Deadwood Season One: Episodes Five, Six and Seven
‘The Trial of Jack McCall’ is fairly straightforward: Hickok’s killer is tried in a makeshift courtroom set up in the Gem, where it can be more easily manipulated by Swearengen; Jane goes on a bender in the woods and befriends Plague victim no. 1; Joanie goes to Hickok’s funeral, also attended by Cy and Montana, and Alma and Trixie together babysit the young Norwegian girl. I think the highlight is an incredibly perverse soliloquy by E.B. as he scrubs blood off the floor. The double quotation marks signal E.B.’s vocalization of what he imagines Swearengen’s thoughts to be:
‘You have been tested, Al Swearengen. And your deepest purposes proved. There’s gold on the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted it from the rooftops. “That’s why I’m jumping through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced the fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too, using loyal associates like Eustace Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes. To explain why I want her bought out I will make a pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I will throw Farnum a token thief. Why should I reward E.B. with some small fractional participation in the claim? Or let him even lay by a little security and source of continuing income for his declining years? What’s he ever done for me except let me terrify him every goddamned day of his life till the idea of bowel regularity is a forlorn fucking hope. Not to mention ordering a man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms. So every fucking free moment of his life E.B. has to spend scrubbing the bloodstains off the goddamned floor to keep from … having to lower the rates.” God damn that motherfucker!’
The idea that division and contradiction is a sign of evil is at least as ancient as the gospels, and in this speech E.B. dramatizes his part in the duplicity that marks him as one of Satan’s minions. He begins by assuming a position superior to Swearengen, but in narrating the reasons for this understanding discovers again his pathetic inferiority, in spite of his greater insight.
1. “You have been tested”, reveals that E.B. believes himself to be in relation superior to Swearengen, assuming that E.B. is the one doing the ‘testing’. At the very least (since we know E.B.’s surmise of Swearengen’s motives is correct), he has a vantage point from which he is able to see Swearengen and his machinations in a way that Swearengen is unable to see E.B. To E.B., Swearengen is transparent.
2. This is confirmed by his voicing of Swearengen’s thoughts, through which E.B. not only exposes Swearengen’s pretexts in relation to others, but in relation to himself, E.B., as well. This proves to be too much for E.B., and from that exalted position he believed he held he then ‘descends’ into the knowledge of his obsequiousness and self-contempt.
Swearengen can’t be completely evil; he’s not the devil himself, or ‘evil incarnate’ or whatever, since the dramatization of evil here (I think) reveals it’s human dimension. And, of course, out of Swearengen’s actions some good is derived (the medicine, for example, is delivered from Cheyenne almost entirely because of his initiative; that this initiative exists for the calculation of future profit doesn’t matter in the least: he’s quite aware of the good accomplishes, and even minimizes what honor would seem to redound to him). Here the evil – duplicitous, or double, by nature – is incapable of standing on its own and continues in the corrupt relations between men. In Swearengen blindness accompanies power, but in E.B. powerlessness accompanies insight. There are two sides of fear here, terrorizes and terrorized, and the flip side of Swearengen’s willful deceit is E.B.’s self-hate. Forlorn indeed.
‘Plague’ shows the disease spreading, Alma gets over her laudanum addiction with help from Trixie, Jane discovers that she has a gift for tending to the sick, and the Reverend collapses because of an epilepsy fit. Bullock is attacked by an Indian protecting sacred burial grounds, and the two fight to the death. Star shows an interest in a more and more healthy looking Trixie, and Alma does so well getting over her addiction that she comes under the suspicion of Swearengen.
“Bullock Returns to Camp” gives us a good idea of how Bullock came out of the fight; what’s interesting is that he’s found by Utter on his way back from Cheyanne. The two of them go off in search of McCall and find him in another camp. Back in Deadwood a young man and his sister arrive in search of their father, or, failing that, work, and the girl is tutored by Joanie, unbeknownst to her brother over at the Gem. Andy walks back into the Bella Union to confront Cy. Jane and Charlie Utter reunite, and Trixie has a showdown with Alma Garret over the welfare of the young Norwegian girl.
All in all these are fine episodes; I thought the storyline concerning the Reverend and his epilepsy is especially good for it’s searching treatment of issues of Faith. The Reverend and Doc discuss the connection between seizures and belief, and though confrontational, they both take the trouble to ask questions about each other’s answers. The story of the two teenagers is more complex than their admirers are able to understand, and is discouraging, to say the least.
‘You have been tested, Al Swearengen. And your deepest purposes proved. There’s gold on the woman’s claim. You might as well have shouted it from the rooftops. “That’s why I’m jumping through hoops to get it back. Thorough as I fleeced the fool she married, I will fleece his widow, too, using loyal associates like Eustace Bailey Farnum as my go-betweens and dupes. To explain why I want her bought out I will make a pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I will throw Farnum a token thief. Why should I reward E.B. with some small fractional participation in the claim? Or let him even lay by a little security and source of continuing income for his declining years? What’s he ever done for me except let me terrify him every goddamned day of his life till the idea of bowel regularity is a forlorn fucking hope. Not to mention ordering a man killed in one of E.B.’s rooms. So every fucking free moment of his life E.B. has to spend scrubbing the bloodstains off the goddamned floor to keep from … having to lower the rates.” God damn that motherfucker!’
The idea that division and contradiction is a sign of evil is at least as ancient as the gospels, and in this speech E.B. dramatizes his part in the duplicity that marks him as one of Satan’s minions. He begins by assuming a position superior to Swearengen, but in narrating the reasons for this understanding discovers again his pathetic inferiority, in spite of his greater insight.
1. “You have been tested”, reveals that E.B. believes himself to be in relation superior to Swearengen, assuming that E.B. is the one doing the ‘testing’. At the very least (since we know E.B.’s surmise of Swearengen’s motives is correct), he has a vantage point from which he is able to see Swearengen and his machinations in a way that Swearengen is unable to see E.B. To E.B., Swearengen is transparent.
2. This is confirmed by his voicing of Swearengen’s thoughts, through which E.B. not only exposes Swearengen’s pretexts in relation to others, but in relation to himself, E.B., as well. This proves to be too much for E.B., and from that exalted position he believed he held he then ‘descends’ into the knowledge of his obsequiousness and self-contempt.
Swearengen can’t be completely evil; he’s not the devil himself, or ‘evil incarnate’ or whatever, since the dramatization of evil here (I think) reveals it’s human dimension. And, of course, out of Swearengen’s actions some good is derived (the medicine, for example, is delivered from Cheyenne almost entirely because of his initiative; that this initiative exists for the calculation of future profit doesn’t matter in the least: he’s quite aware of the good accomplishes, and even minimizes what honor would seem to redound to him). Here the evil – duplicitous, or double, by nature – is incapable of standing on its own and continues in the corrupt relations between men. In Swearengen blindness accompanies power, but in E.B. powerlessness accompanies insight. There are two sides of fear here, terrorizes and terrorized, and the flip side of Swearengen’s willful deceit is E.B.’s self-hate. Forlorn indeed.
‘Plague’ shows the disease spreading, Alma gets over her laudanum addiction with help from Trixie, Jane discovers that she has a gift for tending to the sick, and the Reverend collapses because of an epilepsy fit. Bullock is attacked by an Indian protecting sacred burial grounds, and the two fight to the death. Star shows an interest in a more and more healthy looking Trixie, and Alma does so well getting over her addiction that she comes under the suspicion of Swearengen.
“Bullock Returns to Camp” gives us a good idea of how Bullock came out of the fight; what’s interesting is that he’s found by Utter on his way back from Cheyanne. The two of them go off in search of McCall and find him in another camp. Back in Deadwood a young man and his sister arrive in search of their father, or, failing that, work, and the girl is tutored by Joanie, unbeknownst to her brother over at the Gem. Andy walks back into the Bella Union to confront Cy. Jane and Charlie Utter reunite, and Trixie has a showdown with Alma Garret over the welfare of the young Norwegian girl.
All in all these are fine episodes; I thought the storyline concerning the Reverend and his epilepsy is especially good for it’s searching treatment of issues of Faith. The Reverend and Doc discuss the connection between seizures and belief, and though confrontational, they both take the trouble to ask questions about each other’s answers. The story of the two teenagers is more complex than their admirers are able to understand, and is discouraging, to say the least.
posted by Quin Finnegan at 2:45 PM
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