Deadwood Episode Guide: Deep Water

Written by Malcolm Macrury

Directed by Davis Guggenheim

As a general, I have found that the second episode of a series can generally help establish whether or not it has the potential to be a very good show. It’s a general rule that the Pilot can be gangbusters and then the series, however ambitious, will peter out as the writers have trouble following it up. There was a certain truth to this with The Wire (which frankly needed a couple of episodes before the breadth of what Simon was trying to do became clear) and to a certain degree with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under (though frankly both series, at least in the first season, fired on all cylinders all the way through. It is also true, to an extent, with Deadwood. The opening episode is exceptional well done, and we get a very clear indication of what the series could be. But we don’t start to get a really solid picture of what Milch and company were trying to do until the second episode.

In what will become typical fashion for the series, Deep Water opens a few hours after the Pilot ended. Farnum is bringing the body of Tim Driscoll to Wu to be devoured by the pigs, and Swearengen awakes from his bed with Trixie, remaining indifferent to whatever affections she may have brought to him during their slumber.  Then again, he’s probably holding a grudge about the gun she placed at his bed. His first problem when he gets up is Farnum giving him the news about what happened earlier that morning, along with the fact that there’s a girl who survived the slaughter, and the story she might tell. Swearengen doesn’t react to this at all. It is not until later in the episode when Persimmon Phil, who he thought did the ransacking, and murders last night, and Ned Mason show up that we begin to get a clear picture of just what’s going on. Phil begins telling him the story of what happened, and before he has gotten five lines out, Swearengen says: “Keep lying like that and I’ll cut your fucking throat.” This is the first time we see just how easily Swearengen can detect bullshit. It will become consistent the longer the show goes on, eventually we’ll get the idea that he can just smell it. Phil then relates the entire story of what happened the night the Metz family was attacked, and we get the feeling that Swearengen has no problem with this kind of thing – if he plans it. He doesn’t mind innocent families get slaughtered – as long as it’s his operation, and he gets his cut. Phil tries to bribe his way out of it, and Swearengen gets quieter and quieter until he starts wailing on him.

Swearengen is a man of many interests, and he clearly tries to handle every possible angle.  He knows that he has no chance of taking out Hickok in a fair fight, so he tries to get Ned Mason – whose brother, we now learn, was the one that Hickok and Bullock executed and the end of the Pilot – to kill him for him. (Those of us who were avid Parks & Recreation fans will no doubt be amused to see a younger Nick Offerman as Ned, as well as getting a look at a full frontal Ron Swanson.) At the same time, he knows that the girl survivor of the massacre could be a potential threat to him. So he tells Dan to get the Doc from the cabin where he has been caring for her, so he can figure out next move.

One of the virtues of the second episode that it starts to flesh out some of the characters who weren’t firmly drawn in the Pilot. Two of them are Doc Cochrane and Calamity Jane. Jane remains at the Doc’s headquarters, clearly drawn to the wellbeing of young girl. Cochran, in the meantime, is all too aware of the potential danger to the girl. He is reluctant to tell Bullock about her well-being, and when Swearengen asks him directly, he goes to great pains to emphasize that she probably won’t live.  Swearengen tries to get him at a weak moment when he is treating the whores of the Gem, and it is here that we see that there is steel in this middle-aged man. Because of all the suffering he has seen, it has enabled him to speak truth to power. He is one of the few people who will talk to Swearengen almost as an equal (even though both men deny it), and there is more bravery in him than he would even admit himself. After Al pays a visit to his home, Doc whispers to the girl: “Don’t ever tell anyone what you saw that night.” Then he takes a rifle he keeps in his ceiling, and waits.

We also start getting a clearer picture of Jane. She clearly has a gift for being a caregiver, and one of the deeper relationships in the series will between that of her and Doc. But when Swearengen comes up to the cabin to check on the girl, despite all the inner toughness she has manifested, she nearly collapsed and the mere glimpse of him. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in this, we the audience already know how dangerous he can be. But she collapses into a fit of weeping, and then gets drunk in order to try and find the courage to kill him. When Charlie Utter encounters her later that night, she collapses in his arms and admits just how scared she was of the man. Robin Weigert almost certainly earned her Emmy nomination for her work in this episode, and it’s a very powerful performance. Even drowned in whiskey there is clearly bravery in her that isn’t present in so many in others.

Bullock, in the meantime, is dealing with his own problems that intersect indirectly with just about everything else. He arranges for the burial of Ned Mason with the Reverend Smith, and agrees to see to serve as a witness along with Sol.  But in the middle of this, he’s still trying to arrange a bargain with Swearengen for the lot for his hardware store.  In this episode far more than in the Pilot, we get a very clear sense of the inner rage that is always propelling Bullock around. And in the early episodes, it is very clear that Swearengen has a gift for bringing it out. In the morning, they try to negotiate, and Swearengen tells a joke based on his killing Ned Mason that clearly pisses him off.  When Swearengen continues to insist that he has some kind of partnership with Wild Bill Hickok, he gets angrier, and the first negotiation ends badly. Sol then tries to head off trouble by agreeing to act as his proxy at the next one, while Seth sits at the bar. Trixie makes her only attempt to get his business, and he politely refuses. The fact that “he wouldn’t drink and he wouldn’t fuck” only worries Al more, and when Sol tries to deal with the next set of terms as proxy, Seth just pissed again.      He and Al then start negotiations that get louder, and when Seth makes his “counteroffer”, Swearengen says: “Here’s my counteroffer to your counteroffer: Go fuck yourself.”

But for all his anger, Bullock clearly has a depth of vision that many don’t have. Walking away from the Gem, he tells Sol: “The camp needs a bank.” And when they both encounter Charlie noisily relieving himself: “You get along with people, turn a dollar, look out for yourself. He don’t know how to do that. So I’d like to know your secret, so I can tell it to Bill.” When Bullock modestly defers, Charlie tells him to tell Bill anyway. “Before it’s too late.” Despite his best efforts, Charlie knows time is running out for his friend.

Bullock and Starr go to the saloon where Bill is still getting beaten at poker, and McCall is still taunting him. “Why are you playing?” Bill asks. “If it’s to piss me off, you’ve already won.” When Bill walks up to get more chips, he casually mentions to Bullock that the men in the corner – Tom and Phil- mean him harm, and asks Bullock to cover his back. Tom is drunk and ready to kill for revenge, but before he even manages to pull his weapon, Wild Bill shoots him “He meant me harm,” is all he says. And Seth covers him.

The two major stories officially converge after Swearengen tells Dan to kill the girl. Dan clearly has a problem with this, but goes to the cabin to do it.  When he faces off with the Doc, Cochran uses the only lever he has – the fact that without his treatment of the whores, the Gem will be in ruins.  Dan, who clearly doesn’t want to do this, reluctantly gets the Doc come with, and he manages to persuade Jane that there is no problem here. Doc then tells Swearengen that Jane has “absconded with the child” and by definition, she’s under Hickok’s protection. Coming after the shooting of Ned, Swearengen then shows what for him, is his first sign of conscience.  He stabs Phil himself, and then arranges for him to disappear.

The major story that we haven’t touched on is the Garrets. Brom clearly has no luck in mining, and it’s clear early on he isn’t cut out for it. When he tries, ham-handedly to get Farnum to buy it off him, E.B. tells him he was drunk at the time. Brom has begun to get that he’s been conned, but he still doesn’t know the danger he’s in. Alma, in the meantime, wants to get her ‘medicine’ from the Doc, who is really irked at the fact that she disturbed him with this. “There are other people in the camp who actually need my help,” he tells her bluntly. Even right now, it’s easy to make the assumption that the Garrets are just a Yankee couple, a rube and his addict wife.  We still don’t realize – and its possible at this stage, Milch didn’t either – just what is in store.