Gangsters and Gunslingers
If you need to reach me, don't call on Sunday night. Let me explain, as the bouzoukis pluck out the strains of Never On Sunday in the background.
I don't watch a lot of TV. At least, not standard broadcast television. Oh, I was raised with TV like everyone, and watched my share until I got to college. Then, the combination of not having a TV and studying theater and rehearsing in the evenings weaned me from the habit. The television set I own is more than 15 years old and has developed several interesting ticks. For one, it retunes itself occasionally. It is set to channel 4, in order to receive from the cable box and VCR, and every now and then it will switch to channel 4. Yes, from channel 4 to channel 4. But, much as if it is switching channels, when it retunes there is a split second of dead sound. (The picture remains unaffected.) Since these retunes tend to run in series, there are times when the dialogue begins to stutter. I can sometimes combat this by switching to another channel and then coming back to 4, but that doesn't always help. It's to the point that I don't even notice it unless it's happening a lot, but it drives others crazy. Aside from a few similar glitches, though, the set works fine, and I'm unlikely to replace it until it dies completely or some unknowing burglar breaks in and steals it. From my fingers to God's ears! What am I paying renter's insurance for?
The astute among you may be asking, "If you don't watch much TV, why do you have cable?" It's not TV, it's HBO.
Sunday night is TV night. Oh, there have been flirtations with other nights, such as the West Wing/Law and Order combo on Wednesday, but they don't last. Sure, I'm a sucker for Big Brother, but I never watch what follows it - couldn't even tell you what did. I've seen maybe 2 complete episode of Friends, and never saw Seinfeld, Frasier or Third Rock From the Sun in their original time slots. (I was introduced to the latter three as reruns on Fox.)
My Sunday night TV tradition - if you discount childhood viewings of such fare as The Wonderful World of Color (I was too young to watch this program when it was Walt Disney Presents and it lost something when it became The Wonderful World of Disney) and the rest of the NBC lineup - goes back to the early 90s and The Simpsons. FOX, being FOX, moved The Simpsons all around the schedule - putting it up against Cosby at one point, where it still didn't die. By the late 90s, both The Simpsons and The Larry Sanders Show had settled on Sunday nights for good, and so had I. When Larry Sanders went off the air, I hoped HBO would come up with something half as good to fill the gap in my Sunday night schedule. The network responded with The Sopranos.
The Sopranos is back this season, with a vengeance. In this case, the phrase is not cliché. All of the characters have axes to grind, and heads to bury them in once they're good and sharp. Over the past few episodes, the show has gained momentum, and viewers are now girding their loins for the coming bloodbath. If you're a fan, you've been watching; if not, it's almost too late. Last week's episode was the ninth of the season, and since a season generally consists of 13 episodes, it looks like we're down to the final four.
For the past two seasons, The Sopranos has been something of a dreary affair. Last season in particular - the one in which Tony and Carmela's marriage fell apart - was in dire need of Zoloft. Plot threads involved Christopher's heroin addiction, Carmela's doomed flirtation with soldier Furio and Tony's loss of the only thing he loved, his racehorse. The cast and writing were up to their usual standards, but there wasn't a stand out episode, such as the previous season's "Pine Barrens," in which Christopher and Paulie get lost in the woods while trying to whack a Russian mobster, or Janice's breakup with Richie Aprile in season two, or almost every episode from the first season.
This year is back to form. Though the story lines are as dark as ever - Tony and Carmela are headed for divorce, Carmela has an abortive attempt to have an affair, Tony is dealing with guilt over his relationship with his cousin - the energy is high. Episodes are packed with incident - last Sunday's outing involved three major plot threads, and after all three had been resolved, there was a final revelation that put both this season and the entire series into a new light. Steve Buscemi, Robert Loggia and David Strathairn have been added as guest or supporting players. (Also on view are Max Casella, who once played Doogie Howser's best friend, and Frankie Valli, tiny yet threatening.) Loggia played a character named Feech LaManna, one of the Class of '84 - a group of gangsters jailed 20 years ago who have recently been paroled. He immediately created strife in the Family, but rather than letting this story line play out throughout the season - as similar plots have in previous seasons - it was tied up by the fourth episode. The problem was resolved - as was another conflict, between Tony and Christopher - with more elegance than the gunplay we usually expect.
Feech, by the by, was a character introduced, but not seen, as early as season three. He's the "old mustache" who used to run the Executive Poker Game that Tony and Jackie Aprile, Sr. knocked over when they were kids, as related by Ralphie to Jackie Jr. This is one of the joys of The Sopranos. The show does a better job of adding and developing minor characters than any show on television, with the exception of The Simpsons. (The Simpsons regularly spins entire episodes around such characters as Principal Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel, or Krusty or Moe, using the family as secondary players.) Tony's sister Janice, now a stalwart of the series, entered as a one season story line. Patsy Parisi - who handled Tony's breakup with Gloria (Annabella Sciorra) in season three - was originally introduced as a threat to Tony, the twin brother to whacked Philly Parisi. With Tony and Carmela's separation, Carmela has developed a circle of friends of mob wives and widows. This serves not only to keep the show fresh, but to deepen the texture of its world.
Another element of The Sopranos which makes it stand out - and which it shares with other HBO dramas (and comedies) - is that it is greater than the sum of its parts. It has room for metaphor. Commercial TV is so desperate to squeeze a few minutes of plot into 40 minutes of air time that it rarely makes time for much more. An exception was The West Wing, at least in the early days, when it moved at such a frenetic clip that it was the audience's responsibility to keep up. But that pace allowed it to develop at least two story lines per episode, and since Aaron Sorkin trusted his audience to follow him, he didn't look back to constantly prod them, unlike most commercial fare, which has a constant "didja geddit?" grin plastered to its goofy face. HBO shows have the luxury of a full hour and several showings a week, which give them the confidence to try new things with the belief that the audience will play along.
Here's a rather simple example from this year's season. In the first episode, Tony has moved out of the house and is living in his dead mother's place. (The mileage they've gotten out of that house since Livia died is astonishing, especially since it was on the market at one time. Speaking of houses on the market, the Minneapolis home which served as the exterior location for Mary Richards' apartment is for sale. A mere $1.7 million will get you five bedrooms, six baths and a ton of tourists.) Carmela and AJ are there alone when a bear shows up on the property. The bear actually threatens AJ, who is taking out the trash, until Carmela frightens it off. Later, a Fish and Game Warden appears to explain to the audience why it is not beyond belief for a bear to appear in the backyard of a New Jersey home. But the bear has more significance than just a plot development. Tony is, of course, a bear of a man in his own right. In his absence, another bear threatens the family. The bear is drawn by the bird feed Tony purchased in a previous season to feed the ducks that lived in his pool. The ducks were the cause of his early panic attacks, symbolizing, according to his doctor, his fear of losing his family. Tony is losing his family, and the bear is there to destroy the security he invested in to keep his symbolic family present. In his absence, Carmela is forced to defend the home, and she acts as the mother bear, protecting her young against the intruder and later enlisting the aid of another alpha male, the Warden. Tony has several members of his crew keep watch at the house in case the bear returns. He has an AK-47 hidden at the house, and he entrusts his big gun to younger men. He has abdicated his role as the protector of his family, and in this time of danger, has thrust his wife into the arms of strangers. The bear only appears at night, so Tony is metaphorically cuckolding himself, in the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte. By the end of the episode, Tony - having been rebuffed in his affections by his analyst - has reclaimed his gun and is himself serving as the guardian against the intruding male, though doing so, significantly, outside the house.
Is this sort of analysis unwarranted? Yes and no. I am perhaps stretching a point to make a point. The metaphors in this episode are not what students like to call "hidden meanings," there to find and circle. But they are meaning. They give the story greater texture. Perhaps it takes a text analysis wonk like me to determine this degree of significance, but even a casual viewer will find in The Sopranos greater levels of shading than in the average episode of ER.
Granted, even HBO backs a stinker from time to time. The wretched Carnivalé, which it squeezed into its Sunday night lineup last year and is threatening to impose upon us against, was nothing but metaphor. The show took 12 episodes to deliver what was essentially exposition disguised as plot. And the season finale was a cliff hanger - pretty ballsy for the first season of a show that wouldn't necessarily return. Even after four seasons, The Sopranos still wraps up all its story lines by the end of the year.
HBO's strength lies in revitalizing genre shows. The Sopranos provided the first fresh view of the mob since Goodfellas. Curb Your Enthusiasm has redefined the sitcom, The Wire found fresh life in the police procedural, Six Feet Under has shattered the family drama (think The Waltons on acid). Now comes Deadwood, which finds life in the western I would not have expected.
I am Deadwood's whore. Full disclosure: I like westerns. Good westerns. True Grit. Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But then, I like most genres. (With the exception of war movies. The only war movies I seem to like are those with a hook, like The Dirty Dozen. Could not abide Shaving Ryan's Privates. Which may be why I never made it through Band of Brothers.) And I approached Deadwood with some hope. The trailers made it look like fun. It's the creation of David Milch, who brought us NYPD Blue and was a writer on Hill Street Blues and Murder One. It follows The Sopranos, so it wasn't an effort to catch. One look, and I was hooked.
Deadwood follows in the tracks laid down by Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. The West is filthy, people are filthy, morals are loose at best. It takes place in the town of Deadwood, before there even was a South Dakota, and is based on - but is not slavish to - actual people, places and events. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are characters, and if all you know of Jane is the Doris Day portrayal, you're in for a surprise. Our hero is Seth Bullock, and he and his partner Sol Star were real people, as were Al Swearengen, Charlie Utter (another member of Hickok's crew) and even Reverend Smith. Much of the action takes place between competing houses of ill repute, The Gem and the Bella Union, both of which were "theaters" in historic Deadwood.
The show stars Timothy Olyphant, who you may recall as the drug dealer from Go, or less memorably, from A Man Apart, Dreamcatcher or Rock Star. He is currently on view in The Girl Next Door, playing a role based on Joe Pantoliano's Guido the Killer Pimp from Risky Business. Or so I read. I haven't seen The Girl Next Door, nor do I intend to, but I cannot fault its audience for being drawn in. I certainly saw my quota of teensploitation flicks back in the 80s, starting with Risky Business, but descending as low as My Tutor, starring Matt (Mr. Olivia Newton-John) Lattanzi and the ineffable (though in this movie, infinitely effable) Caren Kaye as the titular tutor.
But I digress.
The rest of the cast is a mix of faces both familiar and un. The appropriately named Al Swearengen - he is, indeed, an engine of cursing - is played by Ian McShane, who you may remember as the mob boss in Sexy Beast, but probably not. (On the other hand, if you haven't seen Sexy Beast, do yourself a favor and rent it.) I am predicting Golden Globe and Emmy nominations, and likely wins, next year. (Clip and save!) As the villain of the town, McShane chews the scenery, spits it in your face and makes you like it. William Sanderson, Larry of Newhart and the toy maker in Blade Runner, plays Swearengen's toady. Brad Dourif is the town doctor, Jeffrey Jones the newspaper editor, and Ricky Jay a partner at the Bella Union. Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe bring great authority to supporting roles. They have played so many roles, and so many in this genre (Carradine's first part was in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, when he was 21) that they wear the costumes and language as if they were born to them.
Ah, the language. Much has been made of the salty nature of the intercourse between the characters. There seems to be a widespread belief that profanity is an invention of the 20th century, and that such Yosemite Samisms as "you lily livered varmint" might be more appropriate to the period. There are no "consarnits" in the show, but there are plenty of "c**ks**kers." Along with the usual f***s, c*nts and the occasional, but rare, m*****f*****. Those who are willing to believe that men were coarse during this period still tend to assume that the nature of discourse was somewhat milder.
While it is true that f*** did not appear in any dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965, and didn't make its debut in the OED until 1972, sources date its use to as early as 1278. The American Heritage dictionary notes the usage of a variant - the faux Latin "fuccant" - in a poem published prior to 1500. The OED cites "fukkit" from the 1503 poem, "Brash of Wowing." The earliest citation of the current spelling is from 1535. Shakespeare punned around it both in Henry V, when Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, and in Merry Wives of Windsor, when a character refers to the "focative case," instead of "vocative." Similarly, c**t was in use in the 13th century, and makes veiled appearances in Hamlet and Twelfth Night. I haven't had much luck researching c-sucker, most likely because its main function is as an epithet, but I imagine it was in wide use by 1876, the year of the show. And you can just imagine the sponsored links that come up when you do this research.
In any case, profanity is wielded like a club by the characters in Deadwood. Swearengen is the champ, but Calamity Jane gives him a run for his money. One online poster noted that in the April 25 episode, c-sucker was used only 5 times, an all time low. Jane must have been absent that week. Whereas Swearengen uses the word mainly to refer to people he doesn't like Jane sees it as synonym for "man," or in extreme cases, "you." If the c-ses were cut, and only the f-s remained, this show probably wouldn't have half the rep it does for foul language. We are so used to f, that it takes a cocksucker to rouse us from our lethargy.
Of course, clubs are also wielded like clubs. Well, not clubs so much, but guns, knives, ropes, shovels - pretty much anything you can think of to inflict pain or death. HBO keeps track in the "Dead Count" section of the site. Although Episode 5 seemed to pass without incident, you can generally count on a shooting or knifing in every show. The killings range from matter of fact to shocking, and while half of the corpses end up buried, the rest are fed to Mr. Wu's pigs. As in The Sopranos, violence is a way of life, and anyone who can't deal with it won't be alive for long. In any case, the violence, while not for the squeamish, is never gratuitous.
I am completely wrapped up in Deadwood. Whether it's historically accurate or not, it feels like it is, which is more important. As with any TV show, the litmus test is whether or not you want to spend time with these people. I do - at least from the safety of my 21st century sofa. The season is half over - I've been meaning to tell you about this for weeks - but it's not too late to catch up. HBO has already had two nights of multi-episode reruns, and I wouldn't put it past them to have another. Small pox has hit the camp, and as far as I can tell, all lives are up for grabs but Bullock's and Swearengen's, so your favorite character may be dead soon.
I don't watch a lot of TV. At least, not standard broadcast television. Oh, I was raised with TV like everyone, and watched my share until I got to college. Then, the combination of not having a TV and studying theater and rehearsing in the evenings weaned me from the habit. The television set I own is more than 15 years old and has developed several interesting ticks. For one, it retunes itself occasionally. It is set to channel 4, in order to receive from the cable box and VCR, and every now and then it will switch to channel 4. Yes, from channel 4 to channel 4. But, much as if it is switching channels, when it retunes there is a split second of dead sound. (The picture remains unaffected.) Since these retunes tend to run in series, there are times when the dialogue begins to stutter. I can sometimes combat this by switching to another channel and then coming back to 4, but that doesn't always help. It's to the point that I don't even notice it unless it's happening a lot, but it drives others crazy. Aside from a few similar glitches, though, the set works fine, and I'm unlikely to replace it until it dies completely or some unknowing burglar breaks in and steals it. From my fingers to God's ears! What am I paying renter's insurance for?
The astute among you may be asking, "If you don't watch much TV, why do you have cable?" It's not TV, it's HBO.
Sunday night is TV night. Oh, there have been flirtations with other nights, such as the West Wing/Law and Order combo on Wednesday, but they don't last. Sure, I'm a sucker for Big Brother, but I never watch what follows it - couldn't even tell you what did. I've seen maybe 2 complete episode of Friends, and never saw Seinfeld, Frasier or Third Rock From the Sun in their original time slots. (I was introduced to the latter three as reruns on Fox.)
My Sunday night TV tradition - if you discount childhood viewings of such fare as The Wonderful World of Color (I was too young to watch this program when it was Walt Disney Presents and it lost something when it became The Wonderful World of Disney) and the rest of the NBC lineup - goes back to the early 90s and The Simpsons. FOX, being FOX, moved The Simpsons all around the schedule - putting it up against Cosby at one point, where it still didn't die. By the late 90s, both The Simpsons and The Larry Sanders Show had settled on Sunday nights for good, and so had I. When Larry Sanders went off the air, I hoped HBO would come up with something half as good to fill the gap in my Sunday night schedule. The network responded with The Sopranos.
The Sopranos is back this season, with a vengeance. In this case, the phrase is not cliché. All of the characters have axes to grind, and heads to bury them in once they're good and sharp. Over the past few episodes, the show has gained momentum, and viewers are now girding their loins for the coming bloodbath. If you're a fan, you've been watching; if not, it's almost too late. Last week's episode was the ninth of the season, and since a season generally consists of 13 episodes, it looks like we're down to the final four.
For the past two seasons, The Sopranos has been something of a dreary affair. Last season in particular - the one in which Tony and Carmela's marriage fell apart - was in dire need of Zoloft. Plot threads involved Christopher's heroin addiction, Carmela's doomed flirtation with soldier Furio and Tony's loss of the only thing he loved, his racehorse. The cast and writing were up to their usual standards, but there wasn't a stand out episode, such as the previous season's "Pine Barrens," in which Christopher and Paulie get lost in the woods while trying to whack a Russian mobster, or Janice's breakup with Richie Aprile in season two, or almost every episode from the first season.
This year is back to form. Though the story lines are as dark as ever - Tony and Carmela are headed for divorce, Carmela has an abortive attempt to have an affair, Tony is dealing with guilt over his relationship with his cousin - the energy is high. Episodes are packed with incident - last Sunday's outing involved three major plot threads, and after all three had been resolved, there was a final revelation that put both this season and the entire series into a new light. Steve Buscemi, Robert Loggia and David Strathairn have been added as guest or supporting players. (Also on view are Max Casella, who once played Doogie Howser's best friend, and Frankie Valli, tiny yet threatening.) Loggia played a character named Feech LaManna, one of the Class of '84 - a group of gangsters jailed 20 years ago who have recently been paroled. He immediately created strife in the Family, but rather than letting this story line play out throughout the season - as similar plots have in previous seasons - it was tied up by the fourth episode. The problem was resolved - as was another conflict, between Tony and Christopher - with more elegance than the gunplay we usually expect.
Feech, by the by, was a character introduced, but not seen, as early as season three. He's the "old mustache" who used to run the Executive Poker Game that Tony and Jackie Aprile, Sr. knocked over when they were kids, as related by Ralphie to Jackie Jr. This is one of the joys of The Sopranos. The show does a better job of adding and developing minor characters than any show on television, with the exception of The Simpsons. (The Simpsons regularly spins entire episodes around such characters as Principal Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel, or Krusty or Moe, using the family as secondary players.) Tony's sister Janice, now a stalwart of the series, entered as a one season story line. Patsy Parisi - who handled Tony's breakup with Gloria (Annabella Sciorra) in season three - was originally introduced as a threat to Tony, the twin brother to whacked Philly Parisi. With Tony and Carmela's separation, Carmela has developed a circle of friends of mob wives and widows. This serves not only to keep the show fresh, but to deepen the texture of its world.
Another element of The Sopranos which makes it stand out - and which it shares with other HBO dramas (and comedies) - is that it is greater than the sum of its parts. It has room for metaphor. Commercial TV is so desperate to squeeze a few minutes of plot into 40 minutes of air time that it rarely makes time for much more. An exception was The West Wing, at least in the early days, when it moved at such a frenetic clip that it was the audience's responsibility to keep up. But that pace allowed it to develop at least two story lines per episode, and since Aaron Sorkin trusted his audience to follow him, he didn't look back to constantly prod them, unlike most commercial fare, which has a constant "didja geddit?" grin plastered to its goofy face. HBO shows have the luxury of a full hour and several showings a week, which give them the confidence to try new things with the belief that the audience will play along.
Here's a rather simple example from this year's season. In the first episode, Tony has moved out of the house and is living in his dead mother's place. (The mileage they've gotten out of that house since Livia died is astonishing, especially since it was on the market at one time. Speaking of houses on the market, the Minneapolis home which served as the exterior location for Mary Richards' apartment is for sale. A mere $1.7 million will get you five bedrooms, six baths and a ton of tourists.) Carmela and AJ are there alone when a bear shows up on the property. The bear actually threatens AJ, who is taking out the trash, until Carmela frightens it off. Later, a Fish and Game Warden appears to explain to the audience why it is not beyond belief for a bear to appear in the backyard of a New Jersey home. But the bear has more significance than just a plot development. Tony is, of course, a bear of a man in his own right. In his absence, another bear threatens the family. The bear is drawn by the bird feed Tony purchased in a previous season to feed the ducks that lived in his pool. The ducks were the cause of his early panic attacks, symbolizing, according to his doctor, his fear of losing his family. Tony is losing his family, and the bear is there to destroy the security he invested in to keep his symbolic family present. In his absence, Carmela is forced to defend the home, and she acts as the mother bear, protecting her young against the intruder and later enlisting the aid of another alpha male, the Warden. Tony has several members of his crew keep watch at the house in case the bear returns. He has an AK-47 hidden at the house, and he entrusts his big gun to younger men. He has abdicated his role as the protector of his family, and in this time of danger, has thrust his wife into the arms of strangers. The bear only appears at night, so Tony is metaphorically cuckolding himself, in the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte. By the end of the episode, Tony - having been rebuffed in his affections by his analyst - has reclaimed his gun and is himself serving as the guardian against the intruding male, though doing so, significantly, outside the house.
Is this sort of analysis unwarranted? Yes and no. I am perhaps stretching a point to make a point. The metaphors in this episode are not what students like to call "hidden meanings," there to find and circle. But they are meaning. They give the story greater texture. Perhaps it takes a text analysis wonk like me to determine this degree of significance, but even a casual viewer will find in The Sopranos greater levels of shading than in the average episode of ER.
Granted, even HBO backs a stinker from time to time. The wretched Carnivalé, which it squeezed into its Sunday night lineup last year and is threatening to impose upon us against, was nothing but metaphor. The show took 12 episodes to deliver what was essentially exposition disguised as plot. And the season finale was a cliff hanger - pretty ballsy for the first season of a show that wouldn't necessarily return. Even after four seasons, The Sopranos still wraps up all its story lines by the end of the year.
HBO's strength lies in revitalizing genre shows. The Sopranos provided the first fresh view of the mob since Goodfellas. Curb Your Enthusiasm has redefined the sitcom, The Wire found fresh life in the police procedural, Six Feet Under has shattered the family drama (think The Waltons on acid). Now comes Deadwood, which finds life in the western I would not have expected.
I am Deadwood's whore. Full disclosure: I like westerns. Good westerns. True Grit. Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But then, I like most genres. (With the exception of war movies. The only war movies I seem to like are those with a hook, like The Dirty Dozen. Could not abide Shaving Ryan's Privates. Which may be why I never made it through Band of Brothers.) And I approached Deadwood with some hope. The trailers made it look like fun. It's the creation of David Milch, who brought us NYPD Blue and was a writer on Hill Street Blues and Murder One. It follows The Sopranos, so it wasn't an effort to catch. One look, and I was hooked.
Deadwood follows in the tracks laid down by Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. The West is filthy, people are filthy, morals are loose at best. It takes place in the town of Deadwood, before there even was a South Dakota, and is based on - but is not slavish to - actual people, places and events. Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are characters, and if all you know of Jane is the Doris Day portrayal, you're in for a surprise. Our hero is Seth Bullock, and he and his partner Sol Star were real people, as were Al Swearengen, Charlie Utter (another member of Hickok's crew) and even Reverend Smith. Much of the action takes place between competing houses of ill repute, The Gem and the Bella Union, both of which were "theaters" in historic Deadwood.
The show stars Timothy Olyphant, who you may recall as the drug dealer from Go, or less memorably, from A Man Apart, Dreamcatcher or Rock Star. He is currently on view in The Girl Next Door, playing a role based on Joe Pantoliano's Guido the Killer Pimp from Risky Business. Or so I read. I haven't seen The Girl Next Door, nor do I intend to, but I cannot fault its audience for being drawn in. I certainly saw my quota of teensploitation flicks back in the 80s, starting with Risky Business, but descending as low as My Tutor, starring Matt (Mr. Olivia Newton-John) Lattanzi and the ineffable (though in this movie, infinitely effable) Caren Kaye as the titular tutor.
But I digress.
The rest of the cast is a mix of faces both familiar and un. The appropriately named Al Swearengen - he is, indeed, an engine of cursing - is played by Ian McShane, who you may remember as the mob boss in Sexy Beast, but probably not. (On the other hand, if you haven't seen Sexy Beast, do yourself a favor and rent it.) I am predicting Golden Globe and Emmy nominations, and likely wins, next year. (Clip and save!) As the villain of the town, McShane chews the scenery, spits it in your face and makes you like it. William Sanderson, Larry of Newhart and the toy maker in Blade Runner, plays Swearengen's toady. Brad Dourif is the town doctor, Jeffrey Jones the newspaper editor, and Ricky Jay a partner at the Bella Union. Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe bring great authority to supporting roles. They have played so many roles, and so many in this genre (Carradine's first part was in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, when he was 21) that they wear the costumes and language as if they were born to them.
Ah, the language. Much has been made of the salty nature of the intercourse between the characters. There seems to be a widespread belief that profanity is an invention of the 20th century, and that such Yosemite Samisms as "you lily livered varmint" might be more appropriate to the period. There are no "consarnits" in the show, but there are plenty of "c**ks**kers." Along with the usual f***s, c*nts and the occasional, but rare, m*****f*****. Those who are willing to believe that men were coarse during this period still tend to assume that the nature of discourse was somewhat milder.
While it is true that f*** did not appear in any dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965, and didn't make its debut in the OED until 1972, sources date its use to as early as 1278. The American Heritage dictionary notes the usage of a variant - the faux Latin "fuccant" - in a poem published prior to 1500. The OED cites "fukkit" from the 1503 poem, "Brash of Wowing." The earliest citation of the current spelling is from 1535. Shakespeare punned around it both in Henry V, when Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, and in Merry Wives of Windsor, when a character refers to the "focative case," instead of "vocative." Similarly, c**t was in use in the 13th century, and makes veiled appearances in Hamlet and Twelfth Night. I haven't had much luck researching c-sucker, most likely because its main function is as an epithet, but I imagine it was in wide use by 1876, the year of the show. And you can just imagine the sponsored links that come up when you do this research.
In any case, profanity is wielded like a club by the characters in Deadwood. Swearengen is the champ, but Calamity Jane gives him a run for his money. One online poster noted that in the April 25 episode, c-sucker was used only 5 times, an all time low. Jane must have been absent that week. Whereas Swearengen uses the word mainly to refer to people he doesn't like Jane sees it as synonym for "man," or in extreme cases, "you." If the c-ses were cut, and only the f-s remained, this show probably wouldn't have half the rep it does for foul language. We are so used to f, that it takes a cocksucker to rouse us from our lethargy.
Of course, clubs are also wielded like clubs. Well, not clubs so much, but guns, knives, ropes, shovels - pretty much anything you can think of to inflict pain or death. HBO keeps track in the "Dead Count" section of the site. Although Episode 5 seemed to pass without incident, you can generally count on a shooting or knifing in every show. The killings range from matter of fact to shocking, and while half of the corpses end up buried, the rest are fed to Mr. Wu's pigs. As in The Sopranos, violence is a way of life, and anyone who can't deal with it won't be alive for long. In any case, the violence, while not for the squeamish, is never gratuitous.
I am completely wrapped up in Deadwood. Whether it's historically accurate or not, it feels like it is, which is more important. As with any TV show, the litmus test is whether or not you want to spend time with these people. I do - at least from the safety of my 21st century sofa. The season is half over - I've been meaning to tell you about this for weeks - but it's not too late to catch up. HBO has already had two nights of multi-episode reruns, and I wouldn't put it past them to have another. Small pox has hit the camp, and as far as I can tell, all lives are up for grabs but Bullock's and Swearengen's, so your favorite character may be dead soon.
posted by John Bliss at
9:00 AM
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