Deadwood just kind of ends. It's de facto series finale doesn't feel particularly grand or final. The folks behind the show had planned for a two-season arc, so the end of S3 doesn't even feel like much of a season finale. There are tons of story threads left dangling, plenty of character trajectories that still seem to be in flight, and little resolved about the state of the camp or its future.
Despite that, there are some odd, thematic codas to the series' final episode that make it work as an emotional ending, if not necessarily a narrative one. Chief among these is the story of Jane and Joanie. Jane entered the camp having courtly love for Bill Hickok, courtly disdain for her only other friend, Charlie Utter, and a certain waywardness, a lack of trust or ability to be in the world. Joanie entered the camp being tied to a monster, with not nearly enough self-esteem or support to let her get away from him, even as she tried mightily to do. And yet their final scene here, with Jane sore at Joanie over not playing along with her little game with Sophia, hints at closure and stability for both of them. Jane has found someone who returns her affections and admiration, and gives her a reason to put down the bottle and make it through the day. Joanie has found someone worth being there for, worthy of her love and her attention and it helps give her a foothold in this world. Charlie is there for both of them, and with his gift, the bearskin robe that was once Bill's, in a way he is too. Joanie's speech to Jane that she wants to be there for her no matter what, even when they don't get along, and their ensuing embrace, is possibly the sweetest moment in the entire show, and a fitting end point for their stories.
If you close one eye and squint with the other, you can see a similar thematic echo to the beginning of the series for Seth Bullock. In the opening scene, we meet a version of Bullock who is devoted to justice in such an unyielding, doctrinaire fashion that he'll hang a man himself to make sure the mob doesn't get him. It's mostly an empty gesture, doing little to change the man's fate, but much to assuage Bullock's harsh sense of right and wrong. At the end of "Tell Him Something Pretty," Bullock seems poised to enact the same sort of justice to Hearst. Whether it's his snide comment to Alma or his patronizing tip of his hat to her as he's leaving the camp, Bullock can, once again, barely restrain himself from teaching Hearst a lesson.
And yet, he does! He makes his own smart remarks back, but in the end, he forebears, for the greater good. It may not be ideal, but the citizens of Deadwood have found a way to rid themselves of Hearst and give themselves a chance to reassert themselves without his shadow looming so darkly over the camp. In his final scene of the series, Bullock admits that not stepping in and delivering a blow to Hearst makes him feel impotent, but the truth is that there's too much at stake. He loves his wife, he loves Alma, and in a way, he loves the whole of Deadwood. His sense of justice, brutally and coldly dispensed, takes a backseat his understanding of the greater good and the way justice would upset the rest of his life. That is growth, and a solid place to end his arc.
Alma too, reaches an end. When we got to know her through the first season, her only desire was to leave. She felt apart from this place, as it was something unfamiliar, and she wanted little part of it. Now, as the series ends, she cares enough about this place, about the connections and friendships she's made here, that she is willing to sell her very lucrative claim in order that she and her adoptive daughter can stay there. The final time we see her, she and Sophia are returning from visiting Mr. Elsworth's grave, one of the saddest and yet strongest connections to place, the same one that seems to keep Jane tied there despite her wandering ways -- it's where your loved ones are buried. Alma is now a part of this camp, and she has made sacrifices, financial and personal, to keep it that way.
There's other bits and pieces that feel more like the appropriate end points for season-long arc rather than series-long ones. Harry Manning, who's proved to be a decent fellow, gets his fire engine from Tom Nuttal, the whole reason he even jumped into the sheriff's race. Fields, who's dealt with Steve the Drunk's racism all season, wheels his brain-damaged ward with him to the polls, and with some help from Charlie, adds some poetic irony by bringing that bigot with him to exercise his constitutional right to vote, a right Steve would no doubt have demeaned coming from him. And Hearst, who has been made to feel like an outcast by nearly everyone in this town, finally decides to leave it, and let his representatives do the dirty work in his stead.
Not everything introduced this season is tied off in such a fashion. Beyond giving Al a foil worthy of his mettle and adding another wrinkle to the Hearst saga, it's unclear what the point of Langrishe and his troupe was, particularly the members of it besides Langrishe himself. Farnum has been largely reduced to comic relief and shows little sign of changing in that regard. And Tolliver is still a seemingly pointless asshole, abusing people for fun to little or no narrative end.
But there's a thematic resonance in the major fireworks of the episode, which binds a number of the remaining characters together, When Hearst demands Trixie's death, Al concocts a plan to kill Jen, a prostitute Johnny Burns is sweet on, in her stead, banking on the notion that Hearst was too distracted by Trixie's anatomy to be able to discern her corpse from another's. That story, and the ensuing negotiation and handwringing over it, touches on much of what Deadwood has been concerned with from the jump.
Because one of the most interesting developments over the course of the series has been Trixie. The image of Al with one foot on her neck beneath his boot is a hard one to shake from the show's early going. And we were surprised that after all that, she still went to bed with him that night. Since then, both Trixie and Al have evolved considerably. Trixie has seen Alma through her harsh times, learned accounts, and was the only one in town with the gumption, inflammatory as it may have been, to actually take a shot at Hearst. And as we see here, she has moved on to Sol as her confidante (who stands up for himself rather than passively agreeing with her), and want to be with him.
We see a sympathetic view of Johnny Burns that compares and contrasts him with Al. He aspires to be like Al, to be as smart as to decipher Wu's drawings, to be as clever at strategy so as to figure out Hearst's plans, and to know how to make a camp like Deadwood function. But when push comes to shove, he can't do the hard thing, he can't sacrifice his own connections.
But then again, neither can Al. Even with her loving another man, Al cares too much about Trixie to let her take the fall for what she did. So an innocent person dies instead. An innocent life is sacrificed because not enough people, or not enough important people, care to keep her alive when the alternative is people they love dying. So Al does the dirty deed. In a tense scene, Hearst inspects her and gives his approval. And a ruse to spare Trixie and send Hearst on his way reaches fruition.
In the end, Al is still the one scrubbing the floor, still the one doing the dirty work, when he could easily pass it off to someone else. He's still talking to that Indian Chief about being unable to change. And he's still giving maxims after those in his employ, muttering to himself that Johnny wanted Al to "tell him something pretty" about how Jen died. Civilization, and how it gets made, isn't pretty. It's an ugly business filled with more blood, mud, and hatred than we care to acknowledge when looking back at the history of our nation. The stories of what happened here will be twisted -- made to seem grander than they are, but at the end of the day, the camp seems safe once more, their positions secured for the time being, and there is Al, once again, on his hands and knees, cleaning up the mess. There will always be such messes to clean up, and for better or worse, there will always be Als trying to clean them.
Series finale, not the ending I would have liked, but it was good. We will miss the people of Deadwood, especially Al and his relationship with the others, especially Wu.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-08-03T17:27:33Z
Deadwood just kind of ends. It's de facto series finale doesn't feel particularly grand or final. The folks behind the show had planned for a two-season arc, so the end of S3 doesn't even feel like much of a season finale. There are tons of story threads left dangling, plenty of character trajectories that still seem to be in flight, and little resolved about the state of the camp or its future.
Despite that, there are some odd, thematic codas to the series' final episode that make it work as an emotional ending, if not necessarily a narrative one. Chief among these is the story of Jane and Joanie. Jane entered the camp having courtly love for Bill Hickok, courtly disdain for her only other friend, Charlie Utter, and a certain waywardness, a lack of trust or ability to be in the world. Joanie entered the camp being tied to a monster, with not nearly enough self-esteem or support to let her get away from him, even as she tried mightily to do. And yet their final scene here, with Jane sore at Joanie over not playing along with her little game with Sophia, hints at closure and stability for both of them. Jane has found someone who returns her affections and admiration, and gives her a reason to put down the bottle and make it through the day. Joanie has found someone worth being there for, worthy of her love and her attention and it helps give her a foothold in this world. Charlie is there for both of them, and with his gift, the bearskin robe that was once Bill's, in a way he is too. Joanie's speech to Jane that she wants to be there for her no matter what, even when they don't get along, and their ensuing embrace, is possibly the sweetest moment in the entire show, and a fitting end point for their stories.
If you close one eye and squint with the other, you can see a similar thematic echo to the beginning of the series for Seth Bullock. In the opening scene, we meet a version of Bullock who is devoted to justice in such an unyielding, doctrinaire fashion that he'll hang a man himself to make sure the mob doesn't get him. It's mostly an empty gesture, doing little to change the man's fate, but much to assuage Bullock's harsh sense of right and wrong. At the end of "Tell Him Something Pretty," Bullock seems poised to enact the same sort of justice to Hearst. Whether it's his snide comment to Alma or his patronizing tip of his hat to her as he's leaving the camp, Bullock can, once again, barely restrain himself from teaching Hearst a lesson.
And yet, he does! He makes his own smart remarks back, but in the end, he forebears, for the greater good. It may not be ideal, but the citizens of Deadwood have found a way to rid themselves of Hearst and give themselves a chance to reassert themselves without his shadow looming so darkly over the camp. In his final scene of the series, Bullock admits that not stepping in and delivering a blow to Hearst makes him feel impotent, but the truth is that there's too much at stake. He loves his wife, he loves Alma, and in a way, he loves the whole of Deadwood. His sense of justice, brutally and coldly dispensed, takes a backseat his understanding of the greater good and the way justice would upset the rest of his life. That is growth, and a solid place to end his arc.
Alma too, reaches an end. When we got to know her through the first season, her only desire was to leave. She felt apart from this place, as it was something unfamiliar, and she wanted little part of it. Now, as the series ends, she cares enough about this place, about the connections and friendships she's made here, that she is willing to sell her very lucrative claim in order that she and her adoptive daughter can stay there. The final time we see her, she and Sophia are returning from visiting Mr. Elsworth's grave, one of the saddest and yet strongest connections to place, the same one that seems to keep Jane tied there despite her wandering ways -- it's where your loved ones are buried. Alma is now a part of this camp, and she has made sacrifices, financial and personal, to keep it that way.
There's other bits and pieces that feel more like the appropriate end points for season-long arc rather than series-long ones. Harry Manning, who's proved to be a decent fellow, gets his fire engine from Tom Nuttal, the whole reason he even jumped into the sheriff's race. Fields, who's dealt with Steve the Drunk's racism all season, wheels his brain-damaged ward with him to the polls, and with some help from Charlie, adds some poetic irony by bringing that bigot with him to exercise his constitutional right to vote, a right Steve would no doubt have demeaned coming from him. And Hearst, who has been made to feel like an outcast by nearly everyone in this town, finally decides to leave it, and let his representatives do the dirty work in his stead.
Not everything introduced this season is tied off in such a fashion. Beyond giving Al a foil worthy of his mettle and adding another wrinkle to the Hearst saga, it's unclear what the point of Langrishe and his troupe was, particularly the members of it besides Langrishe himself. Farnum has been largely reduced to comic relief and shows little sign of changing in that regard. And Tolliver is still a seemingly pointless asshole, abusing people for fun to little or no narrative end.
But there's a thematic resonance in the major fireworks of the episode, which binds a number of the remaining characters together, When Hearst demands Trixie's death, Al concocts a plan to kill Jen, a prostitute Johnny Burns is sweet on, in her stead, banking on the notion that Hearst was too distracted by Trixie's anatomy to be able to discern her corpse from another's. That story, and the ensuing negotiation and handwringing over it, touches on much of what Deadwood has been concerned with from the jump.
Because one of the most interesting developments over the course of the series has been Trixie. The image of Al with one foot on her neck beneath his boot is a hard one to shake from the show's early going. And we were surprised that after all that, she still went to bed with him that night. Since then, both Trixie and Al have evolved considerably. Trixie has seen Alma through her harsh times, learned accounts, and was the only one in town with the gumption, inflammatory as it may have been, to actually take a shot at Hearst. And as we see here, she has moved on to Sol as her confidante (who stands up for himself rather than passively agreeing with her), and want to be with him.
We see a sympathetic view of Johnny Burns that compares and contrasts him with Al. He aspires to be like Al, to be as smart as to decipher Wu's drawings, to be as clever at strategy so as to figure out Hearst's plans, and to know how to make a camp like Deadwood function. But when push comes to shove, he can't do the hard thing, he can't sacrifice his own connections.
But then again, neither can Al. Even with her loving another man, Al cares too much about Trixie to let her take the fall for what she did. So an innocent person dies instead. An innocent life is sacrificed because not enough people, or not enough important people, care to keep her alive when the alternative is people they love dying. So Al does the dirty deed. In a tense scene, Hearst inspects her and gives his approval. And a ruse to spare Trixie and send Hearst on his way reaches fruition.
In the end, Al is still the one scrubbing the floor, still the one doing the dirty work, when he could easily pass it off to someone else. He's still talking to that Indian Chief about being unable to change. And he's still giving maxims after those in his employ, muttering to himself that Johnny wanted Al to "tell him something pretty" about how Jen died. Civilization, and how it gets made, isn't pretty. It's an ugly business filled with more blood, mud, and hatred than we care to acknowledge when looking back at the history of our nation. The stories of what happened here will be twisted -- made to seem grander than they are, but at the end of the day, the camp seems safe once more, their positions secured for the time being, and there is Al, once again, on his hands and knees, cleaning up the mess. There will always be such messes to clean up, and for better or worse, there will always be Als trying to clean them.