Spoilers ahead ...
Derek Powazek has a good article on the new HBO series Deadwood where he compares it to our late lamented Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I get his point, and there are Whedon-esque touches to Deadwood, but the key precursor to the new show remains NYPD Blue, one of producer David Milch's earlier series.
Buffy was explicitly female-centric, while NYPD Blue and now Deadwood are guy shows to the core. On NYPD Blue, regular women characters are either the lovers of the male characters, "tough" cops whose behavior is favorably comparable to how "guys" act, or both (although when both, the love wins out over the tough ... see Ross, Charlotte). On Deadwood, the women are almost all whores ... one of the only two exceptions is Calamity Jane (see NYPD Blue under "tough women who act like men"). There is one woman, Alma Garret, who has potential; otherwise, this is a guy show through and through.
But a really really good guy show. Keith Carradine's rendition of Wild Bill Hickok has been a joy to behold. He doesn't say much, he doesn't do much, but when he says it or does it, he means it. As Powazek notes, the conversations Wild Bill has with his new friend "Montana" are noteworthy mainly for how much doesn't need to be said. Hickok is the traditional western hero, and Carradine pulls it off with all the cumulative power of the iconography behind him.
So, of course, they've already killed him off.
Milch is mostly just following history here ... Wild Bill was killed in Deadwood by Jack McCall, and Wild Bill was killed in Deadwood by Jack McCall. So it's not like we didn't see it coming. But it was terrible sad nonetheless.
And now we've got a show, only four episodes in, where the closest thing we had to a connection with past traditions has been shot in the back. Leaving just the anarchic mud of the town of Deadwood ... leaving a completely unromantic vision of unbridled capitalism. There are "heroes" as well as villains in Deadwood, to be sure. But mostly this is one muddy show, and another excellent addition to the HBO roster. As someone who found both Carnivale and K Street lacking, I am glad to see HBO is back on track.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
Any town which has Brad Dourif as the doctor is a town I don't want to live in.
So far from what I've seen, Deadwood really reminds me of McCabe And Mrs. Miller, not the least because of Carradine (his film debut).
But did they really say "cocksucker" that much in the wild west? And if so, why was there no pulp western hero known as the Cocksucker Kid? Or a town called Cocksucker?
2 - BB
It is the use of old fashioned language and colloquialisms that give the show its charm and authenticity ( bad language excepted).
3 - Jim Carruthers
I didn't say that cocksucker wasn't old fashioned, you cocksucker, I just wondered that every second cocksucker, would have used the word "cocksucker" all the cocksucking time.
Especially when they weren't actually sucking cock, cocksucker.
4 - Jim Carruthers
Or is "cocksucker" the one Bart Simpsom FCC approved vulgarity that you can use on the public airwaves, especially with scruffy, dirty, cowboys? And given the lineup of the Village People, an Indian Chief is next.
5 - suladog
take a drink every time someone says cocksucker on Deadwood..you'll be chewing hardwood faster than Wild Bill
6 - Jim Carruthers
Take a drink whenever somebody says "cocksucker" on Deadwood, and they'll ship your corpse back to New York City as an exhibit in P.T. Barnum's Times Square Exhibition.
7 - suladog
ha..my husband and I counted nine last Sunday night
8 - Jim Carruthers
Take a drink everytime somebody says "cocksucker" on Deadwood and in 50 years when they commercialize electricity, boy, howdy, will we give that Edison eastern bastard a run for his money, not to mention. lighting up Hollywood.
9 - Jim Carruthers
By the way, do you think they cast Molly Parker as Mrs. Garret because her breakthrough role was as a necrophiliac (dead wood, geddit?), though as an opium addict and proper woman, I imagine her character is more of a reference to "McCabe and Mrs. Miller".