100 Favorite Shows: #63 — Deadwood
“Welcome to fucking Deadwood! It can be combative.”
[Disclaimer: In November of 2002, actor Jeffrey Jones (A.W. Merrick on Deadwood) was arrested for soliciting a fourteen-year-old boy and possessing child pornography. To the former, he pled no contest. To the latter, the charges were eventually dropped. Still, Jones is registered as a sex offender in the United States’ Department of Justice database. The initial report can be found here.]
Deadwood was an unsettled village in South Dakota that steadily developed into a town over the course of the late-1800s. Deadwood was an HBO drama that aired from March 2004 to August 2006, capturing a small but dedicated fan base. Partially based on the true history of Deadwood, Deadwood took narrative liberties in good measure with these real life accounts. Creator David Milch centered his conception of Deadwood around the figures — namely Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) — grounding them in a revisionist western that was more unforgiving than Unforgiven.
(You’ll definitely find some godforsaken Deadwood spoilers in this essay.)
Before I ever watched Deadwood, I learned about it from Alan Sepinwall. Three years ago, I was gifted TV (The Book), which ranked the 100 greatest series of all-time and was written by Sepinwall, along with Matt Zoller Seitz. I’d been set on eventually ranking my own 100 favorite shows long before Sepinwall and Seitz published their historical tome, but I was still enthralled by it and I cherished how it gave me a path forward to write my own essays. However, what I was most struck by was that something called Deadwood was in the top ten. I’d heard of every other show in their pantheon, but Deadwood was unfamiliar to me. I eventually arrived at their writing for it and the show was added to my watchlist before I even finished their first paragraph on the short-lived Milch series. It seemed profound. It seemed like an all-timer.
Of course, they were right. I consider Sepinwall the greatest television critic of all-time and a big part of that was how much he taught me about Deadwood. About the parallels between Milch and Swearengen as two figures who valued the power of rhetoric above all other linguistic tools. About how Milch would often write dialogue up until just minutes before a scene started shooting. About how Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown) plucking Captain Joe Turner’s (Allan Graf) eye from his skull during a brawl in the season three episode, “A Two-Headed Beast,” came from an idea Jerry Cantrell had during a game of poker with Brown.
All of this behind-the-scenes intel on Deadwood made the actual viewing of the show that much more enriching. It also helped because it gave me some background before I immersed myself in the western town of Deadwood for a quick binge watch on HBO. After all, if you know me, then you know I mightily struggle with noirs and westerns. There are some I hold in high esteem, but there are also a lot (for respective examples, The Big Sleep and Once Upon a Time in the West) where there is clearly a story happening, but I’m not smart enough to parse the dialogue and understand it.
Deadwood, however, I immediately connected with. And I loved it all the more for it status as a revisionist western. On the one hand, it clobbered the tropes of small screen westerns that had once dominated television. (The most popular revisionist westerns are, like, Django Unchained and True Grit. But these were subverting western tropes on the cinematic scale. Deadwood was holding a mirror up to the old stalwarts: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and whatever series Rick Dalton was on.) On the other hand, it never pretended to care about the plots of the episodes more than the characters. What was actually going on in Deadwood was always secondary to how the characters were interacting with one another and what was influencing their decision-making processes. That’s the key reason why Deadwood was brilliant. Character-driven stories will win out for me every single time, especially when they’re buoyed by incredible monologues akin to those out of Julius Caesar (“Stand [the pain] like a man and give some back”).
That isn’t to say that Deadwood wasn’t also driven by its lofty storytelling ambitions. I mean, the early episode four death of “Wild Bill” Hickok (Keith Carradine) sets a lot of the plot-centric elements of the show in motion (think the revenge quest that Seth tears through). But it also proves to be a moment that helps define the show’s characters and how they respond to the cruelty of the world around them.
For example, Seth does seek revenge for Hickok. This is one way to ensure that someone’s death is not in vain. Later in season two, though, when his nephew (Josh Eriksson) is killed by a horse, Seth doesn’t seek vengeance on the horse as his path to peace. While it makes sense to not pin all your feelings of hatred on a horse, it also shows that Seth has taken to a different path of resistance to senseless death. Revenge isn’t the way to ensure a death had meaning. It’s to continue the work that one believes is good. Every choice Seth makes as a result William Bullock’s death is made with the hope that good can come from the tragedy. Even when all the evidence says “not likely.” Even when he can be as damn cynical as the rest of them. (Good thing they didn’t have magic eight balls in the old-timey days.)
This is just one example of how nothing on Deadwood happened for the sake of it happening. It was always grounded in what those actions would mean for the characters. Seth Bullock, the reluctant, ear-pulling sheriff, was definitely an anomaly in Deadwood, though. (Even his ear-pulling wouldn’t have happened if General Crook (Peter Coyote in an all-too-brief appearance) didn’t stride into town in the season one finale, “Sold Under Sin.”) Very few mirrored his streaks of morality (though, a couple characters echoed it to a grander extent). Even his acts of enforcement, though, grew muddled the further Seth entrenched himself in the town’s villainy. Becoming chummy with the riffraff might not have been the best decision for Seth’s humanity, but it was absolutely the right decision for the viewers because it meant we had the electrifying scenes between Olyphant and McShane, of which it felt like there were never enough.
If I ever wrote essays about television in the mold of Shea Serrano, I might feel compelled to create a pantheon of television actors. People like Ted Danson, Lucille Ball, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus would be V.I.P.s of the pantheon. (I’m just brainstorming, but Kristen Bell, Donald Glover, Tina Fey, and Alan Alda would all have arguments, as well.) I think Timothy Olyphant belongs there, too. He had roles on Deadwood, Justified, and Santa Clarita Diet, all of which were stellar. He’s also turned up on a number of comedies and just banged out supporting turns on The Mandalorian and Fargo. The man is one of the best the small screen has ever seen and he was rarely better on Deadwood than when he was acting opposite McShane.
If Olyphant belongs in the TV Actor Pantheon, then Ian McShane’s take on Al Swearengen is a first ballot entrant into the TV Anti-Hero Hall of Fame. He didn’t just chew the small town scenery. He would chew it, regurgitate it, and then mold it back into how it looked when he got there. And then he’d just chew it all over again. Every monologue, every glint of bloodlust, every brutally violent murder was the result of McShane’s impeccable instincts as an actor.
He turned Swearengen into a vile monster; there’s no denying that. But he also provided a sense of pathos to Al that showed why someone of his creed would even be accepted in Deadwood, save for the power he wielded. I never really kept track of Deadwood’s historical accuracy and its taking of liberties for narrative and creative purposes, but from all accounts, McShane’s portrayal might have been somehow softer than the real life Swearengen, who was cruelty personified.
After all, McShane’s Swearengen had a big heart, which gave him the capacity to journey down the other side of the violence spectrum. Instead of being motivated by sin, he could be motivated by mercy. In the aforementioned “Sold Under Sin,” for example, Al smothers Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon) when he sees that his misery will only be exacerbated with prolonged life. He need not suffer, according to Swearengen’s individualistic justice. Not when Swearengen understands the suffering all too well.
However, it’s not that Swearengen’s mercy killing of Smith showed that he was changing as a character. It just showed his depth from a new angle to Deadwood fans. Swearengen was always a violent son of a bitch who had a big heart. Smith didn’t give him a heart; he brought the heart out of him. People didn’t really change so much on Deadwood — they just became more the people they always were deep down. Al always had heart. And he always had a brutal taste for inflicting terror. He was both things. (I mean, I’m pretty sure I just summarized basic characterization, but it was so deftly handled on Deadwood that I wanted to make my views on Al Swearengen as clear as can be.)
Ultimately, though, the same is true of McShane as it was with Olyphant. They were at their best when they were working together. Their uneasy, pseudo-buddy cop dynamic felt like something that could have come right out of transposing the Lethal Weapon characters into the third Back to the Future film. They earned the respect of one another. Perhaps not love, but respect all the same. For everyone else in their lives, respect was demanded. Between the two of them, they earned it and trusted one another enough to coexist.
Don’t misinterpret me! The show was obviously more than just Bullock and Swearengen. It was a slew of delightful supporting characters who were played by some of the most beloved character actors of the 2000s. There was Alma Garret (Molly Parker), the fish-out-of-water who is tragically and consistently bullied away from the life choices that would make her happiest. There was Whitney Ellsworth (Jim Beaver), the closest Deadwood ever came to going full Yukon Cornelius. There was Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens), the local madam on an endless pursuit for some comfort in a harsh world. There was Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe), a consistent foil for multiple characters who shoved his luck off a cliff, rather than simply pushing it. And who could forget Jack McCall and Francis Wolcott, two separate characters who were both played by the legendary scene-stealer, Garret Dillahunt?
Ultimately, I was most enamored with the characters I could see parts of myself in, even though they spanned centuries apart from me. I loved the wild unpredictability of Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) and the fact that she had an indefatigable spirit. Everything could go wrong in the world and Jane would be crushed by it, undoubtedly. But she could never hide the resilience within her and the relentless hope that things could eventually be better.
I also loved the self-deprecation of Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox) and how he was always true to his beliefs of what was best for the world around him. Langrishe came into town in the third season, bringing the arts with him to Deadwood. The town had long since become a survival machine, but it could be easy to wonder exactly what they were surviving for. Langrishe showed why the town’s eventual incorporation and the constant fight for justice was not for nothing. There was more to life and Langrishe proved it.
And how could I not mention Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif)? The only doctor in Deadwood, Doc was a bulletproof necessity in their world and he used his “unkillable” status for good. How inspiring that was! More than just Langrishe’s infusion of art into an artless world, Doc showed that there were some upstanding citizens in Depravity Land, too. Not only did he stand up to the viscous tactics of his fellow townsfolk, but he cared so much about the doing the right thing that it would creep in on his medical talents on occasion. (Perhaps a visit from M*A*S*H’s Sidney Freedman was in order.) In “Sold Under Sin,” when Doc has a bit of a dance with Jewel (Geri Jewell), it seems like there is hope for this nihilistic world after all.
Hope was hard to come by on Deadwood, to be sure. Hostetler (Richard Grant) kills himself in the same episode that Dan and Turner get into a brutal session of fisticuffs and it all just feels like a fruitless rock bottom. (I will say that, even though dangling eyeballs are too gruesome for my liking, the way their battle was shot was just incredible. Typically, western duels are slick and shoot-em-up. But Dan v. Turner was visceral, animalistic, and real. There was no modern luxury of a quick bullet or a non-filthy setting. There was no youthful fantasy of being a rogue cowboy. It was just violent.) But all the characters had a little bit of Calamity Jane in them. They all had the ability to hope for better.
The hope that they could make Deadwood happen all on their own. The hope that, one day, someone would “print the legend” (as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance encouraged and as Milch would one day do). The hope that the person you become over the course of a tragic day can change by sunset. All of this was present in Deadwood, a walking juxtaposition all itself. The more it embraced capitalism, the quicker the show died. The more violent its episodes became, the succeeding installments would be doubly poetic. The show (and Milch) could hold a lot of ideas at once.
Thankfully, Milch was able to bring a movie follow-up/wrap-up to the cult classic just a year and a half ago! The gang was all there, save for Boothe, sadly. But it was heartening to see Milch fully realize his vision of Deadwood before his 2015-diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease became too much to bear. Maybe such a tragic occurrence lightened him a bit as he took Deadwood: The Movie as an opportunity to give Bullock a sense of peace (even though it came with the final days of Swearengen. “Our father who art in heaven… let him fucking stay there.”)
It’s true, though. If there is a God, how could he let so many horrible things befall the community of Deadwood? In a way, that’s Al’s own twisted form of peace and acceptance, too. There’s no fucking God because no God would ever let Deadwood happen. Instead, they relied on the people of the community to bring the joys to life. Scant as they were.
