Deadwood is One of HBO's Nicest Shows

I just wanted to take some time to show some appreciation for HBO’s Deadwood. Recently we got Crave for the first time. I haven’t really had access to the HBO catalogue in a really long time. I’m sure I could have found whatever show online but still, having it all with the convenience of a streaming platform is nice.

It’s exciting to have a fresh batch of shows to browse. 

When I was younger I watched the first 2 seasons of Deadwood on the DVD era. I worked at Le Superclub Videotron and it was great. I could just rent seasons of shows and binge before bingeing TV was cool. I never ended up finishing season 3. Today I finished all of it. including the movie they did in 2019.

Anyhow, I’m not a huge Western person, but Deadwood is a cool show.

The set grows each episode

Now Deadwood is based on a real place. Wikipedia says it was founded illegally in the 1870s. Colonel Custer leads an expedition out in the Deadwood lands around 1874 and they find gold. This led to a big gold rush and by 1877 there were about 12000 people in the town.

Season 1 of Deadwood takes place in 1876 and spans into 1877 by the end of season 3. You see it grow from a settlement of lawlessness into a real city that gets annexed by the USA. 

My understanding is they built the original Deadwood set, then continued expanding it week to week in order to show the rapid growth of the settlement. This is back when HBO blew hundreds of millions to make these insane set pieces that we then bought box set DVDs to support. Ah, the good ol’ days. 

It’s truly well designed. The costumes are on point and the level of effort that went into realism without relying on CGI is appreciated. It’s also crazy to compare season 1 to season 3 and realize how much changed in such a short period of time. Deadwood is a compelling town full of interesting characters. 

A lot of the characters are real people

You can find Wikipedia pages for a whole slew of characters who were on the show. Seth Bullock actually did go to Deadwood with a real ass Sol Star to build a hardware store. It burned down and they opened a hotel (as depicted in the Deadwood movie). Turns out Wild Bill Hickok was killed by Jack McCall over being insulted that Bill gave Jack money for breakfast. Even Charlie Utter and Calamity Jane are real people that frequented Deadwood. 

George Hearst actually does buy up all the gold claims and become a US Senator. This excites me. I know they take a lot of creative liberties with fiction, but to find a real town and showcase all these real people through fiction is fun. 

Part of what attracts me to the Fallout video game series is the locations. The ones you find in the game are real life places. You almost learn the geography of an area via the Fallout map. In the same way, the Deadwood IP introduced me to a whole section of US history that has something to bite into when you dig deeper. It’s not just a bunch of made up people telling a story, albeit some are made up people. 

I was really impressed with the level of depth they went into portraying the world of the Western USA in the 1870s. That being said, Wikipedia says E.B. Farnum was highly fictionalized for the show (he was actually a mayor), LOL. I’m sure a lot of creative liberties were taken but it’s always amazing to see how much of it is true. 

Great show, bad ending

The show got cancelled with season 3. The show had the pleasure of being really expensive right before the writer’s strike of 07 and the economic collapse of 08. I’m sure HBO had realized these 9 figure shows weren’t profitable. 

They spent a lot of time introducing these characters from a theatre troupe in season 3. They were clearly building them up for the next season but with the cancellation, they just take up space. Their plotline goes nowhere. 

The show just kind of ends. There is no climatic ending. Just realism. The bad guy is satisfied and leaves town. Deadwood is joining South Dakota and there’s nothing that will stop it. In hindsight, an anticlimatic and realistic ending is almost refreshing, but it feels wrong almost. Such a good show deserved a proper Six Feet Under quality ending. 

I love the writing and character interactions. The exploration of good and evil and all the grey zones in between. By the end of it most of the initial “bad guys” have big hearts (Al bouncing between compassion and egotism mid blowjob as an example) and the “good guys” are all flawed. It does a really good job of growing these characters, which is partly why the theatre troupe throws you off, you just can’t get attached to them.

The relationships feel real. The humanity explored feels interesting. Great effort. 

If you haven’t watched Deadwood, you should. Also shoutout the Hoopleheads podcast for making me feel social as I watched Deadwood alone. 

Live Long and Prosper Everyone