It is silly and reductive to walk away from as well-regarded a program as Deadwood with just a single question in mind. But "silly and reductive" are not the worst things I've been called within the last week, so that doesn't bother me overmuch.
One of the impetuses for the creation of this blog was the realization, while I was watching Deadwood's run on HBO GO, that, for the first time in my life, I actually had some thoughts. There being no convenient place for me to share them, I decided to create one, fueled in part by the possibility that I might have another thought at some undetermined point in the far future.
I launched this blog when I was starting Deadwood's third season, and it seemed a little silly to launch into weekly reviews at that point. But I did want to actually take some time and puzzle out my thinking on the show.
And the thought with which I walk away from Deadwood is the question at the top of this post. The core of my experience with the show is the bare reality that I was drawn head first into every scene featuring Ian McShane, and seldom cared for those that didn't.
It is difficult to overstate just how extraordinary McShane's performance here is. As Al Swearengen, McShane finds and portrays the core of a character who could often have seemed like a thuggish caricature of an HBO drama Anti-Hero(TM). Instead, McShane imbues the character with wit, cunning and, quite extraordinarily, no small amount of heart.
McShane brings a thoughtfulness even to Swearengen's violence, and a violence even to his thoughtfulness.
This is, in short, one of the finest leading performances I can ever remember seeing on a television program. When McShane is tasting the words of David Milch, the show's creator, executive producer and head writer, Deadwood soars.
But while Deadwood is never too interested in soaring, it also fails to truly find the meaning of the mud in which it is so proudly mired.
Deadwood falls short in how it surrounds McShane. There are some fine performances, compelling moments, enjoyable dialogue and intriguing story lines. But for all that, Deadwood never coheres into anything like a digestible whole. It is, instead, a series of awkward silences and opaque scenes, punctuated by moments of violence and brutality, few of which lead anywhere.
What's perhaps most odd about Deadwood is its fondness for characters and plotlines that go nowhere and achieve nothing. We can consider Martha Bullock, for example; played by Anita Gunn, Martha is the wife of Seth Bullock, one of the show's main characters (played by Timothy Olyphant and his dreamy jaw line). She is also....
"She is also nothing else," is how that sentence ends. There's some back story discussed in Martha's first few episodes: she was originally married to Seth's brother, who died with Custer at Little Big Horn. She then married Seth, and eventually comes out to the Deadwood camp once Bullock gets settled there, bringing her son by her first husband with her.
Martha eventually loses her son in a tragic accident involving a rampaging horse, an extraordinary loss that affects her for two or three episodes, and is then never mentioned again. Gunn's role after this story line ends is to play a few scenes as the teacher of the camp's children and to stand around in the background cooking things as her husband discusses other matters.
This is assuredly a realistic portrayal of the role of a wife in a 19th century mining camp, but it is decidedly uninteresting television. I don't know how many scenes of Seth and Martha sitting in strained silence an audience really needs to see, but I know Deadwood blew by that number quite soon after Gunn's initial appearance.
Then there's the Bella Union, the competing casino, bar, brothel and massive plot sinkhole established by Cy Tolliver. I, like all reasonable people, am a fan of Powers Boothe, who played Tolliver and seemed for all the world when he set up shop in the camp like a compelling counterweight to Swearengen.
Instead, Tolliver became a confusing character whose only purpose on the show was to make Al look decent by comparison. Tolliver spent most of three seasons scheming and making alliances with Swearengen's enemies, all of which came to naught and none of which seemed to have any discernible impact on the show's plot.
Tolliver, perhaps, works as a cautionary tale and character study, a portrait of a pathetic man who thinks himself powerful but must constantly beg for the approval of those who actually are. Joanie Stubbs, on the other hand, has no such redeeming features.
That's perhaps an ironic thing to say, as I believe the point of her presence on the show is to provide a kind of redemption story. Stubbs, played by a large hat and Kim Dickens, is Tolliver's head prostitute who leaves to run her own brothel late in the first season.
Joanie is around important events; her brothel is the setting for a brutal murder of several prostitutes by an agent of the gold magnate George Hearst (who would become the villain of the third season). But there's little sense in which she actually...well, does anything. She eventually turns the brothel over to Martha Bullock for use as a schoolhouse, and she becomes protective of the children there, but this is not nearly as meaningful as the show seems to think it is.
Deadwood never actually digs into Joanie and her motivations, beyond establishing that she's a lesbian. The writers never do the work necessary to flesh out her character and make us care about her; as a result, any redemptive arc, even if it ends in a fumbling attempt at a relationship with Calamity Jane, lacks resonance and meaning.
The list of plotlines and characters that seem to exist just for the purpose of existing is extensive. It includes:
- A young Scandinavian girl who loses her parents in the pilot episode, sees her life threatened by Swearengen (Al ran the bandits who killed her family) is adopted by Alma Garrett (one of the show's main characters) and then just kind of hangs around for 30 episodes getting her hair brushed,
- A plot line in which Tolliver is stabbed by a minister, spends a few episodes feigning ill health, then gets back on his feet and starts plotting,
- A plot line in which Mrs. Garrett, a recovering laudanum addict, falls back into the habit, then...gets better,
- Calamity Jane, who is a drunk. The show makes this clear many, many many times, in scenes that occasionally amuse but more often annoy,
- Wyatt Earp shows up and cuts some timber.
Larger than problems associated with any given character or story is the distance between its apparent perception of its setting and what the viewer actually sees. Deadwood is grim and gritty and brutal. Deadwood, on the other hand...well, it's not my kind of camp, but it's hard not to notice the apparent decency of most of its inhabitants.
It's notable that pretty much all of the show's significant antagonists are external to the camp. The South Dakota territorial representatives. Hearst's minion. Hearst himself. By contrast, while there's no lack of brawling, drinking, financially lubricated fucking and murder within the camp, it doesn't actually seem like a truly rough and tumble place.
Alma Garrett can walk the thoroughfare without any undue attention (until she's shot at in the third season by...Hearst's minions). When Martha Bullock's son is killed, the whole damn camp mourns. Everyone is respectful of the camp's children. Jane can pass out drunk on the street every night without fear of being attacked or robbed.
For a lawless frontier mining camp, Deadwood seems like a shockingly pleasant place.
All of this probably makes it sound as if I disliked Deadwood more than I did. It is, on the whole, an enjoyable experience. One propped up by McShane's stunning performance, yes, but also by some wonderful dialogue and excellent production values.
But I had reason to expect more from Deadwood. As a result, it's hard not to find the bevvy of loose ends, unnecessary characters, weightless plot lines and opaque motivations more than a little disappointing.
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