I have great appreciation for HBO, and not because of Deadwood — like the title implies I'm not sure about what to make of it yet. The thing I admire about HBO is that they appear to be truly committed to making drama and willing to suffer the consequences. They succeed some and fail some, as in any artistic endeavor, but they don't let up. The rest of the television world has given up on drama for the sake of reality, and in doing so, has given up any pretense, however flimsy, of being an artistic medium. For the most part, TV has become to drama what tabloids are to literature.
This was not always the case. While TV was always way more tripe than not, episodes within certain series, and occasionally a series itself, were an artistic achievement. But that time has passed and is unlikely to return any time soon. HBO is all that is left.
I suspect Deadwood is HBO's first attempt to turn The Sopranos into a formula. Take a genre mythology, toss in grey-shaded, three-dimensional characters, add a good dash of humor and absurdity, hire immensely skilled, realistic looking actors (not pretty movie stars), an ounce of violence, a pinch of sex, and bind with enough soap opera to string folks along. All flippancy aside, that is not a recipe that can be followed by a focus group driven chef.
Deadwood uses the Old West as the genre mythology, the rest of the ingredients are the same. (One suspects a subsequent attempt will be their announced series on Ancient Rome.)
Deadwood is a "camp," not a town or a city — a lawless outpost in Sioux territory that is apparently destined to fall back under the auspices of the U.S. government because the government is mad at the Sioux over the Little Big Horn. More importantly, there's gold in them thar hills.
The camp is under the thumb of a decidedly distasteful fellow, appropriately named Swearengen, who has his hands in just about everything going on. He runs the bar/casino/whorehouse, wheels and deals for land both in town and nearby mining claims, and generally behaves like a crueler, less civilized version of Tony Soprano.
In the course of the first three episodes there are new arrivals: a new-life seeking ex-lawman looking to start a hardware store with a poignantly Jewish partner, an upper crust Easterner out for adventure with a supremely graceful drug-addict wife, a competing saloon/casino/whorehouse, and the celebrities Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. These strangers come to town and conflict (that is to say, drama) ensues. With varying degrees of accuracy, the events portrayed roughly coincide with real events in and around what would become Deadwood, SD around 1876. In fact, a solid historical knowledge of Old West lore would provide plenty of spoilers as to the upcoming events.
Article comments
1 - r stude
I think that the center of Deadwood is the town itself, about the fragile nature of carving out a community from an often savage frontier. Especially in some of the recent episodes, the struggles of the town to put together it's own government have taken a lot of focus from the prostitution and the poker games.
2 - Jim Carruthers
Al Swearengen is more complex than distasteful. Given his efforts to get the camp made into a real town, and in the last episode, his drunken soliloquy about being raised as chattel in a Chicago orphanage, he comes across as somewhat admirable.
Then there's the language. This series has rendered profanity as poetry. Take as a prime example Al's dialogue with Mr. Wu which lasts about 10 minutes and consists almost entirely of the word "cock-sucker".
3 - David Mazzotta
"...the fragile nature of carving out a community from an often savage frontier. Especially in some of the recent episodes, the struggles of the town to put together it's own government..."
This is the exact conclusion I've come to since writing this review. In fact, it wil be the topic of a future article...