‘Deadwood’ on HBO: 5 Episodes to Watch to Get Ready for the Movie

The series’ pilot is one of TV’s best, introducing you not only to the expansive cast, but the feel and tone of its storytelling. The opening sequence tells us all we need to know about Seth Bullock’s (Timothy Olyphant) unwavering yet ambivalent views on justice and morality. We get to see the loudmouthed “Calamity” Jane Canary (Robin Weigert) and her devotion to “Wild Bill” Hickok (Keith Carradine). We see the prostitute Trixie’s (Paula Malcolmson) volatile fury that masks a vulnerability unmatched by anyone else in the camp. Future widow Alma Garret (Molly Parker) is a fish out of water with a husband (Timothy Omundson) whose naivete will eventually get him nearly swindled, and definitely killed.

Most importantly, under the masterful eye of legendary director Walter Hill, we are outlayed with the teeming, explosive sense of life amid the chaos. The story could begin and end anywhere, with anyone. It does end with Bullock and Hickok killing a man covering for a faked Indian raid that left a little girl orphaned. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Best line: “Nobody’s drinkin’, nobody’s dancin’, nobody’s chasin’ tail. I have to DEAL WITH THAT!” – Al Swearengen

Stream "Deadwood" on HBO Go

Stream "Deadwood" on HBO Now

Deadwood created the feeling of stories folding within other stories, passing in front of, behind, and around the camera. Deaths of apparent major characters helped fuel that feeling. Alma’s husband, Brom, was murdered in the previous episode, with considerable consequences to come. Another such murder occurs in “Here Was a Man.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that “Wild Bill” Hickok was a primary figure in the story of Deadwood. Indeed, the historical Hickok arrived in the Deadwood camp just about the same time as Milch presents him in the series. He also dies at the same time.

Keith Carradine has given some major performances in his career, but few matched the soulful fatalism of his Hickok. He only spends a few days in Deadwood, but each feels as though he is trying to finally strip the myth from the man–and that he is devastated to find who the man really is. He does the decent thing of representing Alma Garret’s mining interest in the wake of her husband’s murder, and successfully outflanks Swearengen from snapping it up. Yet, he also runs afoul of a two-bit poker player who will bring about his end. Not that he cares.

His death is one of the most elegant sequences in the series, a weave of crosscuts from one character to another as they discover the matter of Hickok’s murder. The score gives way to Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla’s “Iguazu,” as haunting a piece of music as you’ll ever hear when employed by such means. Jane and Bullock arrive at the No. 10 Saloon to find Bill on the ground. Bullock drops to his knees, a new chance at friendship snatched from him. Cut to black.

Best Line: “Some goddamned time, a man’s due to stop arguin’ with hisself. Feelin’ he’s twice the goddamned fool he knows he is. Because he can’t be somethin’ he tries to be every goddamned day without once getting to dinnertime and not fucking it up. I don’t wanna fight it no more. Understand me, Charlie? And I don’t want you pissing in my ear about it. Can you let me go to Hell the way I want to?” – “Wild Bill” Hickok

Stream "Here Was A Man" on HBO Go

Stream "Here Was A Man" on HBO Now

Civilization, at its core, is the recognition of the human experiment as a collective endeavor, rather than an individual one. Al Swearengen slowly comes to this realization as Deadwood must become part of the Dakota territory in order to advance his own interests, and Alma Garret sees that opening a bank would serve as a powerful symbol of community.

But civilization comes at a price. Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) and Francis Wolcott (Garrett Dillahunt) work together to undermine Wu’s hold on Chinese Alley with their own bevy of Chinese prostitutes. Yankton commissioner Hugo Jarry (Stephen Tobolowsky) pretends as though his political corruption makes him superior to Tolliver and Wolcott’s more barbaric machinations. The Pinkerton agent Ms. Isringhausen (Sarah Paulson) attempts to extort Swearengen and Alma in exchange for their official story on the death of her husband, printing the legend in the service of something more important.

But Wolcott extracts the highest price of all. Dillahunt also played the coward Jack McCall, who put a bullet in the back of “Wild Bill” Hickok’s head. Both McCall and Wolcott are angels of death, sent to tear rents in the burgeoning social fabric. Yet, Milch’s masterful turn is to present the feeble, pathetic men living inside these angelic trappings. Wolcott was sexually abused as a child, is terrified of true intimacy, and at the slightest provocation by Tolliver, releases his impotent rage on three of Joanie Stubbs’s prostitutes. It is as menacing a sequence as Deadwood ever presented, in a show full of them. A man who thought himself cultured in the shadow of his great employer, George Hearst, cannot hide the devil inside him, nor how small the man is sheltering it.

Best line: “Past hope. Past kindness or consideration. Past justice. Past satisfaction. Past warmth or cold or comfort. Past love. But past surprise? What an endlessly unfolding tedium life would then become.” – Francis Wolcott

Stream "Something Very Expensive" on HBO Go

Stream "Something Very Expensive" on HBO Now

More signs of modernity poke their holes into the quilt of Deadwood. The telegraph operator, Blazanov (Pasha Lychnikoff), arrives on the stagecoach, ready to bring instant messages from the world over. Tom Nutall (Leon Rippy) shows off his newfangled bicycle, boasting of its efficacy on all manner of surfaces. Swearengen and Ms. Isringhausen complete their business of buying off the Pinkertons.

Indeed, the bicycle wager is one of those rare moments in the series’ history that manages to bring out communal joy among all who participate. Big grins cross the faces of otherwise cutthroats like Al, Bullock, Tolliver, and Wolcott.

Those are details surrounding the two emotional pillars of the episode. In one, Martha Bullock (Anna Gunn) attempts to extend an olive branch to her erstwhile romantic rival, Alma. Alma’s heartache corrodes into rebuke, and when Martha’s own distress is brought to Bullock, he can’t express his feelings, much in the way that he never can. He married his brother’s widow, a woman he barely knows. He is in love with Alma, but honor dictates that he push her aside. And because he’s a man living in the West in 1877, he can’t say a goddamn thing about it to anyone who matters. He just gets angry. Bullock may not rape and murder, but he is in many ways Deadwood‘s symbol of the rot at the heart of men. He knows what’s good, but he can’t hide that good isn’t always what he feels.

Al is the other pillar. He nearly died from a kidney stone in the season’s earlier chapters, and is reckoning with the advancement of age. He began to talk to the severed head of a Lakota man who was killed the year before, and whose head Swearengen kept around for lack of a better idea. Here, he offers his most poetic soliloquies to the head, whose ear will always remain discreet and sympathetic. It is a beautifully surreal way for Swearengen to be vulnerable and honest in ways he only hints at with others.

Best line: “Don’t the decapitated deserve recreation, chief? As much, if not more so, than those of us not yet dismembered.” – Al Swearengen

Stream "Childish Things" on HBO Go

Stream "Childish Things" on HBO Now

No major violence erupts in “Leviathan Smiles.” Its calling card might be the appearance of Wyatt Earp to work a timber lease (based in historical fact). Much tension is built for later payoff, however. A.W. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) publishes the condolence letter that Bullock wrote to the family of the union organizer murdered by George Hearst’s (Geral McRany) men, thus needling Hearst to eventual action. Theater operator Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox) insinuates himself into Hearst’s life via a back remedy, in order to report back to Al any worthwhile information. Tolliver helps craft a scheme for Hearst to get Bullock killed.

But the episode emblematizes a structural strategy that Deadwood uses for narrative and emotional effect. As previously stated, the show pushes at the edges of the frame with its depiction of life and energy. The tale of Chesterton (Aubrey Morris) is a classic example of this. Chesterton is a bit player, an old actor on his deathbed who made the journey with Langrishe. He barely features onscreen, and his initial function appears to be as an obstacle for Langrishe to open his new theater in Joanie’s old brothel.

But because Milch’s writing is so assured, and his actors’ performances so lived in, that Chesterton’s death becomes an incredibly moving moment. We’ve gotten to know Langrishe, and through him–and Morris’s subtle acting–we understand how his passing could devastate Langrishe and his fellow players. Chesterton barely registers in terms of onscreen minutes and mentions, but we come to appreciate the impact of his life. Such is the greatest signal of civilization. (It doesn’t hurt to part this earth with some lines from King Lear, either.)