more severe, with almost half of his face literally missing. The fictional characters of both Darmody and Richard, with their dual physical disabilities, inform audiences of the deadliness of the first industrial war and the lasting impact the conflict had on the lives of individual men who suffered numerous surgeries, pain, handicaps, and, in the case of the latter, public revulsion as a result of their service.

Darmody’s position in society, as well as his position in Thompson’s organization, is shaped by his war service. Not only does his backstory illuminate the horrors and physical consequences of the Great War, but what motivates him—and holds him back—also grows out of his wartime and postwar experiences. Darmody’s goal is to reconnect with and provide financially for his family, but he finds himself with few prospects upon his return. The fact that Darmody has been away has stalled his progress in Thompson’s organization and makes it difficult for him to make ends meet. Darmody is not unlike many returned servicemen who were faced with “widespread social unrest, rising unemployment, and economic hardship.”⁸⁹ According to Richard Severo and Lewis Milford, soldiers struggled to survive economically when back at home and often turned to crime.⁹⁰ Darmody’s lowly economic status is observed through his clothes and his surroundings, examples of what scholars call an “objective correlative,” which is an object or environment that “comes to signify something about the character.”⁹¹ It may reflect the mental state of the character, the personality of the character, or, as in the case of Darmody, the social and economic status of the character. There are numerous objective correlatives for each character, Jimmy included, but in season 1 his small one-bedroom apartment signifies his financial difficulties, certainly when contrasted with the opulent (Thompson’s Ritz apartment, the Commodore’s mansion) and more modest (Eli Thompson’s family home) dwellings of others. The war does not drive Darmody to a life of crime—he is already involved—but after returning home to Atlantic City, he does find that he has been passed over for a ward boss position. The job has gone to Paddy Ryan, a young man who, unlike Darmody, did not serve in the war. Nucky Thompson later explains that if he had stayed stateside and continued his studies, the job would have been his, but Darmody’s service left him in a disadvantaged position. From the pilot episode Darmody is driven to regain what he feels is lost ground, making him into an active, goal-oriented protagonist.

While Darmody’s wartime experience provides motivation, it also creates conflict for the character. Conflict is an integral part of any narrative and can be generated between characters, be sparked by environmental factors, or manifest within a character. In a sprawling long-form series like Boardwalk Empire, multiple conflicts are ongoing amongst the various storylines and characters. Darmody certainly engages in a number of conflicts with other characters over the course of two seasons, but the internal conflict he faces is the most significant in terms of his character development. Similar to many soldiers who served on the front lines, Jimmy appears to be suffering from shellshock. What would be termed “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) today was at that time a relatively unknown phenomenon. Nonetheless, thousands of servicemen suffered from it. It is now recognized that “PTSD is a complex and multidimensional latticework of symptoms, memories, events, responses, and beliefs” manifesting in numerous ways and causing “disruption to very primary notions of self, family and society.”⁹² Darmody’s PTSD manifests in distrust, emotional turmoil, and reckless and self-sabotaging decision-making, which proves to be the biggest obstacle he faces in achieving his goals.

Darmody ultimately cannot overcome his past; while his character transforms on a superficial level, acquiring flashier clothes and possessions (much like Capone), he can never escape his own history. The memory of the war clearly haunts him and threatens to overwhelm him. Before going to his fateful meeting with Thompson, he says a cryptic goodbye to Richard, his mind lingering on the war.

Darmody: “Nobody was meant to be there.”

Richard: “But that’s where we were. We’re still there, aren’t we?”

Darmody: “Time to come home, Richard.”

Richard: “How?”

Darmody: “I dunno, but promise me you’re going to try.”

Darmody encourages Richard to move on from his wartime experiences, but he is unable to do so himself; he goes to his death knowingly, telling Thompson that he “died in a trench, years back.” The staging of Darmody’s death reflects the profound effect the war has had on him. He’s shot in front of Atlantic’s City’s newly erected war memorial, and as his life slips away, he appears to gaze up at the solemn face of the statue. A haunting orchestral score begins to play as the scene cuts to a flashback in which men with guns, bayonets attached, huddle in the trenches, nearby trees on fire. Mortars explode in slow motion near the front lines, and the camera tracks to Darmody, who waits pensively in a prayer-like stance. The whistle sounds, and Darmody’s figure is lost from sight as he heads over the top of the trench.

In his final moments, Jimmy Darmody flashes back to his time in the trenches during World War One.

Darmody’s war service is so integral to his character that it ends up retarding his growth; unable to move past his personal demons and evolve as a character is required to do, it is only fitting that Darmody dies at the end of season 2. Viewers are often aligned with Darmody and are witnesses to his evolving romances and friendships, his complicated family situation, and the twists and turns of his bootlegging career. Each facet of his life is shaped by the war; he is not simply reduced to a set of Great War facts and statistics. His character brings attention to an oft-ignored period in US history and, most importantly, encourages viewers to care deeply about it, because it is packaged in a multifaceted character with whom they are likely allied.

It is worth remembering that, like all characters in film or television, Darmody is constructed only in part on paper by the writers; he is also constructed through the lens of the camera and the performance of the actor. Patrick Phillips argues that “characterization is as much visual as it is verbal,” and of particular importance is the actor.⁹³ Michael Pitt, the actor who plays Darmody, is an inseparable part of the character and is, in fact, the viewer’s first contact with the character. Casting and star identification can potentially have a major impact on character and the audience’s response. Dyer, in particular, attributes great importance to star identification. He suggests “the phenomenon of audience/star identification may yet be the crucial aspect of the placing of the audience in relation to a character. The ‘truth’ about a character’s personality and the feelings which it evokes may be determined by what the reader takes to be the truth about the person of the star playing the part.”⁹⁴ The question then becomes whether viewers can get past or overcome the prior roles and associations the actors bring with them. In part, this will depend on the audience’s familiarity with the actor. Arguably the biggest “star” on Boardwalk Empire is Steve Buscemi. He is best known as a character actor, appearing in everything from Michael Bay blockbusters to Coen brothers indies.⁹⁵ Pitt, while an established actor, is undoubtedly less well-known. His filmography prior to Boardwalk consisted mainly of low-budget independent films, such as The Dreamers (Bertolucci, 2003), and his most mainstream exposure came via a stint on Dawson’s Creek (The WB, 1998–2003). Many of the viewers coming to the HBO show may have been unfamiliar with his work, and so star identification most likely did not have a major impact on viewer response to the character.

Nonetheless, Pitt, as the actor playing Jimmy Darmody, still contributes elements to the character through his physical appearance and performance. After Darmody’s demise at the end of season 2, many viewers took to online forums to express their thoughts on his death. Alan Sepinwall’s weekly recap on HitFix for episode 12, season 2, for example, received over twice as many comments as episode 11 of the same season and more than ten times the amount of comments as the first episode of the season. Clearly, the death of Darmody elicited strong responses in viewers, and their feelings towards the character frequently connected back to Pitt. “At the end, as Jimmy lay dying, I found myself standing up in front of my television and yelling at the screen,” viewer DC posted. “Michael Pitt brought such charisma and screen presence, the show isn’t going to feel the same.”⁹⁶ At the other end of the spectrum, one audience member, having “always found his performance as Jimmy Darmody extremely self-conscious,” “sang the Hallelujah Chorus when he made his exit in this episode.”⁹⁷ For other viewers it was Pitt’s physical appearance that drew them to Darmody’s character. “Jimmy was the main reason why lots of women tuned [in]. It wasn’t to watch Nucky!” declared one viewer, whose sentiments were echoed by stravu9’s angry post: “Jimmy was my POV character. Buscemi is too ugly to carry a show. I’m cancelling my HBO.”⁹⁸ What makes a compelling character differs from individual audience member to individual audience member, but the actor behind the role can undoubtedly have a significant impact on how viewers respond to them.

What Darmody’s character ultimately provides, along with the other invented characters, is a level of unpredictability and contingency. At the start of the series he occupies a similar position to the other “gangster toddlers,” but unlike the trajectories of the real historical gangsters, whose careers are firmly established and mythologized, Darmody’s future is always uncertain. William Guynn succinctly captures the hypothesis of philosopher of history Louis O. Mink “that the reader of history adopts a specific position in relation to historical narrative that is different from the position he adopts in relation to fictional narrative.” For example, a reader reading a novel does so with a certain amount of anticipation; unsure what is going to happen next, the reader has the “impression of the contingency of events.”⁹⁹ On the other hand, the reader of a nonfiction historical text will most likely already have some knowledge of the topic, and the author may lay out the approach and argument at the start of the text in the introduction, thereby partially eliminating any sense of the unknown. Mink does concede that historians will present and interpret events differently, still allowing a sense of contingency for the reader. The same rules apply to historical television series and their characters. Viewers familiar with Capone will know where his character is ultimately headed, but because Boardwalk Empire’s representation differs from other popular representations, there is still an element of uncertainty; he is “both contingent and determined,” especially given the invented nature of many of his scenes.¹⁰⁰ Darmody is an even more unpredictable character because there are no landmarks to adhere to, no historical figure to consult to provide clues as to what is coming next.

This sense of contingency is valuable in a historical text, as it gives history itself an element of chance; the impression that things could have turned out differently. The evolution that Capone undergoes and the signifiers he adopts over season 1 are mirrored in Darmody, and the two are ultimately on the same career path. Within the structure of the show, Darmody is just as, if not more, important than the real figures, receiving greater screen time, and viewers likely become equally invested in his character. Winter describes Darmody as the type of figure who become “the little asterisks in the history books.” “Not every bootlegger or low-level criminal made it into the history books,” he explained.¹⁰¹ Darmody ultimately has an interesting effect on the real historical characters around him, helping to demythologize them. The fact that Darmody dies and does not succeed helps to illustrate that the gangsters remembered today were not untouchable figures or predestined “great men” of history.

Overall, Winter and his writers achieved a great level of depth and detail relating to Darmody’s war service, firmly rooting it in history. This area of historical inquiry does not die with Darmody but is carried on through Richard, who faces similar issues adjusting to life after the war. Darmody serves an interesting function on the show, both as a representative of an unsuccessful gangster that history has not remembered, and a representative of combat soldiers in the Great War. Rosenstone discusses a corresponding idea in relation to historical events portrayed on-screen that do not “accurately reproduce a specific, documentable moment of the past.” For Rosenstone, “generic historical moments” created for the screen are still valuable and claim their “truth by standing in for many such moments.”¹⁰² In the case of Darmody it is not an event but a character that has a similar effect. He is a proximate figure, not based on any one person, meaning that the writers could draw upon a much larger pool of historical literature. Rather than being confined to the experiences of one man’s life, an invented character can embody the experiences of a much larger group, or multiple groups, as is the case with Darmody.

Conclusion

So did Winter succeed in his aim to make the characters and the show unpredictable by mixing the three character types together and weighting the series in favor of fictional characters? There has been a mixed response from viewers, with some greatly enjoying the depictions of the real gangsters and others feeling that the inclusion of real people destroys the sense of uncertainty. On HitFix, Ever complained that “the historical characters are not that interesting because we already know what will happen to them.”¹⁰³ Likewise, Brian felt that the inclusion of real gangsters could “potentially weaken the series overall” because he knew what could and could not happen to them.¹⁰⁴ Such criticisms have been echoed by other viewers and critics. A solution that many have suggested is to set the show in an “alternate universe” and play with the histories of the established gangsters, or fictionalize them as the writers did with Nucky Johnson. An anonymous commenter posted: “I would actually like to see them kill a Lucky Luciano or Meyer Lansky just to show us that this is a different universe and anything goes. It would add an air of unpredictability I think the show lacks.”¹⁰⁵ For these viewers it is clearly not enough that the writers have created new relationships and scenarios for the real-life figures. Knowing how and when the gangsters die or fall into the hands of the law is too much of a “spoiler” to overcome. In the case of the real gangsters, viewers are also still able to do what Winter himself was guilty of when watching Deadwood: turn to Google to find fast answers. “This is the third week that BE has driven me to Google stuff which I like, Deadwood was the same,” wrote Gridlock.¹⁰⁶

For others, though, the historical figures are the most satisfying on the show. Greg Grant opined that “Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, and George Remus are all more compelling characters than Nucky Thompson, because . . . well, how many people heard of Nucky Thompson’s character before this show? There’s a reason we remember Al Capone.”¹⁰⁷ His sentiments were echoed by Dr. Gross, who wished Boardwalk Empire “was the story about the rise of these gangsters, rather than the Nucky Thompson story.”¹⁰⁸ It is also worth considering that not all audience members will be familiar with the background of the historical figures, and, for them, what happens to these gangsters remains a mystery. In part of an ongoing debate over “spoilers” and whether discussing history constitutes a spoiler, one person took issue with reviewer Sepinwall and other viewers who post comments. “It’s a little presumptuous of you to assume America’s criminal history is so well-known outside of the US,” the commenter complained. “Hell, I’m willing to bet not every American knows who was who and who did what. Capone? Sure. Luciano? In broad strokes. But the others? Well, thanks to you, I now know that they’re untouchable.”¹⁰⁹ Not everyone’s historical knowledge is the same, so viewers will be approaching the real figures, and even the invented characters and the characters based on historical figures, with a different base of understanding from which to draw upon.

It is difficult, then, to gauge whether Winter is successful, as the variety of responses illustrates that audience members read and respond to characters differently. “What the text tries to get the reader to construct,” Dyer states, “may not in fact be what s/he constructs.”¹¹⁰ While the writers attempted to present viewers with a new interpretation of Capone, shaped Thompson’s character in an effort to generate allegiance, and aimed to construct an engaging invented character in Darmody, not every viewer will have the desired response to the character. “Meaning is the product not just of a film text, but also of personal response,” as each viewer privileges certain signs of character over others, resulting in varied evaluations of each character.¹¹¹ Character construction is only partially in the control of the show’s creators and the actors who play the roles; the rest resides in the audience, who may also “infer what a character ‘is like’ beyond the definite information supplied,” thereby continuing to build upon and expand the character.¹¹² While this issue is to a large extent a matter of personal taste, some conclusions can be drawn regarding the success and capabilities of each of the three character types in terms of presenting history on-screen.

The historical characters serve a number of functions on the show, including drawing in viewers and rooting the show in a specific place and time. As sociologist Gary Alan Fine notes, when we focus on a specific individual, one with a well-known reputation, “he or she stands for a historical period and set of events.” Capone was undoubtedly a celebrity in his own time and in the following decades has appeared in countless films and television shows, not to mention written historical texts, which has maintained and strengthened his reputation. He brings with him a flood of associations—of urban America in the 1920s, ethnicity, crime, and, of course, Prohibition. A reputation such as Capone’s “is a powerful metaphor for thinking about a period.”¹¹³ Boardwalk Empire utilizes the reputation of Capone, and to a lesser extent gangsters such as Rothstein and Luciano, as a type of shorthand for the twenties and the era of Prohibition. By including these real figures, the show’s creators did not have to create a historical world from scratch because of the associations and prior knowledge the figures carry with them. These characters essentially lay the foundation upon which the show is built. Although Boardwalk uses Capone’s reputation, it also complicates it. The complex treatment of Capone illustrates that television is a medium capable of presenting a multidimensional representation of historical figures. Even while engaging in invented dialogue and scenarios, Boardwalk Empire’s Capone manages to capture the real Capone’s personality.

However, there are limits to what can be done with a historical figure, and there will always be some areas that leave people unhappy. Jonathan Eig, a Capone biographer, generally applauds both Boardwalk’s handling of Capone and Stephen Graham’s performance, although he finds fault with Graham’s physique. “He’s way too short. I have a really hard time with that,” Eig explained. “Just him standing in front of the Four Deuces was an intimidation, and I just don’t get that with Stephen Graham.”¹¹⁴ An actor can embody a historical figure with great sensitivity and success, but there will always be “a ‘real’ person in this equation—the actor,” an obstacle that cannot be overcome.¹¹⁵ When portraying a real historical figure, there are, as Jean-Louis Comolli explains, “at least two bodies in competition, one body too much,” something that is not an issue with invented characters.¹¹⁶ If the creators want to stay true to the spirit of the real person, as Winter and his writers aim to, then they are also beholden to the documented facts and existing knowledge about that figure. There are limits to what Capone’s character can do and the historical issues that can be explored through him. Winter felt it was important to include a significant storyline surrounding World War One and its residual effects in the 1920s, but he could not have done this through Capone. There are boundaries for historical figures that cannot be crossed without invalidating the representation of that individual.

The characters based on historical figures circumvent this issue, but carry with them their own drawbacks. This character type has a lot of potential in that it allows for the incredible and colorful histories of real people to be used either as a starting point or a general guide that the writers can then freely change and manipulate. Of the three character types it is the best example of the blurring between history and invention, which is where it also becomes problematic. Although most viewers were not familiar with Nucky Johnson at the start of the series, when Boardwalk Empire was released, fans did start to ask questions and investigate the central figure. This has led to some confusion over the relationship between the real and the invented Nucky, and to what extent Nucky Thompson is tied to Nucky Johnson’s real-life trajectory.¹¹⁷ As the seasons progress, Thompson moves further and further away from his real-life inspiration. The Thompson of season 5 bears little resemblance to Nucky Johnson; by this point he has resigned as county treasurer, remarried (both during season 2), ditched his suite at the Ritz, and abandoned his trademark carnation (start of season 4), not to mention the changes to his criminal activity and the different time and circumstances of his death. While Nucky Johnson was clearly the basis for Nucky Thompson at the start of the series, there is almost nothing to link them together by the fifth season. The fictional character evolved and developed independently of his historical inspiration over the seasons, complicating how viewers may comprehend the character and his relationship to history; it may be difficult for viewers to negotiate where the “real” ends and the fictional begins.

This confusion is potentially exacerbated by the different kinds of inspired-by characters that viewers will have encountered on TV. Even though Deadwood’s Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen, for example, share the name of real historical figures, they fit more comfortably into the inspired-by/based-on category. If Terence Winter did Google what happened to Al Swearengen, he would have seen that Swearengen died in Denver in 1904 under suspicious circumstances, not that he passed in 1899 in his room at the Gem (as he appears to do in Deadwood: The Movie).¹¹⁸ While both Bullock and Swearengen generally hew closer to their historical counterparts over the course of Deadwood’s three seasons and a film than Thompson does in Boardwalk Empire, there are enough changes to the historical figures that they cannot be assigned to the real historical figure category. They do, however, fit perfectly in the inspired-by category—creators took the contours of fascinating lives but developed facets independent of the historical record. Choosing to name Deadwood’s characters after the real-life figures is possibly misleading, but even Boardwalk Empire’s attempts to change names is likely confusing for audiences, given the similarities between the names of the real figures and their fictional counterparts: Nucky Johnson / Nucky Thompson; Louis Kessel / Eddie Kessler; Mickey Duffy / Mickey Doyle; Louis “The Commodore” Kuehnle / Louis “The Commodore” Kaestner. Inspired-by characters come in many shapes and sizes across TV series, and Boardwalk Empire’s characters are just one example of the forms this character type can take.

The inspired-by character type on Boardwalk Empire has also affected viewers’ understanding of other characters, namely the invented characters, prompting many to believe that all the characters in the show have some specific basis in history. Viewers have taken it upon themselves to research all the characters and try to find some basis in history, creating links between characters on the show and historical figures. There are numerous websites dedicated to such endeavors, and while some of the parallels drawn are clearly correct—Nucky Thompson being based on Nucky Johnson—many of them make incorrect connections. Jimmy Darmody has been consistently linked to Jimmy Boyd, a member of Johnson’s Atlantic City operation in the 1920s and 1930s. One website ambiguously explains, “Boyd, who may or may not have been a Princeton dropout and World War I veteran, emerged as an assistant to Nucky during the bootlegging period, though not as early as the show suggests (1920).”¹¹⁹ This website, and others, acknowledges that while Boyd “did do dirty work” for Johnson, he did not violently rob and kill bootleggers.¹²⁰ However, Winter has always openly discussed which characters are based on or inspired by real historical figures, and Darmody is not one of them. Apart from them sharing the same first name and both working for Nucky, there is nothing to connect the two. While Darmody is a historical character in the sense that he is part of a historical television series and, more importantly, incorporates historical discourse, he is not based upon any one person. Having three different types of historical characters means the lines sometimes become blurred for viewers, not only in the case of Darmody but also in the case of many of the other fictional characters.¹²¹

Completely invented characters perhaps offer the greatest possibilities for presenting history on-screen in terms of character. There are no limits to the historical issues that can be explored using any one character, an obvious benefit when dealing with history on-screen, as it is limited in terms of both time and space as to how many characters can reasonably be included. That is not to say that all invented characters are created equal in terms of historical value. This is evidenced through a brief comparison of Margaret Schroeder and Lucy Danziger, two of the invented female characters. While Lucy is not as central a character as Margaret, she still accrues a reasonable amount of screen time over seasons 1 and 2. Lucy’s scenes tend to involve sex or revolve around her relationships with men. On the other hand, through Margaret, numerous historical topics, including suffrage, immigration, and women’s health, are incorporated into the show. There is great potential for completely invented characters to bring both well-known and little-known historical issues to the attention of viewers, but that does not mean that this capacity will (or even should) be utilized for every single invented character.

Historical TV series can mix and match these character types in an infinite number of ways depending on the historical story the creators want to tell. Band of Brothers, for example, based on a nonfiction book and dealing with a specific US Army company, employs real historical figures for its central cast. Treme, on the other hand, features an invented cast of main characters to capture the wider experiences of a city in the wake of trauma. For audiences, depending on their knowledge of the period/event depicted, some research may be required in order to identify the character types employed on the show they are watching. A viewer unfamiliar with gangster history could have no idea that Lucky Luciano is a real historical figure and that Jimmy Darmody is not. While some audience members will seek out further information beyond the series itself, it is, ultimately, what’s up on-screen that matters—the narrative, driven by the characters, should engage the discourse of history regardless of whether the characters are real, invented, or inspired by historical figures (or a mixture of all three). It is, perhaps, for creators and writers of historical TV series that these categorizations are most useful. Knowing the strengths and limitations of each character type can potentially aid in the process of constructing historical characters and deciding which are best to populate the narrative with.

What is striking about Boardwalk Empire, and, indeed, all of the shows under examination, is the number of complex historical characters that the show is able to incorporate. Treme, for example, has on average a regular main cast of twelve and avoids placing any one character in a clear “lead” position. A potential concern in putting history on-screen is that the actions and significance of individuals may be overstated when not sufficiently placed within a larger context—a concern that the discipline has also expressed in regard to biography, microhistory, and narrative history more generally.¹²² History on-screen, with its limited time frame, must necessarily concentrate on a limited number of characters, and the camera, by its very nature, records the actions of individual figures, rather than abstract groups. While no kind of filmed history will ever be able to escape these confines, history on TV’s ability to incorporate multiple nuanced characters who bring with them a variety of historical storylines is surely an advantage of the medium. The number of characters in serials and the time viewers get to spend with each, potentially generating allegiances, have significant ramifications for the history being presented, as the next chapter suggests.