By way of reminder, both Michael and Jonah will be writing about Season 1 of Deadwood: Friday’s entry in the Summer TV Club.
Michael’s Take
Wow, does Deadwood start out with a punch! Within the first 10 minutes of the show, there’s a brutal hanging and a slew of f-bombs (Wikipedia says there are 43 in the episode). Deadwood immediately made itself known as, if not a realistic portrayal of the Wild West, one that is steeped in stylized, gritty realism. This ain’t John Wayne’s west.
The episode is heavy, to say the least. At times, I felt I didn’t have a grasp on what was going on, not only because the episode seemed to pick up from some previous point, but also because the characters mumble in their already hard to follow accents. When I did catch on though, I really enjoyed it. It’s a complex show that doesn’t mind making its characters pure evil or morally ambiguous, even the first 10 minutes. There was no better way to set the tone of the show then with that opening scene, in which a steel-eyed Timothy Olyphant as Seth Bullock at first shows a slight compassion for a man sentenced to death for stealing a horse, but immediately turns cold when a mob descends upon them, demanding they do the hanging themselves. Bullock gets his last words to pass along to the man’s sister, and hangs him himself, much to the astonishment of the mob outside. Bullock, and later Wild Bill Hickok, have a twisted perception of justice that includes killing without remorse.
Ian McShane absolutely knocked me over in this first episode as Al Swearengen, the owner of the Gem Theatre, which roles several vices (drinking, gambling, and prostitution) into a one stop shop for a town the is built on vice. Swearengen is ruthless, and its not hard to tell, he’s going to be the villain of Deadwood, which I think should be really interesting. As the clear ringleader of a massacre of a family covered up as an Indian attack, Swearengen is immediately weary of Hickok and Bullock, who recover a little girl from the scene and shoot the man they believe actually did it. What interests me is how, in a town where there is no law and no one person that runs the show, Swearengen will clash with Hickok and Bullock, who are clearly on the same page as far as taking matters into their own hands.
I think something that bears noting here in this first glimpse at the show is how profane the language is. I’ve read that creator David Milch decided to use modern profanity because using the actual slang of the time (ex. “goldarn”) would have come across as utterly ridiculous in the context of the show. But at the same time, the swearing seems so over the top and abundant that it’s occasionally distracting. Sure, most of these people are, for lack of a better term, stupid drunks, but I occasionally, the language overshadowed the plot.
Yet, the profanity fits in with Deadwood. Milch seems to be going for a cross between historical accuracy and Old West mythology, and the two ideas work together in a pretty unique way. The Western started as a sort of idyllic exploration of the untamed West, and as Deadwood seems to want to point out, it wasn’t full of John Waynes. Deadwood more than anything fascinated me with its first episode. It’s compelling to say the least, but it’s also incredibly intense to watch, which I think is what makes it so appealing. How do you find characters to root for in a lawless town? I’m excited to find out.
Jonah’s Take
Deadwood opens with Seth Bullock, our main character, preparing to set out for the titular town. Before he can go, he has one last piece of business to attend to: watching a prisoner in lock-up for stealing someone’s horse. A posse comes to kill the man but Bullock refuses to give him up. However, he also knows that he’s outnumbered and can’t hold the mob off. So Bullock hangs the man himself, circumventing the law to make the most out of an impossible situation.
If its contemporary, The Wire, was about how bloated and fading institutions are destroying communities, then Deadwood is about how the creation of those institutions and how they were built from nothing (at least, that’s my take after watching the first episode). The city of Deadwood itself is a potent metaphor: a town in the wilderness with no laws and the promise that an enterprising and resourceful person can make his (and it seems like, while there are a number of interesting female characters, most of the town’s players will be male) fortune without interference from any kind of state. Without laws, we’re left with a collection of individuals, each with a set of morals and varying levels of flexibility with regards to the exercise of those morals.
In the pilot, simply titled “Deadwood,” we meet the season’s major players. There’s Seth, a marshal who seems committed to the notion of justice if not the law. Seth and his friend Sol come to Deadwood to sell hardware, but it isn’t long until Seth’s need to punish the wicked crops up. To do so, he teams up with Western legend Wild Bill Hickok, who has just arrived in Deadwood as well (and who is played by the always welcome Keith Carradine). Hickok’s arrival creates a stir in the community but, for now anyway, he appears to be a bit of a cipher. Hickok and Seth set out to the site where a family was massacred and rescue a little girl, however Seth comes to suspect the man who led them there (and claimed the family were victims of an Indian attack) and the two of them execute the man when they return to Deadwood. In a place without laws, people will follow their own compasses to their brutal ends.
Hickok attracts the attention of Al Swearengen, Deadwood’s breakout character. Deadwood seems designed (or, more accurately, undesigned) for a man like Swearengen who is intelligent, power-hungry, and amoral. Swearengen has no qualms about duping an easy mark for $20,000, killing an underling who made a mistake after he’s done with the man, and beating a hooker. The latter, named Trixie, is a hooker with a heart of gold, but she seems, at first blush, relatively powerless. She comes back to Swearengen and sleeps with him even after he beat her. For Swearengen, Deadwood represents an opportunity for him to provide illicit vices to the lesser masses who are drawn to the town partly by those vices. The most telling scene, for me, was his irritation at the news of the family’s slaughter, because he worried that the ensuing mob would take away from his business. Swearengen is as smart as he is ruthless, though, and he takes control of the situation like a good capitalist: slashing prices and hanging onto his business while promising the time for justice and retribution will come the following morning.
We also got glimpses of a couple more intriguing characters. There’s Molly Parker’s Alma Garrett, who seems much more intelligent and formidable than her simpleton husband (Swearengen’s mark). And, of course, there’s the boisterous and amusing Calamity Jane whose abrasive, energetic presence certainly left its mark on the first episode (she’s definitely my favorite character coming out the pilot, although its close with Swearengen).
Even at this early phase, having heard that the show’s first episodes are its weakest, I find myself really drawn in by the world of Deadwood: its characters, its setting, and especially the thematic possibilities of a city with no laws. I’m also intrigued by the question of why Seth set out for Deadwood in the first place? Is it for the opportunity presented by a town like that or did he leap at the chance to impose his own morality onto a totally blank slate? Am I being cynical? What is this show trying to tell us about those who would lead? And about “The System” on a macro level? Unlike Michael, I thought the excessive swearing worked, not only because it was cleverly used but it heightened the sense that Deadwood is a town without civilization. Here there is no need for decorum and the people in charge have no problem throwing around as many “fucks” and “cocksuckers” as they please. Deadwood is hardly an eden, but what compromises will our characters need to be made to construct and impose order onto the chaotic and natural world around them?
For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.
Michael
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