Deadwood - Season 1 (****)

When it comes to a show like David Milch's Deadwood, one can't help but wax a bit philosophical about the state of television these days. I don't mean that as a lament; television is as good as it's ever been, with shows being afforded real budgets, attracting real actors, and more and more acting as a destination for talent as opposed to a launching pad. That's a good thing. Movies are like short stories. A season of television can be like a good novel. It's given room to breathe.

Take a breath of fresh air, then, and wander into Deadwood - today of South Dakota, erstwhile an illegal town settled on Sioux lands after the discovery of what was to become the largest gold rush in history. This is a show not quite like any other I've seen - it's a western, a character-based drama, a study of good and evil, of order and chaos, and of nothing less than the origins of civilization. How did we, as feudal packs of crafty apes, eventually settle into having laws, morals, society? What were the principles involved? These are the questions, I intuit,that David Milch is exploring.

In working with such lofty themes, then, it is something of a wonder that the majority of the characters are based on real historical figures. The main character, if you can say the series has one, is Seth Bullock, as played by Timothy Olyphant. A Montana sheriff, he is tired of that life and heads to Deadwood with his Jewish partner, Sol Star (John Hawkes) to open a hardware store. Upon arriving, he forms a friendship with famed gunfighter and ex-lawman Wild Bill Hickock (Keith Carradine), and comes into conflict with Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), who owns the Gem Saloon, the epicenter of the town, and is the de facto boss of Deadwood by virtue of being the smartest and biggest asshole in the bunch. Other characters include Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie), a longtime friend of Hickock's, Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), who loves Bill Hickock but is a hopeless drunk, Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown), a henchman of Swearengen's, Doc Cochran (a fantastic Brad Dourif), wracked by mental scars of the Civil War, E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson), a the smarmy owner of the local hotel, and Trixie (Paula Malcomson), Swearengen's favorite whore. That is by no means a comprehensive list. This is a big fucking show.

It's the sort of show where you don't really know how where to start talking. I could talk about the plot. About the threads of characters, and how their lives intersect. It doesn't seem to fit, though. Maybe the place to talk about for now is the dialogue. I think you can tell a lot about someone by how they respond to the actual words of this show. The simplistic sorts will be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of vulgarities uttered - the show would become famous for the depths of its profanity - and yet, there's poetry in the filth. Read the following exchange, and picture the words being savored by good actors:

Wild Bill Hickock: "You know the sound of Thunder, Mrs. Garret?"
Alma Garret: "Of course."
Wild Bill: "Can you imagine that sound if I asked you to?"
Alma: "Yes I can, Mr. Hickock."
Wild Bill: "Your husband and me had this talk, and I told him to head home to avoid a dark result. But I didn't say it in thunder. Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

More than any other show I've ever encountered, Deadwood is full of this level of dialogue: Milch has a flair for talking in circles, of composing a sentence from the inside out, of giving his actors the natural flow of Iambic Pentameter. It's been called "Shakespearean" by reviewers more credible than I, and I am not going to be the one to disagree. No point is ever made straight up. Everybody has the eloquence. Everybody has the flow.

The show is fully serial, and the first few episodes simply flesh out the characters. Plot begins to move forward via a rich Eastern dandy named Brom Garret (Timothy Omundson) who has moved into Deadwood, and finds himself in way over his head in dealing with Swearengen over the property rights to a patch of land. His wife Alma (Molly Parker) is lost, at first, in a laudanum stupor, but as the plot progresses takes more of an active role.

The second, and more meaningful plot catalyst is the (and I hope I'm not giving anything away here) murder of Wild Bill Hickock, and the trial that ensues. Looking at the series as a single entity, that's the point where it stops being about the atmosphere of Deadwood and turns more into a show about the fate of a community at whole. In that context, Al Swearengen shifts from plot-necessary antagonist to complex wheeler and dealer who, while he is certainly greedy and ruthless, in the end sees what's best for the community as best for himself. Other, less obvious evils exist, such as in the form of Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) who opens a saloon/primitive casino/brothel that's in competition with Swearengen's. His character is hinted out in the lead-up to a smallpox epidemic striking the camp (based off a real historical event), and fully revealed in the fate of a pair of orphaned children who arrive in the town. What happens with them is what drives his primary madam Joanie (Kim Dickens) away, for she is more of the heart-of-gold sort.

In writing about where the series goes, I doubt that I can give off the impression of the sort of things that happen, but hopefully in reading this one can tell what sort of show they're getting into when it comes to something like Deadwood. It's the sort of experience I would definitely say is not for novices - it can be hard to follow and if you're concerned with profanity that is very much in excess, it's not for you. But it's a fascinating exercise in television, and the first season represents a unique marker in showing what a television show can do.

Rating: Four Stars (out of four)