Recap: 'Boardwalk Empire' Season 5, Episode 7 ‘Friendless Child’

The paradigm has been much the same over the course of four seasons of “Boardwalk Empire”: a laconic, leisurely, but elegant opening, a slow pace and then a staccato burst of violence and plot in the last three episodes. Season five has fit into that structure quite well, but even as the show prepares to say goodbye, it still retains a great patience. And “Friendless Child,” the series’ penultimate episode, is a pretty good one, when it’s sticking to what ‘Boardwalk’ does best. But the episode is marred by its bookends — overly stylized and contrived sequences that are completely out of character, as if they were made from an entirely different show. It’s jarring and strange, especially for a show so committed to its own vision — often called too slow by many — to suddenly tag on these sequences so uncharacteristic in tone. Otherwise, it's as pretty strong episode.

“My fellow citizens: We are at war,” U.S. district attorney Robert Hodge says over a stylish, montage-laden newsreel...