“Complications (Formerly Difficulties)” & “Something Very Expensive” (Deadwood, S2 eps. 5 & 6)

Al: “When I get back on my fuckin’ feet, I’ll carry my share of the water.”

Seth: “My money’s on you.”

Todd VanDerWerff of the AV Club wrote in his terrific Deadwood columns that “Complications (formerly difficulties)” is about “self-definition,” but I’d cut that observation a little closer to the bone and suggest that both that episode and the one that follows, “Something Very Expensive,” are about RE-definition; specifically the redefinition of prior boundaries, both literal and figurative. Over the course of these two installments, the government’s representative, Hugo Jarry, refines the concept of claim ownership. The town of Deadwood finds itself a part of newly-minted “Lawrence County,” a redefinition of the territory itself. And Deadwood’s citizenry continues to undergo redefinition of themselves, of their own personal boundaries as people and of the boundaries between themselves and those around them.

Whether its Trixie, in the process of reinventing herself as a book keeper and a lover to Sol Star, or Alma, in the process of reinventing herself as a woman of influence and means deciding whether or not to give birth to Seth’s child, or Seth, reinventing himself as a family man to a family he still doesn’t really know, or Ellsworth, considering the prospect of reinvention by marrying a woman who doesn’t love him in order to protect her reputation and that of her unborn child, or Al, reinventing himself as the surprisingly-benign Paterfamilias of Deadwood’s arguably-more-honorable citizens, the members of the Deadwood community are shifting their self-selected boundaries to encompass new territories.

And as the literal borders are shifted, as outside forces make their play for ownership of the riches that Deadwood has to offer, the town erupts into predictable violence. Never having set foot in Deadwood, the vipers of Yankton government have still redefined the land that Deadwood sits on, rechristening it from afar just as it appoints a ruling group of officials over the territory who have likewise never set foot in the community. And speaking of those yellow-bellied cowards…

Hugo Jarry: “I have great respect for the 4th estate. Here’s an announcement to be printed.”

So much is said about Jarry’s total lack of respect for the Fourth Estate in so few words here. This sentence of dialogue is a model of economy and intelligent craft. Jarry’s announcement intentionally muddies the waters of legal claim ownership to the point that no one can be sure whether or not the Law will protect or utterly destroy them. That uncertainty has sparked many a riot, and it’s clear that Jarry’s intentions, like Hearst’s, involve spreading as much unease and misinformation as possible. And yet in the face of this “Legally sanctioned” venality many of Deadwood’s citizens refuse to bend the knee. They know a shark when they spot one – they’re residents of Deadwood after all – and they’re not about to go gently into that good night. When Jarry orders Merrick to print his announcement, Merrick questions Jarry’s intentions and, by Complications’ end, has found a way to report honestly on the government’s devious message while still obeying the letter of the “new law” laid down by Jarry. Merrick’s small act of defiance is made to look even smaller during “Something Very Expensive,” but his defiance is still worth appreciating. Small moments of conscience and nobility are still moments, after all. Not everyone can be hotheaded Seth – storming into bars and beating the snot out of patrons because he’s in a sh*tty mood. Some folks are milder than that, and make their stands in milder ways. We shouldn’t mistake that for cowardice, even as we root for men like Merrick to find larger reserves of steel in their spines. The destruction of Merrick’s office and printing press at the hands of Tolliver’s men might just be the spur needed for Merrick to discover as-yet-hidden reserves of the stuff.

I stand by my opinion that the choice to sideline Al for a few episodes was brave and smart and ultimately successful, in that the rest of Deadwood’s sprawling (and growing!) cast was afforded more of the spotlight, gaining some much-appreciated re-definition (there’s that word again) in the process. But I can’t lie – the show is simply better with Al perambulating around, cursing and lamenting and intimidating and plotting away. Al is to Deadwood as Cooper is to Twin Peaks as Justin is to Carnivale as Locke is to Lost – characters who supercharge their respective shows by dint of their being freakin’ awesome. Al isn’t the same man he was before his fall – literal and figurative. When he tells Bullock not to wipe the lip of the bottle they’re sharing it’s a pledge that Al is offering up – one that he’s offering more and more regularly. It’s the same pledge he gives Dan and Wu, essentially – a sincere-seeming show of solidarity. And these gestures feel less calculated than gruffly honest at this point. It’s pretty moving, actually, as are many of Al’s scenes in these episodes – whether it’s the sight of him being walked to his balcony by Johnny and Dan before he tells them, not unkindly, to leave him alone; or the moments we see between he and Trixie in which the alchemy of their relationship stands revealed, perhaps, as having changed in fundamental ways. When Seth leaves Al’s office and tells Al that in a fight between Cy and Al, Seth’s money would be bet on Al, one gets the sense that there’s genuine respect in the air between them – grudging as it may be.

As Al is beginning to set himself back up in his office, Ms. Isringhausen (I hate typing that name) comes to Al with Silas in tow, and Al’s got her figured out almost instantly, which just endears the man to me even more. Isringhausen (Arrgh!) tells him that Alma confessed to killing her husband and named Al as “her instrument” – something Al knows not to be true, since he ordered the death himself and without consulting Mrs. Garrett. The scene between the two of men is exciting stuff, since it plays almost entirely off of the actors’ sly poker faces and makes Ms. Isringhausen’s (Oy!) intelligence and almost-smirking secrecy into weapons against which Al lightly parries. By the end of these episodes Al’s got Hearst figured into things without ever meeting Wolcott, or speaking with Tolliver.

Wolcott: “This phase is nearly over, even as another begins.”

I like the boredom I hear in Wolcott’s voice as he talks about the phases of Hearst’s plan, and how we get an unspoken sense of how routine this all is to him even as we experience the upheaval the camp is beginning to experience through the members of its “body” (recall Reverend Smith’s speech from Paul comparing a community to a human being). The next phase involves challenging Wu for his territory, importing new drugs and new women into the camp like so much cattle.

There’s something inhuman about Wolcott, and I’m not just talking about his penchant for multiple homicide (Goodbye, Maddie. I never liked you, and I’m weirdly glad to see you dispatched so coldly). Wolcott walks among the people of Deadwood as less of a man than a kind of revenant or dybbuk, possessed by a murderous appetite and sociopathic calm that’s all the more frightening for his having completely accepted those qualities.

Wolcott’s eyes disturb me. They seem so flat and affectless no matter his emotion. Most of the time – even on the bluray -you can barely make out his pupils. That only amps up the sense that Wolcott is inhuman.

None of which is to say that he’s supernatural in any way. But there’s an aura of the uncanny around him as he appears from nowhere at Alma’s claim, or utters words that make him sound like a man who’s walked the earth for centuries, marked like Cain not by God, but by George Hearst (who might as well be a god, what with his Mysterious Ways and unseen power and the way folks talk about him):

Wolcott: “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! No, Doris, we must not let ourselves be past surprise.”

Those are the words of a man for whom life itself has lost much of its savor. He feels nothing, is satisfied by nothing, can love nothing. What is he but a man cursed, as Cain was cursed, whether by his own hideous actions or by his remote “god,” George Hearst? Yet Wolcott engenders zero sympathy. Unlike Al, a monster whom we nonetheless come to love, Wolcott shows few flashes of warmth or compassion save one: the moment in which he reads aloud Bill Hickok’s last letter, mocking Bill’s inelegant words with Carrie until coming to the post script, at which point Bill’s words (and those words are Hickok’s actual words, taken from Hickok’s actual last letter) infect the two of them with something resembling true passion and feeling. Wolcott claims that he’s beyond love, but he’s not beyond longing for it.

Stray bullets:

  • While I appreciate the acting and the language of the scenes featuring Hostetler and the General (no, I will not be calling him by his chosen name), I find them overall to be a distraction from the narrative that’s been constructed for us so far. I’m a big fan of the way in which the General extends Steve the horse-defiler some astonishing compassion, and I thoroughly enjoy the interplay between the General and Jane, but each time that the show would cut to the General or to Hostetler I’d find myself impatient to return to the other characters. I don’t remember much of either character’s arc in this season (and I’m discovering that I don’t remember much of any other character’s arc either, which is making this rewatch of the season pleasantly surprising) and so I’m hoping that future episodes will cause me to change my mind on them both.

 

  • E.B manages the difficult hot trick of getting slimier in each and every episode. It’s amazing. Every time I think I couldnt possibly want to smack him in the face any harder I discover that, no, I could probably smack him a little harder.

 

  • Doc suggests that Al’s had “a small stroke,” brought on by the strain of passing his “gleets,”‘and if you’ve ever had the profound, impossible misfortune of passing a “gleet,” you’ll nod your head and say “yep. Sounds about right.’

 

  • When Silas asks Ms. I whether she was involved in a hanging in Pennsylvania he’s referring to an incident from the 1870s, where coal mining operators in Pennsylvania hired Pinkerton agents to disrupt union organizing and a strike. After a trial that sounds as hyped as Dr. Conrad Murray’s, with Pinkerton agents as witnesses, 19 miners were hung for strike-related crimes.

 

  • Seth spends a good part of Complications acting like a real asshole. He hits people who don’t really need hitting, insults people who don’t actually deserve it, but it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from emotionally. It’s something of a shame that, for as much as I genuinely enjoy Timothy Olyphant’s performance, he hasn’t shown a proclivity toward modulating his acting anywhere between smoldering and ANGRY EYES! CLENCHED TEETH! STRAINED VOICE! Maybe it’s an intentional choice?

Philosophical-type Musings:

Steve: “Fuck you and fuck the future!”

Hugo Jarry: “You do not fuck the future sir! The future fucks you!”

General: “It’s my pain.”

Jane: “And I am suggesting an improved means of dealing with it, which is how progress occurs.”

Seth: “A beating short of murder might’ve done you a considerable good”

Fightin’ Words:

Hugo Jarry: “I’m thirsty.”

Jane: “Lie on your back, take aim, and piss.”

Tweets Minus Twitter:

RT Trixie: “Lemme finish up my Jewish lessons here, then I’ll come find you.” #HolyShitSoOffensive.