The House Next Door

I realize George Hearst is a real character but it seemed as if Al and his other enemies missed a golden opportunity to pick him off as he stood on his balcony unprotected as Dan and Captain Turner beat the hell out of each other.

Good call all the way around Matt. The Dority-Turner fight was indeed a far more dramatically brutal encounter than the classic Tony/Ralphie brawl, and Hostetler suicide just plain didn't make any sense. (At first I thought he was going to keel over from a heart attack, still another possibility that would have at least made more sense.) The Garrett/Ellsworth encounter was indeed heartbreaking, and as someone who's been in a similar encounter with an addict, it was a scene almost too painfully true and unsettling to watch.

Off topic, any chance we'll get some early thoughts from you on The Wire? I saw Alan posting that he received the first six episodes, but was mum on details. We need spillage ASAP!!!!

"That's not how this wants to resolve", to quote Al from "A Lie Agreed Upon Part One". Picking off an international mining magnate would attract all kinds of attention, not to mention the probability of the dread Pinkertons.

While it was satisfying to see Al's man whup Hearst's man, and Hearst marched off the to slam by his ear, I can't help but think the man's appetite for revenge has been whetted. With his resources, all hell can break loose from every side.

The only justification I can see for Hostetler's suicide is the General's previous comment, "They've made you crazy with pride." I agree it doesn't play out convincingly.

Pedro: Re: "The Wire." I move pretty slowly these days, so although I have received all 12 episodes, I have not yet watched them. I will, though, and there will be "Wire Mondays" here at the House when the show begins its run.

Sure -- Hearst's death might raise some eyebrows, but that's what Wu's pigs are for. You can't have a murder without a body.

Good read. What the fight reminded me most of was the gladiator scenes in Episode 11 of Rome. What a lot of these shows do show is how damn good HBO is at showing small scale violence. Those three fight scenes are amazing in ways I haven't seen lately on the big screen. What they haven't been able to capture (though not necessery in Deadwood or The Sopranos) is a larger scaled fight. heck, I don't know if I could see HBO even pulling off something like Oldboy's hammer fight. I hope these comments coupeld with some older ones don't make me seem like a violence hungry gorehound though!

That said, Daniel Minahan put out one of the best composed episodes I can think. The rack shot of the knife in the body and Bullock's anger should be part of the cover for the Season 3 DVD.

One charcter I'm missing this season is Sol. He's kind of been relegated to scenes with Trixie, which while nice, lack some of the strength he showed in earlier seasons. I wouldn't expect him to understand Trixies stream-of-conscious rants, but it makes him seem dimmer than he ever was. Think of Sol standing up to Cy when the two teenage thieves were getting beat in the street. Sure, he didn't save them or anything, but no one else in town (Hickock being dead, and Al and Bullock being otherwise occupied) would have been willing to say word one to an enraged Cy.

Cheers.

I'm surprised you didn't buy Hostetler's suicide Matt - that, to me, was the most powerful part of the episode. Hostetler's always seemed to be tormented internally (see the final scene of the Season 2 episode "Complications") while putting on his best brave face in public. It's the Nigger General, remember, who says, "Let's find that horse." Hostetler comes up with the impulsive plan, but the General's the one who says yea or nay.

Hostetler's a post-emancipation black man and business owner (who was, nonetheless, around in some capacity during the slave years), so I gather that he feels torn between two masters - between what's right and between what the world dictates is right. Steve's just one impetus of a never-ending many. The impulsive thing for Hostetler to do after enduring Steve's body of insults is to get the gun, but I think it's more psychologically fascinating and true that he then turns the weapon on himself. It jibes absolutely with every scene in which his character's been featured.

I honestly do not see what is wrong with being a violence hungry gorehound.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying one's gore onscreen. Quite frankly, anyone that thinks themselves above 'that sort of thing' is just being pretentious and needs to have stick removed from ass ASAP (and no, I'm not referring to you, james, its just that your comment set this off).

I agree entirely with your point about violence on HBO. Some equally impressive large battles in Rome would have done the show some good instead of the crappy few seconds of jerky camerawork that passed for such.

I was just annoyed by Hostetler's death. The first hollow moment in the show to my memory.

I thought the fight's meaning centered around two moments.
At different points in the fray, the Captain and Dan had the other at their mercy and looked at Hearst and Swearegen for instructions, a la gladiators looking to the emperor for a thumbs up or down.

In neither dase did they get a clear signal--just impassive stares. Those stares conveyed Hearst's and Al's feelings well enough. But unlike their Roman predecessors, Deadwood's two rulers could not make any real gesture that would publicly acknowledge their status.

Thus a public fiction remained intact, and so did everyone's private understanding of where power lay.

For myself, I don't have a problem with the idea of Hostetler committing suicide out of pride or despair. Its just that the way it was done felt arbitrary and tacked on. Hostetler motivation for even bothering to satisfy Steve about the board after the livery deal was sealed wasn't clear, much less killing himself over it. The explanation Hostetler himself gave before he walked off to kill himself is that he refused to be thought dishonest. I could see that if the town in general would have thought him a cheat, but it was only Steve that would care or even know what the chalk board was about. Even for the hyper-proud Hostetler, killing himself because he could never get *Steve's* good opinion doesn't ring true for the character.

Do you think Dan's depression after
the fight is legit? He has killed before with no problem. Al states a fair fight is different and something he an Dan try to avoid.

"Sure -- Hearst's death might raise some eyebrows, but that's what Wu's pigs are for. You can't have a murder without a body."

Well, these days you can have one (at least two convictions without a corpus delicti that I know of here in the area I live in), but maybe not then. Regardless, I think it would have been imprudent to pick him off without engineering an appearance of self-defense.

Anon: Yes, I thought Dan's depression was legitimate (i.e., sincere), and it ties in with Al's comment about how he and Dan had always tried to avoid fair fights in the past. I think there are a couple of emotions at play here -- one is Dan reckoning with the fact that he almost got killed (and thought he might get killed going in); the other is a recognition that he's probably never been overmatched before, and he's not as tough (even invincible) as he'd previously thought.

The fact that Dan was sitting there naked during his depressed moment was quite powerful -- another example of "Deadwood" using theatrical staging in a cinematic way, i.e. staging things in a manner that imparts a metaphoric dimension to an otherwise literal scene. Dan was literally and figuratively exposed, to the town and more importantly himself, during the fight. It's a nice touch, like framing Bullock behind bars when he's contemplating his own temper and what it costs him.

Matt -- Any chance you could sneak me those Wire episodes for review purposes? Would love to contribute.

Pedro: Email me your address and a pitch for what you'd like to write about and I'll definitely consider it.

About Hostetler:
It was only after all the signing rigamarole was finished that Steve even brought up the board, and no one standing around in the bank even seemed to care (since most of them didn't even know what it said). So who exactly would have forced the return to the stables to look for it? Hostetler himself? Seth? Steve? If the machinations that led to the final frustration had been made clearer, the tension would have ratcheted up until the final moment. As it was, the thematic tension from the previous episodes was released at the bank, when everyone assembled thought that the sordid business had been concluded. After the scene concluded I just assumed that Hostetler rode out of town, and Steve's little comment was a throwaway wink to the audience -- I mean, how could he explain why the board was embarrassing without embarrassing himself in the process?

Anon

I didn't notice until I caught a glimpse of the credit that Dennis Christopher was on this week. Did he play the latest actor to come to town? Sure doesn't look like he did in "Breaking Away" anymore, does he?

Yes, that was him. I don't think his rump was still "ginger" from the Little 500 though.

Re: Dennis Christopher, one of my favorite aspects of "Deadwood" is Milch's willingness to cast actors wildly against type, particularly actors who haven't had such a juicy part in a while.

Granted, not everybody fits this description -- Jeffrey Jones is definitely playing the Jeffrey Jones part, ditto Powers Boothe, Alice Krige (who was like a Borg queen madam) and Molly Parker (who's played a number of passive-aggressive, desirable/manipulative women).

But Olyphant, based on his breakthrough supporting role in "Go," seemed destined for dangerous wiseass roles, and now he's playing a homicidal Gary Cooper; to the best of my recollection, Brad Dourif hasn't played such an innately decent character since "One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; Kim Dickens is a phenomenal actress, often in roles with a crying-in-your-beer, country music vibe, but she's never been given such a wide spectrum of situations and emotions to play until now; Titus Welliver has never been smoother or more vulnerable; Peter Coyote, who's often typecast as blank-slate bosses, rotting rich deviants and scumbag villains, got to play a haggard, moral, credible career military man at the end of Season One; and I can't remember the last time I saw Dennis Christopher, Franklin Ajaye or Robin Weigert in anything. In industry terms, the TV show "Deadwood" seems a bit like the fictional setting of Deadwood -- a place where people go to slough off preconceived notions and reinvent themselves.

Before Deadwood, the only time I remember seeing Robin Weigert was as the Mormon settler come to life in the museum in HBO's Angels in America.

I don't know how many of you caught it, but Timothy Olyphant did a hilarious guest turn this year on "My Name Is Earl." It's worth catching in reruns if possible.

At different points in the fray, the Captain and Dan had the other at their mercy and looked at Hearst and Swearegen for instructions, a la gladiators looking to the emperor for a thumbs up or down.

In neither dase did they get a clear signal--just impassive stares.

I've looked very closely at those moments at the end of the fight, and I think that Al DOES give Dan a nod. It is very slow, and barely perceptible, but it is there. I don't think Dan wouldn't have killed the Captain w/o Al's blessing.

errr. that should have read, "I don't think Dan would have killed the Captain without Al's blessing."

Tom Block wrote an excellent recap of the fight that contextualizes its place in the history of screen violence. Well worth reading.