Search - Deadwood: The Complete Series on DVD

Brilliant - curse HBO for killing the best show ever

M. Salisbury | Northern CA | 11/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is simply the best television show ever created, as far as I'm concerned. I have watched Season One 7 or 8 times by now, and Seasons Two and Three close to that many times, and I am still in awe, every time. I still feel the same thrill when the theme music kicks in, and I gain new insights every time I watch it.

The dialogue is not easy to follow, but it is well worth the effort. This is a show full of grimness, violence, and oppression, but also some amazing humor, most of it hidden in a tangle of words (EB Farnum's monologues are some of the funniest ever written). As others have pointed out, the profanity is extreme. The first time I watched an episode, I was shocked by it (though not particularly offended -- to me they're only words). Beyond that, it's complex, varied and rich in vocabulary. I've seen reviews on here by people who say that the dialogue in Deadwood shows the "dumbing down" of America. It's obvious they only watched the first 15 minutes -- the language is so incredibly elaborate and well constructed that a lot of people compare it to Shakespeare.

The characters are almost as rich and complex as the dialogue. Al Swearengen has got to be one of the greatest anti-heroes ever created and he is played brilliantly by Ian McShane. (In the first episode, watch poor Tim Driscoll talk himself down from a swindler's share of $6000 to a mere $20, withering under Al Swearengen's pitiless gaze.) Swearengen goes to great lengths to supress any hint of compassion in his soul (and usually succeeds), but it leaks out around the edges sometimes, in a way that is occasionally very nearly heart-breaking (his moments with Reverend Smith, for example). On the other side of the coin, Seth Bullock, the former marshall from Montana, is a man who struggles to supress his dark side but cannot entirely manage it. There's the shell-shocked Civil War doctor, Doc Cochran, who is so tragically frustrated by his limited abilities; Al's oily rival Cy Tolliver, whose charming smile hides a nature far crueler than Al's; the peacemaker partner of Seth Bullock, Sol Star, one of the quiet wonders of the show; and of course that mega-celebrity of the Old West, Wild Bill Hickock, portrayed so beautifully by Keith Carradine that it's a pity Milch had to stick to historical fact in his case.

And then there are the women: the whore, Trixie, and her love/hate relationship with Swearengen, her cranky and suspicious nature endangering her chance at a different life; the rich widow, Alma, whose struggle to break free of societal expectations and conventions is hampered by her addiction to laudanum and her cultural indoctrination; the madame Joanie, whose brutal life has somehow not pummeled the compassion completely out of her; and the pitiful drunk Calamity Jane, who wants so much to be a bad-a$$ but just can't quite manage to get herself out of a bottle long enough -- even she, though, can rise unexpectedly to meet a crisis.

On top of all this the sets and the costuming are simply incredible. I've since watched Westerns, even modern ones, that have just made me groan with impatience -- it's so obvious that they're filming inside a sterile set -- and yell at the screen, "Haven't you watched Deadwood?" Where's the filth? Do you really think those cowboys and miners took baths more than a few times a year? And don't you know that horses poop all over the place? (And as for the costuming, I would pay a LOT for some hats like the ones that Joanie Stubbs wears. Such a shame that those clothes were so impractical and uncomfortable, because day-yum! they look good!)

This is the true history of the west -- fictionalized of course, but not romanticized and prettified, here explored in all its ruthless grime and blood and pathos and sex, severed Indian heads and random murder, bloody fistfights to the death, unabashed and ugly racism, serial killers, opium addicts and degenerate titlickers, beaten-up whores and children trampled to death by horses -- and amidst all this, moments of transcending beauty, compassion, and kindness. You can practically smell the horses**t, the booze, and the vomit -- and Alma Garret's rosewater.

All my life I have loved "The Little House on the Prairie" books (not the TV show, mind you) and I reread them regularly and still love them. This show made me seriously re-examine those books, among many other things. It boggles the mind to think that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote them in the same place and era that this show occurred, and it makes you wonder what she left out of her books (admittedly they were written for children, so you wouldn't expect her to include everything, but still). This is definitely an NC-17 series, but it is one that every adult should watch who has an interest in the history of how our country was settled and what it was really built on (witness George Hearst in Season Three).

I introduce this series to people every chance I get and an am always happy to make a new fan. It still breaks my heart that HBO killed the series so abruptly. There was so much gold still left to mine. I cancelled my subscription to HBO when I knew it was final and will never subscribe to HBO again (so take that you c***s***ers).

I wish I could give this six stars out of five: I would."