Deadwood "Here Was A Man" Review (1x04)
Mar 11, 2015 18:48:43 GMT -5
jerkassimo, nowimnothing, and 2 more like this
Post by Pear on Mar 11, 2015 18:48:43 GMT -5
“Some goddamn point a man’s due to stop arguing with his self, and feeling twice the goddamn fool he knows he is ’cause he can’t be something he tries to be every goddamn day without once getting to dinnertime and not fucking it up. I don’t want to fight it no more. Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?”
Wild Bill Hickok came to Deadwood knowing he would die there. Whereas many other characters ventured into the wild, hoping for a new life and a decent living and an improvement upon their pasts, Bill was never able to shake that past. In “Here Was A Man”, Charlie tries to get his friend to capitalize on his celebrity, to get Bill to collect “appearance fees” to play cards, but Bill isn’t having any of it. He sees no future for himself in Deadwood, and he loads up on the drinking and the gambling as the inevitability of death marches toward him.
The key to the shifting dynamics of the town is perhaps in the use of a thunder-lightning metaphor. In “Reconnoitering the Rim”, Al characterized himself as a “simple type cocksucker, that when he sees lightning, readies for thunder.” In “Here Was A Man”, Hickok tells Alma to “listen to the thunder”, and we get the sense that he’s a person who has listened to the thunder before; he has prepared before, but this time, he’s going to simply let it all wash over him. Thunder, in addition, is a precursor to lightning, and that’s especially apt here because this episode seems to be all about indications of change.
So, when we begin to see Hickok getting his affairs in order–writing to his wife, playing Al Swearengen in order to obtain more information for Alma, saying goodbye to Charlie, going to see Jane and the girl, metaphorically passing the torch to Bullock–we realize that this may very well be his swan song. When he gives McCall some money, one could argue that he does so while knowing what will eventually happen, that he later sits with his back to the door on purpose. After all, it was just a few episodes ago that Hickok was perceptive of who was going to kill him before it occurred, so it’s hard to argue that McCall suddenly outsmarts him.
Of course, one of the greatest things about Deadwood is the care it takes with each of its characters; this is a show that finds humans endlessly fascinating, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a legend or a doctor or a hardware store owner or a prostitute or a random drunk guy on the street. The focus on Bill in “Here Was A Man” is obviously essential, but the show does not want you to overlook the story of Jack McCall; this is perhaps best summed up by the line “He, too, is God’s handiwork”.
Also not to be overlooked is Alma Garret, who spent the first three episodes either in bed or standing by the window. She has essentially been in a prison for a while, her situation exacerbated by the laudanum, but her husband’s death brings out something in her that we haven’t seen before (I tend to think of it as the opposite of Calamity Jane’s introduction, as Jane had a harder exterior that gave way at times to a softer personality underneath). We see not only that she’s bitter about the situation she’s in–her smashing the bottle is representative of that–but also that she’s a very smart woman. She immediately picks up on foul play, she knows that Al is running things, and she asserts herself to a critical Doc Cochran, and she’s suddenly a very intriguing character.
At the end, it all comes back around to Wild Bill Hickok, who dies by Jack McCall’s gun. It’s a wonderful closing sequence that, not coincidentally, brings most of the town together in one place, and the episode ends as we rest on Seth Bullock’s face. He kneels by the body of Wild Bill Hickok, by the body of the last remnant of the Old West. Outside the bar, a man on a horse is holding up a decapitated Indian’s head, but no one seems to care. After all, the Old West is no more, and a new age has been ushered in.
GRADE: A-
OTHER THOUGHTS:
-Cocksucker count: 9 (I’m disappointed in you, show! You went down!)
Total cocksucker count: 39
-A round of applause for Keith Carradine. We only had him for four episodes, but he made the most out of it.
– “I need to fuck something…TRIXIE!”
-As much as I am a fan of women, Timothy Olyphant shirtless is always going to be glorious.
-I’m enjoying E.B. Farnum a lot right now, and William Sanderson is perfectly cast. He’s another person who exemplifies the constantly shifting perceptions we may have of characters: at one instance sly and full of insight–he’s very similar to a Shakespearean Fool in this regard–and at another, scared out of his mind.
-There’s another nice subplot for Dan and Ellsworth here, as the latter reveals what he saw regarding Garret’s death.
-So, there’s another member of the Bella Union–Andy–who comes into town with some type of disease (plague?). The thing about contagious diseases is the fact that they don’t give a crap about boundaries or about differing histories; what matters is proximity in the present. So, someone from out of town can come in and transmit this disease to very different people who are all in the same place at the same time. Interesting thought to consider in relation to the idea of communities forming.
-This was written by Elizabeth Sarnoff, who went on to write for Lost.
– Swearengen monologue of the day: “I do not need the Pinkertons descending like locusts. So I bend over for the tenderfoot cocksucker. ‘Reconnoiter your claim fully’, I say. ‘And then, if you’re still unhappy, I will give you your fucking money back.’ And the tenderfoot agrees. Just as he’s finishing his reconnoiter, cocksucker falls to his death, pure fucking accident. But up jumps the widow in righteous fucking indignation. Wants the doctor to examine him for murder wounds. My visions of locusts return. I see Pinkertons coming in swarms.”
-The set up for this episode is fantastic. It’s a shock when Hickok gets shot–even though I was spoiled when I googled “Jack McCall”–but in hindsight, it makes perfect sense.