Recap: 'Boardwalk Empire' Season 5, Episode 5, ‘King Of Norway’

“Boardwalk Empire” will be slow and graceful to the end, just accept it. With only three episodes left, it feels like long wicks that have been lit that are now traveling down to what likely will be an explosive conclusion. Or at least, that’s the paradigm of Terence Winter’s show thus far. I’m not sure now is the time to surprise us, but ‘Boardwalk’ hasn’t really deigned or sped up its pace in its final shortened season.

Like this season’s narrative that jumped ahead in time seven years, Nucky’s flashbacks have also jumped forward in time. Young Enoch Thompson is no longer a boy. He’s a young man who intends to marry his love Mabel. He’s a deputy Sherriff under Sheriff Lindsay (Boris McIver) and he’s beyond learning the way of the world as he was when we last saw him as a child. These flashbacks — prequels as it were, explaining how Nucky became the calculated mobster he’s come— are now in the motivation phase. He’s not yet power hungry, but Nucky’s ambition is beginning to...