Deadwood (Season 2)
HBO
2005
Rating:


Creator David Milch's "Deadwood" is, undoubtedly, the first fully formed Shakespearean western. In every facet of "Deadwood's" plot machinations, complex characterizations and delicious dialogue resembles what the Bard could have been if he had only written about lawless South Dakota mining towns. There are those who grumble that Shakespeare never wrote a line quite as filthy as "He is fuckin' cunt-struck," but they have clearly forgotten that even "Henry V" had its share of cunt jokes.

"Henry V" and its forbearers, the two "Henry IVs," are the perfect Shakespearian dramas to prove the comparison. The "Henry" trilogy dealt with a man struggling to reconcile the two sides of himself — the man would be king and the man who would be the country's fool.

Everyone in "Deadwood" similarly struggles with their inner impulses. Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) wants to be the righteous sheriff of the town, but he's more than willing to pummel saloon owner Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) in the middle of the street. He also wants to be a loving husband and father, but his affair with widow Alma Garret (Molly Parker) has made the widow pregnant, forcing her to marry Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) in the season finale. Alma would, likewise, like to be the town matriarch, though her love for Bullock is a poorly kept secret.

Then there is Swearengen, the most compelling character on television, who struggles to contain the good within. One of the season's masterstrokes was a four-episode arc in which Swearengen hovered near death as he struggled with a kidney stone. His emasculation was complete once he asked one of his hookers to put her thumb up his rectum to relieve his pain and then, trying to escape, scolded her for following him with her digit fully plugged. The ordeal came to its apex with the episode "Requiem for a Gleet," in which Swearengen finally passes his stone before spending the rest of the season recuperating.

Ever since the passing of the gleet, Swearengen has seemed relatively kinder and even savvier. Perhaps facing his own mortality has wisened the man. Swearengen all but gave his blessing to Trixie (Paula Malcomson), the whore he loves, and Sol (John Hawkes) as they headed off to Alma's wedding, proclaiming, "Well ain't you two a fucking picture!" Swearengen treated the arrival of mogul George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), not with the expected hot-blooded violence, but with ironclad humility. Of course, one of Swearengen's last acts this season was giving the thumbs up to the execution of a Chinese pimp mostly known as that "San Francisco cocksucka."

Swearengen has such complex motivations, such unpredictable reactions and, finally, such humanity, that he could have been created by Shakespeare. Which may spell doom for Swearengen. All of Shakespeare's darkest characters, from Richard II to MacBeth to Hamlet to Titus Andronicus, met foul ends. Milch could do Shakespeare one better and let the humanely villainous Swearengen keep his kingdom of Deadwood while Bullock recedes into his own darkness. There could be no more fitting end to one of television's finest hours, an end that's hopefully far off on the horizon.

Posted Sunday, July 17, 2005

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