Watching Deadwood for the first time and have a question

I haven't seen it in a long while but remember thinking he definitely knew it was coming. In line with Jesse's character in The Assassination of.... I think the implication was that Hickok was just tired of living as the man he'd become.

I'm jealous. That is (mostly) such an enjoyable show.

Mostly? I loved every minute of that show.

Unless of course you're just referring to the inevitable moments of heartbreak that come with any great HBO drama. Those certainly aren't "enjoyable," but damned if they're not some of the most powerful moments in TV history.

Weren't nothin' to do back in the day 'cept bust ass.

I just finished all three seasons and Deadwood has taken it's seat behind The Wire as my second favorite drama series.

I don't think Bill knew it was coming that fast. I took it as he finally let his guard down in the town and the letter was to let his wife know that he found a place where he could settle for a while.

No, he was tired of living. Charlie is killing himself to help Bill break free of his demons and what's Bill's response? "Charlie, can't you let me go to hell in my own way?" (I'm paraphrasing). He's tired of life. He's tired of running from his past. Hell, he sits with his back to the door of the saloon... something he'd never done before. It was all but suicide.

My "mostly" goes to a few plot thread problems I have with the final season (no spoilers here for Callahan's sake) but I don't think I've seen another show with as many truly great characters. They could arguably have built the entire show around any number of characters in the 3 seasons of Deadwood - that's something.

Any people on Directv who wish to relive the greatness, 101 has been showing repeats. Right now, halfway through the series, though. (middle of Season 2)

He also never sat with his back to the door, but chose to on that day, knowing there were people in the camp with hatred in their hearts and a hunger for a slice of his fame.

He had a sense it was coming.

You're in for some great with Deadwood. I'll take it over The Wire anyday, let alone any other HBO show. Once you get accustomed to the language, it's amazing the amount of character and theme they fit into one line. Just wait for Wolcott to show up.

I myself have just rewatched season one recently and I'll say this - did he know that Jack McCall specifically was going to kill him? I'd say no. Had he given up on the levels of self protection he may have once employed and styarted walking around as a man who was happy 'going to hell the way he wanted' - most definately yes.

Yeah he writes the letter, yeah he wears the cowboy sash, but the most telling part for me is when he sits down to play poker and for the first time is happy to take a chair where his back isn't against a wall, where he can't see who walks up behind him. Carradine plays this moment perfectly too, it's like Bills bucking the habits of a lifetime when he sits in the chair he'll die in, and then gets this resigned look on his face as he does.

Bill had just stopped caring whether he lived or died. He was done - and for a man with his standing and enough people gunning for him, that meant he was going to shuffle off pretty quick - be it by McCalls hand or whoever

Exactly. It's not for nothing that a prior episode had him surviving an attempt on his life, through hyper-vigilance, at that same poker table (but a different seat).

Beyond what rain dog just said, if you go back to the immediate scene you'll actually see that Bill takes note of someone coming through the door. He knew it was coming. You can see it here, right at the beginning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0t1U...eature=related

I seriously need to rewatch this. Seeing the clip from Deadwood when Cutty was in the hospital in The Wire got the itch going again. And I never did finish Season 3.

Yeah, I'm the lone holdout on The Wire. I just finished season 3, and while I recognize the intrinsic greatness of what they're doing, especially in regards to it's committment to theme and character, it never blew shit up the way Deadwood did.

I'm sure it's a matter of taste. I love the Western mileiu, I love the incredible collection of character actors, and I love the theatrical nature of the language. I described it here once as Shakespeare and David Mamet collborating on Tombstone. And not just because of all the heightened language and cocksucking. It's full of the themes they both tackled repeatedly. Alma Garrett is totally a Mamet woman. She even resembles Rebecca Pidgeon, but she's better looking and a brilliant actress.

Season 2 is the greatest (again, Wolcott). Season 3 has a couple go-nowhere plotlines, but the central one with Hearst plays out like sort of like There Will Be Blood meets Dallas.

I'm due to rewatch this, for real.

Yeah, i rewatched the episode last night and I was dead wrong.

I don't really wanna have to ever choose between [ı]Deadwood[/i] and The Wire.

That actor's had a nice second career playing douchebags since Boy Meets World.

Seth'll do that from time to time. By the way, Season 2 episode 1 will make you shit your pants.

I love the visceral, brutal, greasy street fight in season three.

How long did it take for you guys to realize the guy playing Swearengen's right hand man was the same guy who played Warren in Theres Something About Mary? It took me a while, and I was completely blown away. He's a really good actor.

Proud to say I caught it right off the bat. But then, I'm exceptionally good at spotting/recognizing faces.

Even still, it was quite shocking to see him in this role when all I'd seen of him before was Warren.

That happened a couple of times during Deadwood for me. Never more so than with Wolcott. That took me like four episodes to notice. And even then, it was only because I was so impressed I looked him up on imdb. Also a surprise, actors from Newhart, Facts of Life, and of course, Major Dad.

Who played Wolcott? I didn't recgnize him from anything. The little wormy guy who owned the hotel was Larry of "Larry, Daryl and Daryl" fame on Newhart.

This is probably silly, but whatthehell, it was a great revelation for me. Wolcott was played by Garret Dillahunt, the same actor that played Jack McCall, aka the guy who killed Wild Bill. So he's really good at acting.

He also played Meat Loaf on Vh1!

Alma's dad was also great in Wiseguy. And had one great little scene as Edward Norton's dad in American History X.

Swearengen is a pioneering proponent of euthanasia.

Arjun, it's "the legendary Garrett Dillahunt," thank you very much.

Callahan, I understand your reluctance. I've had the back half of Season 3 sitting on my shelf for what's probably a few years now, unwatched, simply because I can't bring myself to finish it and have the series done.

It's my own "Our Mutual Friend."

^^^^ I did this for the longest time, too. And I still have seasons 4 and 5 of The Wire saved up for similiar reasons.

Alma's dad was also Corey's dad on Boy Meets World!

Deadwood does not end on a cliffhanger, which is fortunate, as Season 3 has a pretty strong escalation towards climax throughout. No major plot threads are left hanging and history can tell you what happened to everyone (though you shouldn't look until you've finished the series).

That said, it's clearly a season finale and not a series finale. As such, Deadwood doesn't have the tidiness of a completed vision, like Sopranos and The Wire enjoy, or even a wrap up of every character arc, like Six Feet Under or Rome. But all in all, we're lucky we didn't get screwed like the poor fuckers who were into Carnivale.

Rath, another acceptable title would be 'Lord and Master G. Dillahunt'.

The character actor parade on this show is delightful. Ricky Jay, Stephen Tobolowsky, Sarah Paulson, Pruitt Taylor Vince.

My favorite b-player in the show was probably Zach Grenier as Andy Cramed. Good stuff from that guy.

I'm gonna go see David Milch speak at the University of Pennsylvania next April. Unbelievably excited for that, as he's one of the tv writers (and really, writers, period) that has influenced me so, so much.

There is something to the integrity of just keeping at your season arcs instead of trying to cram in a satisfying ending, even when this results in weird stuff like characters getting introduced near the end and not doing much of anything.

It was a bit of a let-down watching the last episode after the unrelenting OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT of the previous five or so episodes, but that ending (and the bitter irony of the Springsteen song) works better for me everytime I think of it.

Hm?

Which show are you talking about here?

Ok, spoilery:


characters that get introduced late in the season I'm referring to = Wyatt Earp and his brother. What they do onscreen in S3 hardly seems to justify the trouble of including them in the storyline, and it seems pretty clear to me that they would return in latter seasons.

And I thought the last few eps of Deadwood were quite masterful in building up the tension of a Hearst/Swearengen bloodbath. Of course, this being the show it is, I had some notion that it wouldn't go straight up Wild Bunch, but there was still a possibility for some serious bloodshed, which the final episode totally defused. Which is a great move for a season ending, and a suitably downbeat message (big business will swallow up the country, and there needn't even be any bloodhsed for this to happen), but as the ending for the whole show, rather puzzling at first.

SPOILERY



I think you're wrong about quite a bit of this. The characters you refer to were not introduced to come back in later seasons, but because it was an interesting historical footnote that they did appear briefly in Deadwood around that time, and I believe there were apocryphal rumors of a conflict with Bullock. This is not to say that their storyline really went anywhere, but that they primarily served to ramp up the tension and confusion of the main Hearst dynamic, with all the players scrambling to figure out how they might fit into it. If you're going to talk about characters who didn't have time to play our their full storylines, you need to talk about the theater troupe.

I think you're misinterpreting the theme, too. It wasn't that these things could happen without bloodshed; there was a fair amount of violence and murder involved in Hearst's takeover, and it ended literally with a sacrifice in innocent blood. The theme was that, yes, big business would eventually take over, and it would not be the bosses who felt the pain from it or who'd be left cleaning up the mess. And the little guy couldn't do much to prevent this without destroying what he built, the very thing he was trying to protect* the in the process.

*I point to the exchange between after Charlie lays out his plan for a pre-emptive slaughter of Hearst and his minions.
Sol: "There'll be nothing left of the camp."
Charlie: "How much you figure will stand, once Hearst had his say?

I could watch an entire series devoted to Cox's character.

Me too, it's just that the rest of the troupe never really affects the story, and even with him, you're left with the feeling that he was going to be a bigger figure in the community than we saw him being.

There's a bit of debate about whether they ever were there - sources differ. But yeah, they weren't ever scheduled to come back in a later arc or anything.

I stand corrected re: Earp, though I hafta say that if that was the case those scenes feel all the more unecessary to me, the show was already getting oblique enough without throwing in random appearences for historical geek value. But I suspect the occasionally meandering tone of that season is part of its charm.

As to the theme, I agree with pretty much everything you said, and don't really see how this counteracts what I said. The last few episodes were hyping you up to the possibility of an epic shootout; this didn't happen because, as you said, the inhabitants of Deadwood knew that it would only mean their destruction. I wasn't saying that Hearst's takeover was entirely devoid of violence (it's no surprise that capitalism uses strongarm tactics when it needs to), just that the big bloodbath that the viewer had been lead to expect didn't happen, which runs pretty contrary to how these situations usually pan out in westerns.

You said there didn't necessarily need to be any violence for the takeover to occur. Perhaps you meant it as an aside, but I think the show has always accepted that this kind of violence is a, if not desirable, natural element of the growing pains of the community as it goes from wilderness to camp. S3 is about the transition from camp to town, and makes the argument that this change is no less violent for the added veneer of civility (S3 is the bloodiest of them all, from my recollection). This strikes me as an important point.

But yes, another important aspect was that the characters, and in extension the audience, were forced to accept that the price of ongoing survival included forgoing the bloody satisfaction they craved.

Oh, yeah, I suppose I was a bit muddled on this - S3 is bloody as hell, and Hearst would never hesitate to use violence when desirable. I was just talking about that episode in particular, and how the fact that you can't beat him the old fashioned, violent way makes him even scarier.

Yep, started watching this again. This will make my 4th go through. I was about due, I suppose.

Just watched Season 2 again, and I remain insistant upon the pure elemental greatness of Wolcott. That character is beyond genius. What especially odd about that is that he is, at his core, the most hackneyed creation in the entire show, a philosophically witty serial killer a la Hannibal Lector. And yet, the form his sociopathic tendancies take, the haunted erudition, the intricacies of his self-image ('suppose the earth only speaks to us to arrange it's amusements...it tells me there is no sin'), and his ability to compartmentalize his fucked up drives. Brilliant performance, brilliant writing. It's on the level of something like Hans Landa or Daniel Plainview.

What's also great is that even with all of that, as an antagonist, he fits perfectly well with the concerns of the show, particularly the "creation of a community" angle. His mannerism, his facade of being a civilized man, all of that, covering the one guy that can't have any sort of relationship or connection with anybody, is a pretty good counterpoint to everything the series is going for, the need for community and all that, not that far away from what Hearst would exemplify in season 3, except Hearst's main issue was his own inability to accept his own need for connection, whereas Wolcott is completely incapable of that. The fact that, if you take into account the hints of some sort of abuse, sexual or otherwise, makes Wolcott "believable" is just gravy.

I also love how, depending on how you want to look at it, from the Chez Ami incident forward, pretty much everything he does can be read as near-suicidal, for instance, his confrontation with Mose Manuel, and yet, even being that thoroughly fucked up, he is being quite the effective agent for Hearst.

Part of me would love for Garrett Dillahunt to have his chance at a Hans Landa/Daniel Plainview performance in a movie watched enough to give him deserved praise, but I agree that his work as Wolcott is good enough to qualify, as is.