Posted on 06/16/2004 8:59:17 AM PDT by BluegrassScholar
I love the mud, always the mud. The language is the man made muck.
The show is a beautiful in it's cinematography as it is brutal and profane.
I get a kick out of Swearingen cultuted and learned prose liberally peppered with the basest of profanities.
...........well, just because bad language and bad behavior was a part of the "real" west, doesn't mean you have to wallow in it at it's worst just to get a sense of it, but you know your need better than I.
There's an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal online regarding the history of profanity. According to the article, Deadwood's creator, David Milch, claims the language on the show is historically accurate, and as the WSJ article points out, the character of Al Swearengen is aptly named...he is a swearing engine.
I skimmed by it once or twice. I had no idea they used the f-word so much in the old west. I don't know why anybody would want to sit through crap like that.
I have never tuned into The Sopranos, because I don't think I can really relate to mobsters living in New Jersey. And I just don't get Six Feet Under. Deadwood is my favorite television show right now though. Having actually been to the real Deadwood before it became a shameless gambling tourist trap in the mid 1980's. And knowing a bit about the history of the place. As well as being from a small town in Nebraska that in the day was a rough frontier town.
Deadwood is the best show on TV. Period.
IMHO, The Sopranos came VERY close to jumping the shark with that dream episode. Eeesh...
Best Deadwood characters: Swearengen (Swear Engine), Bullock, and the Doc.
BTW: I truly don't think the language is intended to shock, but rather to be accurate. VERY rough times...
Probably de-sensitization.
Like many, after the second episode I was talking about Deadwood with a friend ("Man, they sure do say f*** a lot"), and he mentioned that writer Milch had done research indicating the level and type of profanity was historically accurate.
I'm not so sure that's true (see Cussing and Fighting Would 1870s cowboys really use such bad words?), as "Jesse Sheidlower, the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the scholar of cussing who wrote The F-Word, says probably not. Not that frontiersmen were genteel."
It's hard to imagine how boring Deadwood might be without the cursing.
Six Feet Under needs to be embalmed. A couple of good seasons, then all the good ideas were used up. I don't like shows where the characters morph into aliens in order the keep the show "fresh". Six Feet is dead meat.
I couldn't understand it then, can't understand it now. A complete waste of 20 minutes in the next to last episode. I was just about to flip the channel when it ended.
What were they thinking?
Indeed it's coarse but it's also Elizabethan at times, reminds me somewhat of True Grit (as least as how I remember it, it's been a while). I'm guessing it's also very realistic (as I did Unforgiven).
I enjoy it far more than any of the other HBO series, top notch writing and acting.
Brad Dourif is wonderful as Doc Cochran. His Civil War flashback scene in the final episode was chilling...and you wonder if he knew what would happen when he transferred the Reverend to Al's "care," knowing it was best for the Reverend, but that he was unable to "kill" him as Al would.
Too bad Wild Bill had to get whacked so soon. Calamity Jane hopefully will return, and the doc is a crusty old healer with a heart. Hard to believe the two best shows (IMHO) on TV are so foul-mouthed and violent but in these two cases....it WORKS!!
The most impressive thing about the show has been the characters. I really have yet to see a character on there that I did not enjoy in some fashion. Robin Weigert was amazing; Tim Olyphant, Ian McShane and Powers Boothe are so beleivable it is frightening. But the minor characters are just as good - the Preacher character was really an interesting side-focus all season, and his death at Swearengen's hands was touching (watch carefully - Al sheds a tear when he puts the Preacher out of his misery).
But above all the other actors, the one I am most impressed with is Brad Dourif, who plays the town doctor - obviously still traumatized by his experiences as a Civil War Army surgeon, he seemed to be one of the 'bad guys' at first, but the viewer quickly learns that he is really the moral center of the town.
They seem to be sticking pretty close to history here. I would expect next season will focus on Bullock's getting the town more under control, and a power struggle with Wyatt Earp. Earp showed up in the real-life Deadwood shortly after Bullock became sherriff, hoping to horn in on the action and become sherriff himself; this plan did not succeed.
The last episode featured General Crook and his Starvation March, the campaign after Little Big Horn to punish the Indians. From all accounts, General Crook was a no-nonsense man, and Peter Coyote played him dead on (my only quibble was that the TV version was dressed too well - Crook was an infamous sloppy dresser).
I have high hopes for this show - much more entertaining than The Sopranos in my opinion.
By the way, for all you Lord of the Rings fans, the actor who plays Doc Cochran on Deadwood, Brad Dourif, also played Grima Wormtongue in LOTR.
I believe in this series, it is integral to the times and setting. The writers of this show, will win every award, hands down. The character casting is simply superb, and everyone involved in this series, just went to the A-list.
IMHO, the best 5 minutes in TV history.
Lots of great character actors. 3 from the X-Files (including Dourif), and Swearingen's right hand man was Cameron Diaz's handicapped brother in Something About Mary.
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