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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Deadwood

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

14:08 / 22.03.04

Not a bad show at all. Lawless Old West gold mining town. Wild Bill Hickock. Lots of shooting. And it puts the swear in Swearengen, that's for sure.

The guy who plays Bullock, Tim Olyphant, the main protagonist, is fantastic. He's also the first in many Old West Cliches. To wit:

a) The calm and collected hero who knows all the angles and isn't above playing dirty.

b) The wife of the East-Educated cultured rube who is undoubtedly addicted to some kind of Victorian opiate and keeping it a secret from said rube husband.

c) The idiot man child (in this case, woman child) who is undoubtedly positioned in the most dangerous place possible (in this case, the whore house cum gambling den), setting him/her up to 1) play an incredibly heroic role at a critical point or 2) suffer an unspeakable fate that shows us all the true darkness in the human soul.

d) the actual historical figure(s), in this case, Wild Bill and Calamity Jane.

So, almost makes you want to not even bother, huh? Somehow, though, it all seems to work. The West really is American Myth, and all these stock characters have their roles to play. I'm sure one could write a detailed explanation of what might represent what, but really, it mostly just feels right. It's an old story.

I like Westerns.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:50 / 12.04.04

This show is just getting better and better. Light years tighter than the engaging, lovable, and flabby as Tone in a hawaiian print button-down, Deadwood is lean and vicious.

I love how it oscillates between the uncontrolled hysteria of a gold mining camp reacting to a recent murder (NO SPOILS) and then ending the episode on the resolute and ever so pissed face of Our Man Seth Bullock.

And Olyphant is just so tits as Bullock. He's got this bizarre strut and grit to spare.

Whatever you do, Sopranees, leave the TV on after 9:56.

I'll keep this thread going all by myself if I have to.

18:37 / 12.04.04

Eh, I like Deadwood too, though I can't say I've ever seen a Western before. It is to my eyes an Old West Sopranos, clearly banking on the Sopranos' success, but who cares?

Here's my counteroffer to your counteroffer....

18:05 / 13.04.04

I think Firefly sort of/may have sparked this western TV show thing...it's kind of a western with that "we're out here where there's no set law, no rules, only allegiances are those you decide" feel. Or maybe I just love Firefly and think it influenced this when in fact it didn't!

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

19:57 / 13.04.04

I couldn't think of anyone less likely to be influenced by Joss Whedon than David "Cocksucking Cuntfuckery" Milch, but anything's possible.

More likely, Firefly was inspired by all of the premeire tenets of the genre you just pointed out. There's really only one Western story and you just described it. That's what made Firefly so interesting, truly putting the story in a light that it had never been under previously. Turning space into the frontier it was always described as. Quite brilliant.

But, sadly, not as brilliant as Keith Carradine's performance as Wild Bill Hickok. They need to make an exception at the Oscars and just give it to him. No performance in any medium has a chance to top his.

He alone would be worth watching, but when you add the life altering turns by Olyphant as Seth Bullock and Brad Dourif as the Doc, your knees just get weak.

Also, I was reading on a couple other Deadwood Talkholes about how the residents of Deadwood hadn't seen anything yet, as their first Winter was approaching. It then dawned on me that seeing this shows color pallate, which is now currently quite a lovely Sepia/Poo tone, lose all color will be quite remarkable to see. I felt cold myself, just thinking about it.

Guns are the least these people have to worry about.

01:59 / 28.04.04

I think the best thing about the show so far is that character actors, down to the smallest parts, seem to have been given rein to act balls-out nuts. Each person seems more traumatized and unable to communicate with other people than the next one. It's hilarious a lot of the time, but they somehow feel more like real people than most everyone I see on TV. People lose their nerve in the middle of a sentence and walk off muttering, they sit and brood by themselves, and best yet, all the time, people are getting stupid drunk. Looks and sounds more like my neighborhood at night (Adams-Morgan, D.C.) than anything on "The District," I'm sure.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

11:09 / 28.04.04

Totally!

It dawned on me this week. People just do not stop drinking! I keep waiting for Calamity Jane especially to just projectile vomit out of nowhere.

And yeah, people like E.B. are just so wonderfully bonkers. I really loved, I think it was in the second or third episode, when he totally loses it in front of Al, waving his arms around, talking about trust.

Great show. Great show!

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

04:04 / 20.03.05

The new season is off to a good start here, and while none of the bigger questions from last year are cleared up, the whole season has been set up well in the first two episodes.

As for the "Old West Sopranos" feel, I just don't see it. Sopranos started off VERY well, and has slowly fallen over time. I really think the death of Tony's mother was a blow that the series has yet to recover from.

This series started slowly, and didn't quite grab me until the middle of the first season, yet seems to get better with each episode. The first two epsiodes so far have been about taking things away from our three leads...and how each are stuggling to deal with it. Bullock reacts by wanting to run away and possibly a complex suicide attempt, Swearengen (best character on TV) reacts with anger is quick to kill anyone around him and Tolliver...well, I haven't figured out his reaction completely, as it seems he is acting out of self-pity but may have a lot more up his sleeve.

Still, it's probably the only western I have seen outside of a Clint Eastwood one that wants to deal with tough character issues, rather than just being a morality action play.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

04:14 / 20.03.05

The guy who plays Bullock, Tim Olyphant, the main protagonist, is fantastic. He's also the first in many Old West Cliches. To wit:
a) The calm and collected hero who knows all the angles and isn't above playing dirty.

I don't think that's it. I have been thinking about the character since the second season started, and after seeing the fight between him and Swearengen, I think he is far more complex...and he does NOT know all the angles. I think he is acting out of shock and horror about what he sees around him. He thought he could escape from his past as a lawman (as seen in the first episode), but seeing SO MUCH in the town, he knew he couldn't get away from it and had to do what he could just to keep himself sane.

Now, that sanity is leaving him. He's found a love he can't have due to his brother and his family committment, and wants to run away AGAIN, as he did before. The town keeps getting worse, despite his efforts, and he isn't even a stopgap against the horrors that he sees. And now that Real Law is coming (with the telegraph and statehood), it looks even woprse, as Swearengen and Tolliver are fighting over who will run the town through corruption.

I see him almost as the character who has been pushed too far, and rather then heroically turning and fighting his antagonist, he is willing to be consumed by the death and choas of the town so as to escape it. Maybe that will change this season, but watching the fight with Swearengen the second time, it was not a "how dare you call the woman I love a horrid name" so much as "I no longer care, and this bastard's crazy and strong enough to kill me and set me free."

06:22 / 03.05.05

I cannot get enough of this show. Now I want to go out and rent some westerns. Any recommendations? (Even Clint Eastwood recommends are okay, since I haven't seen them since I was little)....

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

10:15 / 03.05.05

"I no longer care, and this bastard's crazy and strong enough to kill me and set me free."

Oh absolutely. When I wrote that first post I had no clue what was going on. I've since gone through the first season a few more times and you're completely on the button. I was looking at things awfully simplistically after seeing the pilot.

But I pointed out that one line you mentioned because it seems to be a key thematic to this season: Self-Arranged Suicide At The Hand Of Another. Joanie's Madame Pal was the first to succeed but Wolcott has been just gagging for it ever since, well, he became Joanie's Madame Pal's instrument. Joanie herself was also hoping, until the last moment, that Wolcott would give her a hand. I can't believe I didn't see that this was Bullock's play as well. And the fact that the fight ends when his Faux Wife shows up is all the more poignant and awful for poor Bullock.

It's a pretty fascinating conceit and one that can't recall ever seeing handled in any art I've been exposed to. Although WIld Bill's "Can you let me go to hell the way I want to" from S1 should have clued me into what was in store.

Nice to see some action in this thread by the way. If I hadn't been sure before, I'm sure now: Deadwood Is The Best Put-Together Show Ever. This season looks primed to leave last season in the dust, a feat I never would've imagined possible.

I think the blame/praise lies squarely in the lap of Richardson, E.B. Farnum's hapless assistant. He. Is. The Best.

22:28 / 04.05.05

Interesting fact: The Actor who plays Wolcott is the same who played Jack Mccall

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:46 / 04.05.05

And I love how intricately they wove Wolcott's story into Bill's this season. Very cool.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

07:51 / 24.05.06

So did you hear that Deadwood is on the bubble? Season Three is wrapped and set to start in a few weeks but the next one is now completely up in the air.

Pretty amazing, I know.

I just made my way through the documentaries on the new DVD box and it's really amazing to watch the process that an episode goes through, how much thought goes into everything. Seriously, if you didn't think this was the most astute show ever aired, just taking a brief glimpse behind the curtain makes it pretty obvious.

I'm honestly not too concerned that Season Three could potentially be the last one without an opportunity to consciously wrap up the show. (They wrapped shooting before they got word of potential cancellation, natch.) Either Season Finale would have made an exquisite Series Finale and I'm confident that Season Three's will do the same. And they tend to be year-based seasons free from any kind of real gripping cliffhanger. Obviously, though, it'd be nice to get as much Deadwood as humanly possible in one's lifetime.

08:46 / 24.05.06

Good news. I'd heard rumours it was getting another one. My favourite non-scifi tv show's coming back.

Deadwood, it teaches me to swear in a whole new way.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

21:42 / 28.06.06

Just recently started watching this. I've seen half of season two and the first few episodes of season three and I effing love it. Swearengen v.s. Hearst! I want to see him knife the Captain.

I have also noticed the stunning level of whiskey consumption. Swearengen in particular just looks like he's been drunk for the better part of a year.

21:55 / 28.06.06

Watched all of the first two series back to back on dvd and can't wait for the third. Nothing more profound to say, other than Timothy Olyphant is excellent as the tight ass sheriff and Ian MacShane is a fuckijng magnetic fucking Swear Engine. Mind you, there's not a duff performance in the whole damn thing: Calamity Jane, the Gimp, Sol, the moribund Reverend in the first series. Superlative tv.

Disco is My Class War

03:42 / 22.09.06

So Deadwood has been cancelled post-Season Three. But David Milch is writing two two-hour 'miniseries' episodes to finish off the story arc as he originally imagined it, and give some closure to the fans.

HBO suck.

Meanwhile, Season Three is terrifying. Specifically, George Hearst.

11:02 / 22.09.06

I love this show a lot, but I have spoken with people who couldn't deal with it. They were disturbed by the swearing, believe it or not, and by the twisty monologues, and by the warping of roles in a very conservative genre--the totally psychotic sherif, the throatslitting whoremaster that you end up rooting for, etc. (I confess that I did like Swearengen a little better when he was evil incarnate.) And, because I am paranoid, I suspect the show was cancelled because of the anti-corporate tone of its last season.

Has the final ep. aired Over There? Several things about it disappointed me.

miss wonderstarr

09:22 / 24.09.06

I cannot get enough of this show. Now I want to go out and rent some westerns. Any recommendations? (Even Clint Eastwood recommends are okay, since I haven't seen them since I was little)....

I haven't seen this show ~ maybe I should ~ I was going to add it to my new "TV Shows You Haven't Seen" thread. However, my Dad was a big fan of the Western and I inherited some of that from him. I would recommend to you Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo and El Dorado (fabulous because they are just about identical) and the John Ford "Cavalry Trilogy". I also like Winchester 73 and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a lot. Finally, Eastwood's Unforgiven if you haven't seen that ~ from my understanding it may be the closest thing to this show, but it really is a grim masterpiece anyway.

09:35 / 24.09.06

Unforgiven isn't much like Deadwood - Deadwood is much, much funnier for a start.

Not that Unforgiven isn't good.

10:32 / 27.09.06

Has the final ep. aired Over There? Several things about it disappointed me.

I felt that the final episode was rather anti-climatic to be honest. We've had a constant build-up over Season 3 to the town's confrontation with Hearst and his Pinkerton mercenaries. With Hawkeye's (almost) 17 road agents and Wu's armed workers we had the potential makings of a real humdinger of an ending. Something which could leave us wondering who lived and who died (the end of Angel springs to mind).

Instead we had relatively upright people like Bullock and Charlie Utter complicit in the murder of an innocent woman in order to appease Hearst's bloodlust. That didn't sit right with me. Sure it's a ruthless town and they've all had to make compromises over the years but it seemed completely out of character for them to accept cold-blooded murder without the slightest comment.

That said, it was entirely within Swearengen's character. It's good to be reminded in the closing of the show that he is an evil evil bastard.

I realise that, in essence, the point was that one person had to be sacrificed in order that the town didn't go under in a hail of gunfire and blood, but it left me feeling rather frustrated. Hearst doesn't get what's coming to him in any sense of the term. He rides out simpley because he despises the town, not because the town has forced him out.

The bully wins.

Still, there's rumours of a four hour mini series in the style of Peacekeeper Wars to round off the story-arcs (it'd be nice to find out what the Doc was up to as he was entirely absent from the final ep).

18:46 / 27.09.06

I totally agree about Bullock, but I think the Bully winning is very appropriate, I mean, Deadwood's never been concerned with bullys getting what they deserve, has it? I know it'd be poetic, and cathartic and dramatically satisfying to watch Bullock kick the bastard in the head twenty times then drag his arse round to Woo's pig sty, but that's not really how the show works.

It's like Swear Engine says, "they were expecting a pretty story", the implication being that Deadwood is not, and never was, a pretty story, where baddies get what's coming to them.

Still the miniseries to go, tho' (I think)

20:13 / 27.09.06

There were just a lot of things I didn't understand about that last episode. What was up with the body in Utter's care? What was up with Tolliver? Is he just insane? Hearst's victory was pretty realistic, I thought, and courageous on the part of the producers, but, yeah, holy shit, what happened to Bullock's psychotic avenging-angel rage, and Utter's, y'know, decency and/or conscience? The whole deal just seemed to explode the whole point of Jane's soliloquy.

07:31 / 28.09.06

What was up with the body in Utter's care?

It was the son of Hearst's cook Aunt Lou. We'd heard he'd been killed on his way to New York. Presumably Hearst had organised to bring him back to Deadwood for burial.

What was up with Tolliver? Is he just insane?

Yeah pretty much. Tolliver's always been something of a "screen sociopath". He comes across as someone who likes to be in complete control (of Joannie, of the Bella Union). Finding himself completely under Hearst's thumb drives him to prove his control over the world by ending Leon's.

It's like Swear Engine says, "they were expecting a pretty story", the implication being that Deadwood is not, and never was, a pretty story, where baddies get what's coming to them.

Hmm, you speak the strong truth there Boboss. I hadn't thought of it that way.

Bastards killed Elsworth though, I wanted revenge!

Disco is My Class War

11:27 / 28.09.06

I really liked the last episode. It's like the dude said, you can't kill capitalism. 10,000 shareholders will rise in one's stead. So you do the only other alternative: you make it difficult and expensive for Hearst to stay in town, with all his protection, and you try not to have a bloodbath -- because the Pinkertons were always going to win that kind of war. Deadwood doesn't believe in clean democracy; in that universe, the votes are always bought. It's inevitable. So you find a way to work around the votes being bought, and the 'elections' being fixed. Which, I take it, was Season Four's arc.

I read Tolliver as actually, finally, experiencing rage at Hearst's cruelty. He actually gets angry about Ellsworth's death, yeah? But Tolliver is so twisted by this point, and so unable to act, that his rage gets redirected against himself (for being a coward) and then onto the nearest available person.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

00:06 / 03.10.06

Haven't read the thread because it looks spoilerish and I'm only on ep4 of Season 3.

Just curious: is Hostetler the first person to drop the motherf***er bomb in ep4? I was noticing throughout that while people swore in various inventive ways, nobody had yet added the prefix "mother," but maybe I wasn't paying strict attention.

And then Hostetler and Steve the Drunk have their little "you sign first!" showdown, and Hostetdler finally lets fly with "YOU MOTHERF***ER" and I thought "ah, THAT'S it."

Anyone else notice the curious absence of "mother--" in the series? Or am I just stunned and made all this up in my crazy head?

08:03 / 03.10.06

Brought the season 2 dvd at the weekend and slowly watching through it. Steve does let fly with a few MFs in the scene where he and a gang of hoopleheads are about to tar N. General. Bullock wittly replies with something along the lines of "I'll MF you and blow your f**king head off."

That whole "pass the gleets" scene doesn't get any easier to watch the second time around.

04:03 / 09.10.06

Evil Scientist, you speak strong truth, but come on: the Bullock we were lead to believe in really ought to've got himself murdered by Pinkertons. There's no way he'd go along.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

15:53 / 13.10.06

All caught up.

I have to agree with most of the above posters: it seems like a really out-of-whack way of tying things up to have Bullock just tacitly accept that Swearengen butchered a whore to save his partner's girlfriend. Wouldn't Bullock be in the "let's take Hearst out before it comes to that" camp?

That aside: I was at first intrigued, then annoyed, then increasingly annoyed, then bored to tears, then kind of lingeringly annoyed, then bored again, then frustrated with, then quite irritated by, the theatre troupe. Maybe they had some sort of major future role in a fourth season, but I couldn't see any concievable reason for them to be there, except to let Brian Cox be awesome.

They didn't really add anything to the plot (the telegraph interception provided as much, and potentially more, vital information than the "back treatments" did). Their interaction with the town was superficial and irrelevant (another sounding board for Al, and a new schoolhouse! Hurrah!) and they didn't add any more depth or interest to the show, as far as I could tell, except to tack on another five characters to keep track of.

Was this some "Shakespearean" type of deal, where the theatre troupe/trope got shoehorned? Were they meant to serve as some sort of Greek chorus, but failed?

What the dooley was up with the theatre troupe?

19:49 / 11.04.07

Haven't finished watching it yet. Watched for curiosity and got hooked recently.

Have anyone heard the creator David Milch? I've been reading an article on him on the New Yorker (by Mark Singer) and him talking on MIT. Not only he's a ex-junkie ex-everything brainy well-read bad-ass tough mother fucker, he's all "separation is a illusion, cocksucker! We're all part of a living singular organism etc; writing is going out in spirit; God's in shakespearian metrics; those swearing are the failure of release and marking territory in a hostile environment"... and says that much of Deadwood is on that key (he mentioned specifically the scene where Al "gives birth" to the kidney stones). Quite happy that I have many episodes to look forward to (and the two films).

Never imagined this from a guy who created NYPD Blue (that I only watched one episode as a kid and didn't like it; and afterwards not wanting to come near it since I became a dirty fuc#&*g hippie; is it actually any good?).

01:27 / 11.10.07

I just wrapped the series today. There was some closure, but I'd agree that the last episode was a bit of a disappointment after the fantastic build up with Hearst throughout the season. It's different looking at it now, with the knowledge that the movies are not at all likely to happen, so Al scrubbing blood is pretty much it.

But, in a strange way, I think John From Cincinnati works well as a lost fourth season, picking up the Earth2 versions of these characters out and about in the present day.

And, to echo the above post, anyone have an opinion on NYPD Blue? I'd love some more Milch, but most TV from before the mid 90s doesn't hold up so well.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

16:19 / 22.12.07

I recently finished watching this show for the first time and, well...

I was compelled to make a seasonal greetings card. (In part because of this thread causing me to often wonder what Deadwood might be like in the winter.)

05:30 / 03.09.08

Finally watching s3 after saving it for a year. What a show! Swearingen has become one of my all time favorite characters, so much so that I went to see DEATH RACE just to get a pseudo-Al hit. (It was like huffing turds).

18:32 / 05.09.08

Hearst is lowering the hammer. This is amazing.