Deadwood Episode Guide: Childish Things

Written by Regina Corrado

Directed by Tim Van Patten

The two most critical events in this episode happen almost simultaneously, and they are one of the most unifying events in the camp and one of the most horrific. And when you consider much of what is going on around it, that says quite a lot.

The unifying event is actually a pleasurable one for a change. Tom Nutall has received a delivery from Fargo – a bicycle, which at the time is considered another one of the great advances of technology fast coming to the frontier. (We shall deal with a more important one a little later.) In one of the rare moment of genialness in the entire series, Tom’s joy over what could well be considered the title reference, Tom gleefully banters about the ability to ride said bicycle. Naturally, this being Deadwood, he has his own turn of phrase:

“My bicycle masters boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb! Those that doubt me suck cock by choice!”

The drunken revelers soon begin betting Tom that he can ride clear across the camp, and within a matter of minutes he is taking odds, and is preparing Merrick to take a picture of this glorious moment.

In an utter rarity for this series, there is a mood of happiness throughout the camp that we have rarely seen before and will rarely see again. The entire camp becomes an organic body devoted to this single event. Doc Cochran cheerfully looks upon the bicycle as a referee, Merrick discussing candidly how to take the picture, and Richardson, who usually seems slow and unknowing, goes after Farnum in such a comic attack that we wonder if his outward appearance belies a cunning mind. (Indeed, later episodes will demonstrate that there is far more beneath the biblical appearance.). When the events begins, everybody begins to cheer – Al gives a very British ‘Go forth, my son!”, Bullock grins at the huckster who is usually his bête noire, and even the psychopathic Wolcott seems caught up in the spirit of it. You can see a grin cross his face so genuine that even he seems surprised by it.

But in the traditional sense of doubling that Milch and his crew bring to this series, the exact moment of this event corresponds with one just as horrible. To give scope this, one must understand some of the surrounding events. At the episode’s beginning, Wolcott is writing a letter to Hearst in which he details the operations that are going on at what are now the claims that Wolcott has obtained ownership of:

…until workers at wage outnumber individual prospectors in the camp… we must content ourselves with Germans and Cornish unwilling to work at night. We shower them after every shift, and the gold they’ve combed into their hair with grease we recover from traps installed beneath the washing facilities… through the vigilance of our security fellows, the unremitting larceny of these cunning and clannish men is held somewhat in check.

The naked men showered under the presence of armed guards, follows with a nugget removed from a bearded man, who is then shot by a Hearst pistolero. (He is Captain Turner, another character whose importance will become clearer as the invasion of capitalism.)

It is impossible to see these things and not think of the horrors of the Nazis. And the writers’ even double down on this imagery, when we find ourselves dealing with the Chinese prostitutes that have been imported in previous episodes. The Doc, who is becoming to represent more and more the symbol of conscience in a place where there is little to spare, goes to Tolliver and offers to treat them the same way he does to the white ones:

COCHRAN: I’d be available to see to their care like I do these here.

TOLLIVER: Declined with thanks.

COCHRAN: You may not be aware that beyond their afflictions these girls are fucking starving to death!

TOLLIVER: I ain’t one who holds the white man’s as the sole and only path. I strive to tolerate what I may not agree with. But those people’s culture, their women are disposable.

Doc has suffered Tolliver’s arrogance throughout the series, but his plain indifference to this mass murder causes him to reject the Bella Union altogether. “I have to live, too!” he says before storming out. And at the end of the episode, seeing the horrors of the woman in cages, he has the righteousness to confront Wolcott on his evils.

All of this in its own right would be enough to realize the evils of the combine in a very general way. Milch solidifies by putting at his basest terms. In an effort to purchase the richest claim aside from Garret’s, Wolcott has a long conversation with one of the owners of it, Mose Manuel. Mose is considered by Tolliver as the more disagreeable brother, and in the conversation, he makes it very clear that he and his brother can barely tolerate each other, much less have the patience to adequately mine what in historical terms was the richest claim in North America. Wolcott speaks in as broad terms that his brother needs to be persuaded to sell along with him. Mose, however, takes advantage of the empty saloon (the crowds are all on the street watching Tom) to shoot his brother. The moment he comes to Wolcott, the horror of the event slowly unfolding him is truly frightening. By the time Wolcott is willing to give him his $200,000 payout, he no longer wants the money, and now resents him for making him consider it. Even Wolcott seems momentarily stunned by what he has done.

For all the horror around this event, this episode truly belongs to the women of Deadwood. In the broadest of term, this is the episode where we first see the true potential of Anna Gunn as one of the great actresses in the medium. Martha Bullock, up to this point, has mainly been sitting in the background, a prop along with William to keep Seth and Alma apart. But she has two scenes in the episode where she first begins to demonstrate that, much like all the other actresses on this show; she is a force to be reckoned with. In an early scene, she comes to see Alma, troubled by her pregnancy and the betrayal of Miss Isringhausen, about offering to take over the job of schoolteacher for the camp. (The teacher who arrived a few days earlier fled after the assault to the newspaper). This is already going to be an awkward discussion, and it quickly becomes hostile when the two women become openly territorial, saying everything but what they mean about the opposite legs of the triangle they are a part of. When Martha comes back to the house, she seems frustrated towards Seth, but it is not til the day is almost over that she finally reveals that she is well aware about the affair Seth had in her absence and that she is just as humiliated as her husband feared. When she storms up to bed, telling Seth is no uncertain terms that she no longer wants him to be her husband; you can see the beginnings of the work that would one day result in Skyler White.

Seth has been purposely avoiding Alma, so she has two equally important scenes. Despite her conversation with Swearengen in the previous episode, who is beginning the machinations to try and outmaneuver the Pinkertons, Alma decides to confront Miss Isringhausen anyway. But it becomes clear very quickly that she has misjudged her opponent because she is another woman, and she leaves in dismay. Her other meeting is more pleasant. Ellsworth has clearly been considering what Trixie told her before, and where we saw him as being manipulated, we now realize we mistook his earnest behavior for bafflement. Ellsworth is that rarest of things on this series, a good man, and his conversation with his dog (like so many on Deadwood, he would rather talk to someone who can’t answer than to someone else) gives him to courage to offer his hand in marriage to Alma. We learn he too is a widower, and feels a sense of duty as well as genuine affection for her and Sofia. Under any other circumstances, he would make a fine husband.

But the most important meeting of all in the episode is the discussion between Jane and Joanie. On the surface, this would seem to be the must unlikely relationship of any in the camp – Joanie is the picture of refinement, and Jane, a drunken, practically masculine mess. But Charlie Utter, the person who is the unlikely bond between them, and who is clearly worried both of them, gently suggests to a pissed Jane that she might go and see her because she lost her friends. And it is well worth the noting the one other thing they have in common: both are outsiders. For all that Robin Weigert brings to the character of Calamity Jane – and it is considerable – the fact remains that the plot of Deadwood could work perfectly well without her. (When she left the show late last season, Milch seemed to be indicating as much.)  And Joanie has never had the same relationship with Tolliver that Trixie has with Swearengen. (Indeed, from this point on, she will have almost no link to the overriding story herself). In short, these are two people who are utterly unmoored from even the most primitive form of the society of the camp, and there is an underlying argument that without some other connection, both are destined to die.

So the two begin the tentative dance towards each other. And in typical Deadwood fashion, it is met in violence. Joanie tells Jane that she feels that she is danger from Wolcott. Jane leaves to get further drunk (she pointedly refused liquor in Joanie’s presence), but ends up, stumbling over to Joanie’s. Wolcott, who in his own way is deteriorating as much as Joanie is, comes to her place, uncertain as to what he is going to do. There is a very real possibility that Joanie was there waiting for him to finish the job. But when she sees him, she takes the bottle of bourbon, and smashes him over the head with it. Out of surprise as much as pain, he stumbles out to run into Jane, who seems just as determined to kill him. He leaves her behind just as dazed.

Near the end of the episode, Charlie visits Wild Bill’s grave, just as Jane once did. He is in true dismay over everything that has happened, and tells Bill that he doesn’t know what to do about Jane. What he doesn’t know is that in his way he has done exactly the right thing. Which in Deadwood in particular almost never happens.