Deadwood

It's a mystery why it's taken me so long to get around to watching the HBO series Deadwood, since it's a subject I'm fascinated by, and it's gotten almost universally good reviews. I just finished watching the first season, and it's among the best television I've ever seen.

The show is set in Deadwood, in the Dakota Territory, in the summer of 1876. Custer has just been defeated at the Little Bighorn, and gold fever has consumed the Black Hills, which is Indian land, given to them by treaty with the U.S. government. Of course, once gold was discovered, treaties weren't worth the paper they were printed on, and people of all sort, mostly the dregs of society, poured in.

At the time Deadwood was more a camp than a town. Ruling the roost is Al Swearingen (Ian McShane), the owner of the saloon in town. He doesn't prospect for gold--he takes the money of the prospectors, selling them booze, dope, and women. He's a fearsome character, with a foul mouth, an iron fist, and a keen sense of survival.

Two newcomers in town upset the balance. One of them is Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), who is the hero of the show. A former marshal from Montana, he and his partner Sol Star (John Hawkes), have come to Deadwood to open a hardware store. Bullock wants no part of being a lawman again, but his character arc over the course of the season--his sense of moral duty as well as a violent temper--assures the viewer that it's only a matter of time before he wears the tin star.

The other newcomer is Wild Bill Hickok, the legendary gunmen. Played magnificently by Keith Carradine, Wild Bill has outlived his time, and wants to do nothing but play poker. He's caretaken by Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie), and fawned over by "Calamity" Jane Cannary (Robin Weigert), an uncouth woman who's more at home with cowboys than the fairer aspects of her sex.

All of these people were real. Series creator David Milch takes some liberties--Utter, in fact, was a bit of a dandy, not the slovenly fellow that appears--but much of it is accurate. Anyone with a knowledge of history knows that Hickok will not last long, and even keener fanciers of the Old West know that the pathetic Jack McCall (Garrett Dillahunt) is the man who will do him in. McCall is constantly getting Hickok's goat, and asks him, "How stupid do you think I am?" Wild Bill replies, "I don't know. I just met you."

Several other plot threads weave their way through the series. Jane takes care of a young Swedish girl who is the only survivor of a massacre; she ultimately comes under the care of Alma Garrett (Molly Parker), who has come to Deadwood with her dilettante husband, who has bought a gold claim. A rival saloon-keeper (Powers Boothe) comes to town, along with a madam (Kim Dickens) and a gambling expert (Ricky Jay). There's a smallpox epidemic and the suffering of a minister (Ray McKinnon) who develops a brain tumor.

Through the entire series several themes emerge. Foremost is the sense of community. Deadwood is a lawless town--since it is on Indian land it is illegal for any white people to be there. Even so, there is a sense of order. Though someone may be shot at any moment, there's a struggle between good and evil, with good somehow having a tendency to triumph. Despite the nefarious intentions of some, especially Swearingen, the essential decency of people seems to triumph every time.

Though Swearingen is ostensibly a villain, he's much more complex than that, and the writing and McShane's brilliant performance make him fascinating. He's out for himself, that's for sure, but he's not against doing the right thing. The first season culminates with him killing someone in an act of mercy, answering the prayer of the town's doctor (Brad Dourif), another great character. Doc Cochran was a doctor during the Civil War who has seen plenty of horrors, and he performs his duties (a lot of which are tending to the gynecological need of the whores) with purpose and compassion.

Another great character is hotel-owner E.B. Farnum, played by William Sanderson, who is something of a buffoon, but with a sophisticated vocabulary. He's Swearingen's stooge, but privately bristles at playing the role of henchman, and longs to make riches on his own. He has a terrific monologue while scrubbing a bloodstain off the floor of one his hotel rooms, in which he tells off Swearingen--not to his face, of course.

The series got a lot of notoriety for its excessive profanity--there were 43 uses of some variation of "fuck" in the first hour--and linguists debated whether the word "cocksucker" was in use at that time (it's the only English word that the lord of Chinatown knows). But this is not a Western that is subject to the Hays Code or the romanticism of the Hollywood Western. It's more in line with the revisionist history of Patricia Limerick, who debunked the gallantry of the West of historians like Jackson Turner. This Old West was dirty and foul, with almost all of the women working as whores. There was dust and mud and horseshit everywhere, and violence was random and frequent. It was a microcosm of America, in a way.

Everyone involved with this series is to be congratulated.