It's a bit weird how the show was very slow in terms of storytelling all season, and goes into sprint in the penultimate episode. I'm a bit worried about the finale, there is just so much ground to cover.
The newly introduced character of Ulana Khomyuk is an amalgamation of several actual characters who worked with Legasov to prevent the second explosion. Even though she is fictional, she provides invaluable insight into the even greater danger of a potential second explosion. The possibility of that second explosion is fact. It would have happened if not for the bravery of the three men who volunteered to drain the water tanks.
The conflict between Legasov and Shcherbina was remarkable. This series continues to amaze with its recreation of the event, but adds just the right amount of dramatization without being offensive to those of us who find the facts as, if not more important, than just being entertained.
Come back Rooster, please netflix
I'm gonna have to go against the grain here and say this was a poor episode for Game of Thrones standards and not even in my opinion on how the story line will play but the actual episode in it of it's self and in comparison to the rest of the series
The whole season like many have pointed out has been way to hectic without getting any real satisfaction or grasp of the scenes because they're so rushed to advance the plot, as Sansa said this episode Jon has be gone for weeks yet the pacing is so off that nothing can be placed or timed easily and there's just numerous major jumps that seem right to.
So many decisions that just seem absurd and are just for convenience so the guys make it out (the whole expedition/plan was a farce anyways regardless and made up on the spot without any consideration or thought into Cersei's response to it but even ignoring that), that 1st ambush on the tiny group and being able to take down a Walker with such ease so simply to leave one undead remaining (WHY DID ONE REMAIN?!?) for them to bring home was too outlandish and unbelievable. Then only for them to have Gendry be the only one to return(?) to send a raven in time and have Dany save the day all in ONE EPISODE as they sit in a LOTR circle of undead and obviously evacuate unscathed. With the exception of Night King hitting the flying moving dragon at a further distance than the obvious one sitting stationary with the gang!?! Damn, took me way out of the whole episode, no immersion and I thought it was mess compared to say the pit scenes with the dragons or even any other really. Granted this is unprecedentedly more epic and huge in stature but I don't think they did it justice whatsoever
I get the direction they've decided to take the show and I can't blame them, what with not having the books to lean on but I can't help but think how if they (final books) were out by now this whole expedition would've been a whole season with a lot more too it than feeling nothing as I watch a beautiful scene as a dragon comes crashing down black hawk style, and finally what an injustice Benjen going out was... Just sums my critique of convenience and lack of depth especially with the fact that he could have made it out together on that horse but he gets the standard cliched heroic deus ex machina death to "slow down" the dead which is a dumb excuse to sacrifice himself
Kevin.... My God! You are crazy!
Two lummoxes smash into one another in the muck of the thoroughfare. The scuffle starts out honorable, as honorable as that sort of brutality can be. Both Dority and Captain Turner drop their weapons to meet one another hand-to-hand. They grapple and jockey for the upper hand. The tumble down the middle of the street, each struggling for control.
And then, things gets ugly. Turner bites Dority's face. He begins to drown him in the mud. He looks up at Hearst, like a gladiator seeking the approval of the emperor, trying to discern whether he's drawn the beating out long enough to meet his master's demands. He draws it out. Eventually the tide turns in the skirmish. Turner begins bashing Dan's head in on a rock, and left desperate, soon to die otherwise, Dan gouges his opponent's eye out. He beats him down with a nearby piece of wood. He too, looks up to the emperors on their balconies, once at Hearst as challenge, and once at Al for silent approval. Then he does it, and Turner is gone.
It's a scene that's notable in its starkness and brutality. This is not the struggle between valiant men, laden with beauty and glory of the noble fight. It's a drag-out, beat down brawl between two thugs, and it carries with it all the ugliness, all the inelegance and filthiness and harshness that comes with that. It toys with the audience's emotions, suggesting that Dan, who is for once undersized relative to his opponent, may really meet his end, and inviting us to relish his triumph even as we're to be disgusted by what it takes to get there.
The victory, however, is not triumphant for Dan, let alone anyone else. He sits, naked in his room, wanting to be alone. As Al explains to Johnny, there's a difference between murder-for-hire, between taking someone out in one fell swoop, versus a fair fight, albeit a dirty one. Seeing the lights go out of someone's eyes, being locked in mortal combat, leaves you alone with it, makes it more real and personal for even a hardened killer like Dority. Al gives Dan time to make his way through that muck just as he let Dan make his way through the muck in the thoroughfare.
And it speaks to a theme of the episode -- that what you want can be spoiled by how you get it. Dan, in his puppydog sort of way, loves Al, and admires him. He wants justice against Hearst for hurting his master, for disrespecting the man who is his rock. But the way he gets that justice feels wrong, and leaves him feeling hollowed out when it's all through.
The same is true for Elsworth. In another scene which Deadwood, in the show's judiciousness, lets simmer and breathe, Alma is high as a kite and making advances on her husband for what is, presumably, the first time. Like her scene with Hearst a few episodes ago, there's a supreme awkwardness and almost terror to it as she advances. Elsworth may not know that she's back on the laudanum, but he can tell that something is off. The scene lingers as she moves in to kiss him, and there is a moment of shock, of recognition in Elsworth. He moves away, and in as tasteful a way as he can muster given how rattled he clearly is, tells her that he can't do that, can't do any of it anymore. Elsworth's been reluctant about this from the beginning, and with Alma's virtue no longer at stake, and her habit back in force, this is more than he bargained for. Even the affections that he'd once at least jokingly courted, when presented to him in a way that feels wrong, is too much for him to bear.
The most puzzling scene in this vein comes from Hostetler. The tenuous truce between him and Steve the Drunk seems steady enough. The simultaneous signing works as hoped. The bank accepts the deeds. All that's left is to turn over the board with Steve's gunpoint confession from last season. But Steve keeps moving the goalposts. The board has no writing on it anymore, so Steve won't accept it. It's too much for Hostetler, too much abuse that he has to just stand there and take, that he can't shove back into that racist asshole's face. So he kills himself. Part of the choice seems clear -- any more and he'd do something to Steve that would lead to Hostetler being killed anyway, but why he cuts to the chase, without giving Steve any of what he deserves, is a puzzling one for this show. But maybe it stands for the idea that nothing is easy here, nothing is simple, and nothing happens without pain, bloodshed, or both.
Hearst seems taken aback by all of this, or at least the part that he sees. He's not a man accustomed to losing, so Captain Turner going down appears to shake him a bit. Bullock, likewise, seems rattled by what Hostetler did. Both men have hot blood, and inevitably comes to a head. The third Cornishman killed in the street, as Al puts it "like a flag," leaves is a provocation that Bullock cannot tolerate. After a steely confrontation, Bullock arrests Hearst, cannot sit idly by on the sideline for the greater good any longer. This is what Bullock wants, and by god he's going to get it.
If there's a thesis to Deadwood, it seems to be this -- civilization is messy. History, and television, both aspire to be clean, not in the sense of lewdness or curse words (another concern that Deadwood ignores), but in the sense of straightforward progressions with clear, well-delineated beginnings and endings. History books have to condense the endless complications of human progress down to something that high school students can regurgitate. Television hews toward arcs and narrative progressions, where stories start and finish neatly within an episode or a season. We tell ourselves a story about how our lives, how our nation, how our civilization came to be, and it's often one that fits neatly within certain clear-cut boundaries we set for our thinking. Television typically tries to mirror this tack, to chop big ideas into digestible chunks.
But Deadwood isn't interested in either side of this dichotomy. "The Boy the Earth Talks To" is a season finale, and in that regard, it has some requisite big moments, and pays off certain narrative threads that have been put forward since the first episode. But it's also part of the semi-improvisational bent of the show, where despite the episode's place as a capstone on a season, it includes endings, like Wolcott's departure, Wu taking out Lee, or Alma and Elsworth's marriage, but also beginnings, like Hearst's arrival in Deadwood,the start of the Elsworths' new life together, and middles for that matter, like the budding friendship between Jane and Joanie, or the continuing travails of Farnum's hotel, or Al's continued efforts to ensure the survival of the camp with him at the top of the food chain.
That idea comes through in the episode's final sequences, which dance across the camp as a cacophony of events are juxtaposed, and become dappled and intertwined with one another. The anchor, is the wedding of between Alma and Elsworth, and it too is not without its tumult. The wedding itself is not exactly joyful, Both Alma and Elsworth struggle through the ceremony as the ceremonial nature of their marriage starts to weigh on them in the face of the enormity of their commitment. But it represents, to episode one's title, a lie agreed upon, one meant to be better for everyone. It is the culmination of their kinder natures taken to an extreme for the benefit of others, and in that, it is joyous. But that wedding is intercut with two other developments. There is the unsightly (soundly?) thump of Mr. Hearst's hammer as he knocks down a wall in Farnum's hotel, and it is the sign that things end and change, that the stability in the camp is about to face a force which threatens to remake it in its own image. By contrast, there is a scene of Martha Bullock seeing the first green shoots of the sunflowers that William planted, the last gasps of their old lives, emerging from the dirt in her garden, a sign that there is also renewal and rebirth and mementos of what has passed.
Once more, the camp is brought together at the Elsworths' wedding reception. And a different show might have ended it there, perhaps with a montage of the major characters looking contemplative with a soothing tune to lay on the emotion. Instead, we have this site of joy interspersed and punctuated with moments that complicate it, that show even when the town is enmeshed in a celebration that seems to consume it wholesale, Deadwood is an organism that is constantly growing, constantly moving, constantly changing. It is, in a word, messy.
So amid the dancing and merriment, life and death still happens unabated. Cy confronts Andy and takes a dagger to the gut for his troubles. Mose tries to follow Doc Cochran's exercises and in the background behind him, Wolcott hangs himself having been rebuked for his grisly deeds by Hearst. Merrick struggles with his camera while being groped by one of Al's locals. Doc Cochran dances sweetly with Jewel. Wu and Swearengen's hatchetmen return having done their duty. Charlie Utter comes back to town and reunites with Jane and Joanie. Bullock shares a meaningful look with the new bride. This ending is not a simple one. It is one steeped in the unfinished, unsteady forces that grip people, cities, and whole civilizations all at once, and posits that the stories we tell about them ought to be as equally wild and complex as they unravel.
Heart is a man with focus and as Al puts it, concentration. He eschews diversions and distractions, whether it be which Chinese man supervises his operation or who's working where. He is someone who lives to knock down walls, to only seek the color, and leave all the rest of it to others. Al, by contrast, is someone constantly immersing himself in finding out where all those frayed ends lead, to seeing where each play in the playbook might lead him, and ever ready to change course when the terrain requires it. He is a man made for this mess, for the rocky process between wilderness and civilization. And yet as he stands on his balcony, gazing at the revelry below but not participating in it, he seems like Moses, a man who gives his life over to finding the promised land, but destined, perhaps, not to enter it himself.
At the end of the episode, he chats with "The Chief," his only true companion, and bellows at Bullock to go home. When Seth does, he shares that look with Alma. "I believe it's to your fucking right," deadpans Al. This wedding is meant to be one of those events that makes things cleaner, neater. It's meant to wash away the impropriety of the child's conception, to make a clear line between Seth and Alma, each of them now ensconced in their marriages, never the twain shall meet. But this too, seems destined to be messier than they intend, and this camp, like the people in it, will keep moving, and living, and dying apace in ways that don't fit neatly into boxes, seasons, or the flattering histories we construct for ourselves about how we stopped being heathens and started a civilization.
When we meet Anna Bullock in this episode, she is a grieving mother who wants to get as far away from this place as possible. She is understandably distraught by all that's happened, and sees Deadwood as the locus of her son's death. Who wouldn't want to put miles between themselves and the site of such tragedy? Who wouldn't want to make the funeral as brief as possible so that they could run away and make the last couple of weeks of their life seem like a mere bad dream in the rear view mirror?
But then, a funny thing happens. When it comes time for William's funeral, essentially the whole town comes out to mourn him. From the regal Mrs. Garrett to the collection of prostitutes, to the hatchetmen and hangers-on, and humdrum regulars of this frontier village, everyone joins together in the Bullocks' hour of need. They express a solidarity, a sense of community, that brings them all together despite the fact that they occupy different stations in life and often different sides of the various conflicts that divide up the town into various factions and alliances. In a change of heart, Martha Bullock tells Seth to let them all see William in repose. It is, symbolically, Martha welcoming this community, one that she's been on the edges of since she came to Deadwood, into her heart.
Grief is one of those things that cuts through pretense and prejudice. It creates special circumstances that allow for fences to be mended, fissures to be healed, and groups of people to come together when it's needed. There's a supreme bit of heart to that moment, one that reveals the humanity beneath the rough edges of Deadwood's denizens, but that horrible event leads to other bits of sunlight and humanity revealed.
Alma shares an intimate moment with Sofia, expressing both the sense that she too is devastated by these horrible events, but that by being together, they may weather it more easily. Jane, still holed up with Joanie, deigns to take a bath (in a hilarious scene), literally and figuratively exposing her frailties to another human and allowing herself another human connection beyond dear departed Bill and Charlie Utter. And Alma finally responds to Elsworth's proposal, accepting him, and the warmth and security that further binding oneself with those close can provide.
The notable exception is Al. Al refuses to attend the funeral, either because it'd be too sentimental for him, or because he simply doesn't care, or because there's business to transact. But he is not above using that halting power of grief for his own purposes. He negotiates with Commissioner Jarry, using the solemnity of the day to hint that he's angling for local elections rather than additional bribery from Yankton's representative. He uses it as an excuse to tell Mr. Lee (Hearst's brutal envoy to the Chinese community) not to start anything with Wu so that Al can buy a little more time before he can converse with Hearst himself about it. Even when he expresses sorrow for Bullock's loss directly (in a heart-wrenching scene where you see Bullock finishing his son's coffin), he shifts his interaction to make sure Bullock will play ball on fooling the interlopers from the Dakotas. Again, Al seems fueled by a strong dose of self-interest, but he's also interested in preserving this community, in keeping a place that offers solace and comfort when it gathers around corpses rather than just burning them intact.
Perhaps, as Martha Bullock seems to conclude, that's something worth holding onto. Nothing can take back the tragedy of a parent outliving their child; nothing can wipe away the horrors witnessed by a young girl whose family was murdered before her eyes; nothing can ameliorate the pain borne in such horrible circumstances. But when these people come together, to cry, to laugh, to curse, and to share in every other sundry emotion that these events provoke, it's all a little easier, a little better, a little more able to be overcome. Martha comes to understand that, and Swearengen cold and craven as he seems here, aims to ensure that can keep happening.
EDIT 5/15/2019: On rewatch this is definitely in the 10 out of 10 range. Sure, some the Cy Tolliver stuff is interminable as usual, but man, the way this young boy's death affects anyone and everyone in camp, and brings almost all of them together in one of their own's moment of need is just heartbreaking and heartening at the same time. And somehow this episode still manages to be hilarious all the while! One of Deadwood's finest hours, and that's saying something.
Very likely my favorite episode of the show thus far. Bill Simmons has what he calls "Ewing Theory," specifically that sometimes when a star player gets injured or is otherwise unavailable, the team rallies and has a surprising success on their own. That's true for this episode of Deadwood, both in-universe and out of it. It's hard to imagine an episode without the crackling presence of Ian McShane (or at least one without him really saying anything) being this good, but it gives us time to explore the other characters on the show, and Milch and Mann wring as much as they can around it. To that end, Al being out of commission lets you see how he's the gravitational force at the center of Deadwood, and without his presence, nobody's quite sure how to revolve in sync anymore.
The last episode spent much of the time showing Trixie worrying about Al's condition, and that follows here. She cries in Sol's arms, and is short with Jewel, and you see how she's trying not to betray her feelings but is genuinely concerned. You also see Dan, who is a brutal ox of a man, cry and confide and worry about the state of his master. The way he "interprets" Al's response to the doctor and tells him to perform the surgery, only to go back out onto that balcony (like Al once did) with red eyes is an incredible moment. By the same token, Doc Cochran, who's the second most consistent performer on the show behind McShane, is rattled and can't keep his hands steady at the prospect of having to perform surgery on Al. The way all three of them (plus Johnny), work Al through passing his stone, and then once it's over, gather around and hug him, is a surprisingly sweet and intimate moment that shows that however much these people may resent the straw that stirs the drink in Deadwood, they are, for better or worse, lost without him and thankful to have him there. (And Dan's murder of the guy who wants to talk to Al immediately after signifies how Dan didn't become some softy. He's still a harsh man, he's just more complicated than being that and that alone.)
The other major storyline of the episode is the continued adventures of Mr. Wescott, who's continuing his war on two fronts, both to prime the camp for the arrival of civilization (and with it Mr. Hearst's interests) that threatens to scare off or displace the current residents (something we get a taste of with Mr. Wu's frantic gestures to Dan), and his weird fascination with one of the prostitutes and his attendant harsh and odd manner with them. To the former, it's interesting to see Cy bested and overwhelmed by someone, and to see Elsworth, who's clearly had a less than great experience with Hearst's operations, recognize and stand up to Mr. W. The new comissioner who comes to town seems more interested in feathering his own nest (despite his aside glances about the crudeness of the camp) and seems happy to play into Mr. Hearst's interests.
On the latter front, the trouble in paradise between Joanie and her partner doesn't interest me that much, nor do Mr. W's perversions or predilections with the prostitute who just showed up to town, but maybe it'll make more sense when we know what the new madame's game is.
There's other nice touches as well. Thankfully it's a minimal Bullock episode, but I actually liked his scenes. Both he and his wife are trying their hardest be domestic together, but they clearly haven't settled into a comfort level, and both of them are hiding behind formalities at this stage. Both Olyphant and Gunn play their awkward attempts at intimacy but hard-to-overcome distance quite well.
Molly Parker still doesn't really do it for me as Alma, but her scene with E.B., where she calls him out on spreading false rumors about the claims being thrown out (or at least, rumors that he doesn't himself believe) by offering to buy his hotel, was great. Farnum had some great third-tier Shakespearean character monologues throughout this thing and he's grown on me as an entertaining sideshow. But the speech that preceded it, namely Elsworth's to Alma about not believing these rumors, using the metaphor of folks saying the creek's going to overflow but he thinks the levees will hold, was superbly well-written and performed. Seems like something that ought to stand out from the pack on the show.
We also get a scene with Sofia's tutor taking solace with Adams in a wholly new but kind of cute scene, that feels like it's going to set up Adams or whomever scheming to take out Alma, or otherwise throw monkey wrenches into people's plans.
But all-in-all, for an episode where the show's best character was mostly MIA, this was a great look at the way Deadwood operates without him, both in how the people whose lives he touches, even those who seem to suffer under his yoke, are left scrambling and hoping for his return and recovery when he's not there. As Farnum puts it, he knows that he's weak and yearns for a stronger soul to guide him. Without Al, stronger souls come to town and start changing the game, and that's scary for everyone who knows the rules as they stand, even if they're not entirely fair.
This season is going to be awesome! Off to a fantastic start so far! :D
