Deadwood Episode Guide: Unauthorized Cinnamon

Written by Regina Corrado

Directed by Mark Tinker

At the center of this episode is yet another meeting of the camp elders. Johnny spends much of the opening gathering everybody for the meeting, and everyone is aware of the importance. Tom insists on bringing Harry, ‘as a candidate for public office’, and more importantly because he wants to suggest him being in charge of the fire department, which he knows is something that Manning is more suited for. The Doc is invited, but as Al clearly recognized a few episodes back, he has ‘become a lunger’, and refrains from coming. Everyone knows just how important this is, which is why when Jewel puts cinnamon on the table to go with the ceremonial peaches, Dan goes nuts saying: “Don’t fuck with the peaches”, which is where the title reference comes from. Indeed, Harry indulges in the cinnamon, and has a violent allergic reaction to it. Everyone knows how important this meeting – even the whores. Indeed, Jen makes the brilliant observation:

“Guess if you’ve got a pussy, even owning a bank don’t get you to that fucking table.”

Despite the fact that Alma is at the center of the crisis in the camp, no one – not even Al – thinks of inviting her. (Admittedly, she’s not in the best condition right now, as we’ll get to in a bit.

Swearengen comes to the point that they are at a crisis, and that the time has come to go for the guns, unless anyone else can come up with a better strategy. Charlie makes the same point he made last time, suggesting they get the innocents out of the camp, and then go to war. It is Bullock, who is many ways responsible for the crisis at hand, who comes up with another approach. He produces a letter that he has written to the family of the last murdered Cornishman. It is kindly, gentle, and even enlightened; particularly considering it comes from a man we don’t consider a man of letters.  Al’s reaction is to tell Merrick to publish it in the next issue of the paper.

It defines just how much the central characters of Deadwood are men of action that the use of the written words instead of blows leaves them utterly bewildered as to what they’ve done. Adams and Dority can’t explain what it means to Johnny, which means they themselves are baffled, and Al basically seems stunned and silent in his office. It takes a literary man – Langrishe – to explain it to him:

AL:  I sit mystified I was moved to endorse it.

LANGRISHE: Mystified Al? At proclaiming a law beyond law to a man who’s beyond law himself? It’s a publication invoking a decency whose scrutiny applies to him as to all his fellows. I call that a strategy cunningly sophisticated, befitting and becoming the man who sits before me.

And this galvanizes Al in a way few others could – he orders the Gem reopened, asked Jack how things are going, and shares a drink with him when he learns about the mortal illness of a fellow actor. One might find the theater scenes themselves lacking general motivation, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Langrishe himself would be a real asset to the camp – and the series – had it been able to go forward.

And it’s clear that they need to make some moves because Hearst is plotting against them. Admittedly, he seems distracted most of the episode because he is still dealing with Odell, who has indeed brought an assay of gold to him, and who Hearst has supper with. He spends most of the meal trying to agitate Odell, to the point where he gets up from the table. (It is worth noting that most of this is observed by Richardson, who Lou treats as an equal in a way Farnum never will.)

Odell and Hearst have a conversation as they stroll about the camp, which very accurately shows just how Hearst sees the world:

HEARST: Before the color, no white man… No man of any hue, moved to civilize or improve a place like this, had reason to make the effort. The color brought commerce here, and such order has been attained… Do you want to help Liberia, Odell?

ODELL: I want to help myself. If Liberia’s where my chance is that’s all right with me.

HEARST: Gold is your chance. Gold is every man’s chance. Why do I make that argument? Because every defect in a man, and in others’ way of taking him, our agreement that gold has value gives us power to rise above.

ODELL: Fond as you are of my mother, if it wasn’t for that gold I showed you, I don’t guess we’d be talking.

HEARST: That is correct. But for that gold, you’d never have sat at my table. And for the effrontery in your rising up, except that you’d showed me the gold, I’d’ve shot or seen you hanged without a second thought. The value I gave the gold restrained me, you see, your utility in connection with it… Gold confers power, and that power is transferable. Power comes to any man who has the color.

ODELL: Even if he’s black.

HEARST: That is our species’ hope – that uniformly agree on its value, we organize to seek the color.

Hearst casualness in his mention of killing Odell is frightening, but not nearly as scary as his equally matter-of-fact statement that he intends “to bring this camp down like Gomorrah.”

Lou knows how dangerous he is, and after the discussion implores her son to get out of the camp before the next day. It is a measure of just how corrupt Odell is that he seems utterly immune to the danger Hearst poses, and that his biggest concern is not that he’s hurt his mother, but that she was here to see him at all. He doesn’t pay attention to his mother’s warning, even as she bawls before him.

The camp is still concerned with Alma, but Trixie seems more concerned with what fate might befall Sofia. Sol suggests that Seth and Martha could take him, and then makes the bold remark that they could, something that shocks the verbose Trixie into silence.

Alma in the meantime is trying to recover, and she can see just how much the absence of Ellsworth is hurting Sofia, who in just a short time has comes to welcome his goodnight kisses. When Alma puts Sofia to bed, she comes down the stairs, entreating herself: “I want to be good, I want to be good.” Almost as a sign, Ellsworth returns:

ALMA: The thing I did that made you leave last night, the thing that I was coming home to do again, I pray now to forego forever.

ELLSWORTH: Not having me in this house is gonna improve your odds.

ALMA: I started using spirits at seventeen, Ellsworth, with no premonition that we’d marry.

ELLSWORTH: Well, my feeling is that being vessel of purposes not your own, your eye was out for relief. But glimpsing since how being your own vessel is preferable let the pressure off and you’re liable to do alright.

ALMA: You are no pressure.

ELLSWORTH: My friendly hands will always be out to the both of you.

Ellsworth’s essential goodness shows how much this disordered camp needs such a man.

And it’s going to see it soon. Blazanov comes to Merrick after the meeting having read an incoming telegram. Having come across the murdered Cornishman in the thoroughfare a few days ago, and reflecting on the sacrifices his own parents made to bring him here, he feels a certain attachment to this camp. He goes to Swearengen with the telegrams, which basically says Hearst plans to bring in 25 more ‘bricks’ to the camp, mainly to rain down destruction. Al offers him a whore in thanks, and promises him discretion. Blazanov himself has come along to the general feeling of Hearst – when he delivers the telegram, he takes the man’s money but doesn’t seem happy to have gotten such an exorbitant gratuity.

The question is how does this camp go forward? Perhaps the answer comes in the differing responses to certain actions by Tolliver and Swearengen. Despite his defection, Tolliver comes to the meeting of the elders, mainly to try and convince them to hand Bullock over to Hearst, even though he knows the odds of this stopping the bloodshed are ‘fifty-fifty’. When he learns the Doc is ailing, his reaction is almost as coldblooded as Hearst’s would be: put an ad in the paper and get another doctor.

Al takes a different approach. In one of the few comic moments of the episode, the tailor shows up at Al’s doorstep, offering him swatches to cover his missing stump, and goes for a ridiculous exercise to try and show how it would fit to a completely deadpan Swearengen. When Al sees Doc walking through the thoroughfare – he’s just come from treating Harry for his allergic reaction, Al demands that he appears, and offers him the swatches. When Cochran says he will no longer work in the camp for fear of spreading his illness, Al ‘berates’ him, for all the good thing he has done for the camp, and orders him to use the swatches as a mask. “I ain’t breaking in another fucking Doc!” is how he puts it.  Doc doesn’t respond, but the last shot of the episode is him leaving… with the swatches.

On Becoming a God in Central Florida Review

Kirsten Dunst has always been the most unusual of child actresses: unlike so many of who started young, she has always been the most capable of transitioning into inner darkness. This was true in one of her earliest roles in Interview with a Vampire, and has remained true into adulthood, most brilliantly in her work with Sofia Coppola.  There have also been hints of it in her work in television, demonstrating in her work as a teenage runaway in ER, and most memorably in Season 2 of Fargo, where her work as Peggy Bloomquist showed a woman who was determined to not let anything stand in the way of her dreams – not even hitting a gangster and leaving him to die in her windshield.

Now she brings all of these talents to her best use in Showtime’s newest comedy-drama On Becoming A God in Central Florida. In a sense, Showtime is the perfect network for her: it has been bringing child stars as leads of very dark series for much of the 2010s: Emmy Rossum was by far the lead of Shameless and no one will forget Claire Danes’ work on Homeland for a very long time.  Dunst plays Krystal Stubbs, a housewife just a notch above white trash in ‘Orlando Adjacent 1992’ as we learn in the introduction. Krystal is struggling to survive at a job in a piss-poor water park, but her biggest problem is her husband. His main job is working for FAM, an Amway like system headed by a self-help guru named Obie Garbeau (Ted Levine, who we hear more than we see).

It is clear very early on that this is a pyramid scheme – the guru talks in the clichés of making money without working, ones which everybody who works talks in, no matter what. Krystal is the only one who seems to see just how flawed this is, but no one listens to her, especially not her husband Travis, who promises that he will not quit his job, and then does so in an elaborate ceremony the next day. But the exhaustion of being a ‘Garbeau Man’ wears him down: lack of sleep causes him to drive into a lake, where he is promptly eaten by an alligator. With no real options on how to move forward (even her braces are paid for on layaway, so it seems) she finds herself reluctantly being drawn back into the Garbeau System.

Dunst is quite brilliant, demonstrating yet another engage personality (and accent) to her already impressive regime. What Becoming A God does just as well is show an atmosphere that falls around these get-rich-quick schemes. It makes it very clear that these organizations bordered on being something resembling cults, with people, especially those trying to deal with a recession, embracing the most ludicrous clichés and pulp. This becomes particularly clear in the case of Ernie, someone who works at the water park Krystal does, and is incredibly resistant to selling stuff at the park. However, the obvious depression he suffers from leads him to buy in. It’s also clear of Cole, Travis’ superior at FAM, who is constantly struggling to remain at the ‘Jefferson Level’ despite not having any skills for salesmanship himself. And standing throughout this is Garbeau, who seems to have all the answers but offers nothing in return. Why should he? He’s at the top of the pyramid.

This is a dark series that crackles with some very wry humor, and doesn’t have the grunginess that so many of Showtime’s series (Ray Donavan in particular) have.  Showtime has been going through a time of transition with series like Homeland and The Affair coming to an end in the next year. With series like this and City on a Hill and comedies like Kidding, Showtime may be entering a new era, one where it might be able to have a better handle on looking the natural darkness with a bit more humor. On Becoming A God in Central Florida was originally made for Youtube, but it was bought by Showtime, and there is no doubt it belongs on this network.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Deadwood Episode Guide: A Rich FInd

As much as the carnage that surrounded the last episode infused everything, this episode which takes place the day after, reveals the fallout and just how horrible events are beginning to become.

Hearst was clearly a monster before all of this happened, but now that Turner, the man who served as the chief manipulator for his plans for the camp is gone, he has lost even the veneer of civility.  He treats everyone with even more disdain then he did before, not that he was Emily Post to begin with. This becomes even more clear when the major arrival to this camp appears: Odell, Aunt Lou’s son.

When Odell arrives and Aunt Lou regards him with genuine affection, Hearst is clearly angry –  any cover that he considered her with affection is gone the minute he sees anyone who is a rival for his attention, even should that be her own blood.  Like every other relationship he has, it’s just a cover. And it becomes even more clear that Odell’s relationship with his mother is even more fraught when we learn that she sent him to Liberia, a country in Africa that was supposed to be the white man’s solutions to the Negro question, but as Odell makes abundantly clear, was just another place for the black man to get fucked. There was no work for Americans, the educated black men screwed them out of money, until the Englishmen then went and did the same. The idea of a better life for the black man is made abundantly clear to be a falsehood anywhere. And the only way Odell can see to get anything out of life is to try and get money out of his mother’s employer.

As if to make this doubly clear, a lot of attention in this episode is spent to Steve, who spends much of the episode trying to make clear he feels absolutely no guilt about what Hostetler did, even though he spends that same period getting increasingly drunk, berating Tom, who makes abundantly clear how much of an asshole he finds him, and flinching every time he sees either Fields or Odell. When Odell comes into the bar to get drunk before his meeting with Hearst, he gets angry, but spends the remainder of his time utterly unable to look him in the eye.

Aunt Lou, who knows just how dangerous Hearst can be, runs to the livery after her son leaves, gives Fields all the money she has in the world, and basically begs him to get her son to leave the camp. Fields makes a genuine attempt at it, clearly discussing his plans for the money that Hostetler got for selling the livery, and Odell refuses to give him the time of day.  When Aunt Lou learns about this, she is terrified, and one of the last shots of the episode is her running down the thoroughfare, begging the Lord ‘not to have him take her boy. You’ve taken so much else.”

And indeed, she has every reason to be terrified. When we see Hearst in the jail, Charlie Utter claims not to recognize him, and then in mocking tones, makes a motion towards the body of the Cornishmen found in thoroughfare with the knife still in it.  Hearst ignores Utter’s jibes, but when Bullock comes to let him out, Hearst pulls the knife out of the Cornishman, wipes it clean, and puts in his pocket.

He barely goes through the nature of civility with Tolliver later on when Cy dares to tell him that Alma is back on the dope, and there might be any number of ways for her to have an ‘accident’. Instead, Hearst is furious that Tolliver didn’t tell him this the previous day (ignoring completely the fact that there was no way for him to tell him this) and then asks him to hold off for a bit.

Tolliver is himself genuinely alarmed and actually goes as far to bribe Farnum for further information, a move that Farnum takes as something that Al has gone forward with, and either way, genuinely reveals that E.B. is truly terrified by what is happening.

What Tolliver doesn’t know is that Leon has come to realize just how dangerous his boss is. In a monologue with his own reflection, Leon admits that he’s going to try and find a way to avoid his boss bringing him to a bloody end. (This is, in fact, a prophecy.) Leon then goes to the bank, and tells Alma that he will no longer supply her with dope. For his trouble, Trixie sticks a gun in his ear to warn him off after the fact, and than Trixie confronts Alma immediately afterwards.  It says just how lost Alma is that she turns on Trixie and fires her. This leads to her coming home to find Ellsworth there, where he makes it abundantly clear that his marriage to her will only lead to her worsening.

As all of this is going amiss, Bullock and Utter return to the hardware store to discuss the severity of the situation. At this point Charlie, who is almost always the voice of discretion, makes the argument that they should strike first “because that’s what Bill would have done.” He discusses a very elaborate plan where Swearengen’s men would attack Hearst’s people at the mines, while Bullock and he took Hearst out. When Sol points out: “There’d be nothing left of the camp.” Utter points out the obvious: “What do you think’ll be left when Hearst gets done with it?”

Indeed, Hearst makes this abundantly clear near the end when he is talking with Richardson. When Richardson says that he is stupid, Hearst says “Better than some in this town.” Then he says quite bluntly: “I plan to tear it all down.” Farnum, holed up in his quarters, asks himself: “Does he mean the hotel or everything?”

The only person who might have the answer to this is Swearengen, but he has no more solutions than he did earlier. As a result, he spends most of the episode snapping at all of his colleagues. He snarls at Adams for not paying attention to his instructions (even though he’s done exactly that), he berates Trixie when she comes into his office asking “to turning a trick” (though admittedly by this point he’s more concerned with her improving her life than anything else), and is actually civil to Farnum when he comes. When Dan finally enters his office, starting to show signs of coming out of his stupor, Al tasks him with going to Cheyenne in order to hire guns. “Unless I can think of an alternative.” He knows that in a war with Hearst, they will lose but the solution still eludes him.

Finally, Bullock shows up in the Gem, and says “Charlie Uttter thinks it’ll come to blood. When Bullock says we ought to strike first, Al again uses his forest metaphor, with a more fitting conclusion:

SWEARENGEN: If blood’s what it finally comes to, a hundred years from now the forest is what they’ll find. Dewy morning’s lost its appeal to me. I prefer to wake up indoors.”

Al knows that he doesn’t have a solution, but he also knows he can no longer go it alone. He tells Dan to hold off going to Cheyenne, tells Johnny to get out the peaches, and says to Seth: “Let’s be baffled among friends.”

It is this action more than anything else that demonstrates that Swearengen has changed, however much he appalls the idea. When Farnum begs Al to save them, his remark after he’s left is “Haven’t I always?” But at this point, with the full might of Hearst and all he represents drawing down upon the camp, he knows that the only possibility of a way through is together.

And yet the image of Aunt Lou haunts us, as the one who knows him best, knowing what he will do.

Better Late Than Never: Fleabag

Sometimes, when a brilliant series starts and I don’t initially get involved, the longer it stays on the air I will continue to ignore it, despite the accolades and awards. This is especially true of a lot of the streaming series where I can never find the time for binge watching, even if I believed in such a thing.

This seemed to be true of Fleabag, Amazon’s beloved British import by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a woman who in just three years seems to be becoming a national treasure. I’d loved much of her work for Killing Eve, but I couldn’t see the point in getting involved in a Britcom. Then came the eleven nominations for Season 2 and the huge amount of recognition from the TCA. When I learned that the entire series was just going to be twelve episodes, I decided to get involved.

Fleabag is a very dark show about an unnamed Englishwoman (Waller-Bridge herself) who seems the definition of the antiheroine I have discussed in regard to other series.  She drinks heavily, she has a difficult relationship with her sister, Claire (Sian Clifford) and both of them have an awkward relationship with their father (Bill Patterson). Their mother died three years earlier, and he has fallen in love with their Godmother (Olivia Colman, who next to Waller-Bridge is the best thing about this show) an egomaniacal artist whose major subject seems to be  a ‘Sexhibition’, where among other things, she puts plaster models of penises out on display, and who seems to have no problem blotting their mother out of the picture.

Fleabag is a woman who has random one-night stands, drinks excessively, and a la Frank Underwood, will constantly make remarks to the camera when we think nobody’s looking. She spent much of Season 1 trying to find funding for a café that she founded with her friend ‘Boo’, who seemed to accidentally kill herself before the series began. The only person she tries to have a real relationship with is Claire, and even then there’s an awkwardness that neither of them can deal with him. When her husband tries to kiss her at a party, she holds off telling Claire about it, mainly for her to take a promotion to Finland.

Season 1 climaxed where everything in the world seemed to collapse around Fleabag. Her sister accused her of trying to kiss her husband, her father called her out on her horrible behavior to her godmother, and she finally seemed to deal with the root cause of Boo’s death – her boyfriend had broken up with her because Fleabag had slept with him a few days before. In a epiphany, she seemed to realize that she was the kind of person who ‘fucks’ everything up, and it gave the tiniest way to move forward.

The second season – which Waller-Bridge insists will be the final one, despite Amazon’s hopes – opened with an episode that critics considered one of the great episodes of 2019. Taking place about a year after the first season, it is set at an engagement party between the Godmother and Father.  Fleabag is on her very best behavior, but that doesn’t seem to stop this from being the most awkward celebration is the history of television. The daughters don’t want to pretend their happy for the their father, Claire and her husband are abstaining from alcohol, and Fleabag doesn’t want to talk at all, so all of the conversation seems to be directed at the priest officiating the wedding (Sherlock’s Andrew Scott) who is incredibly handsome, and seems unable to stop dropping obscenities in every other sentence. The longer the night goes on, the more ridiculous the conversation becomes, until Claire heads for the bathroom in the middle of the dinner, and Fleabag’s finds that she’s had a miscarriage. Claire won’t go to the hospital, and against all reason, goes back to the table. Fleabag finally explodes, and, in it what is becoming a habit for this series, finds a way to make it all about her. I’m not going to reveal how the episode ends (this is something that the viewer show see for themselves) but it ends in perhaps the only possible way that could get the sisters back together – as well as one of the great punchlines in the history of television.

Fleabag is one of the most dark, delirious journeys in television today. Waller-Bridge, who in addition to starring in, has written and produced the series, is clearly just as good an actress and comedienne as she is a writer for dramatic series. Fleabag goes out of her way to make us resent her, but there’s something genuine likable about her that we don’t see in so many comedies today. But she’s not the whole story. Sian Clifford, who deservedly got an Emmy nomination for her work as Claire, does a marvelous job as someone who is put upon by the world, and yet seems forever in her sister’s shadow. (During the premiere episode, her own family didn’t seem to know that she was a business planner, not a lawyer.) And Colman, who already had a reputation as one of the great actresses in television, is absolutely uproarious, as the Godmother, whose every sentence seems designed to put down anyone she talks to. Could Colman take an Emmy for Comic Acting before she gets one for Drama when she begins her work in The Crown this November?

This is a premature viewing, I admit. I haven’t even begun to follow through with the rest of Season 2, which features an Emmy-nominated turn from one of my other famous actress, Kirstin Scott-Thomas, as the absolute opposite of a motivational speaker. But I can see why Amazon doesn’t want the second season to be the last one. Fleabag has already revealed itself to be one of the better treasures in an already crowded streaming service. One can hardly wait to see what Waller-Bridge will come up with next.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Better Late Than Never: Grace and Frankie

Grace and Frankie has been one of the rarities of comedies in the Golden Age: a comedy series that is old fashioned in style, but managed to become more endearing with each successive season. Part of it is due to the fact that I have always admired any series that is willing to give work to actors and actress in their seventies, and now that all four leads are either at or nearly eighty, I find myself more inclined to cheer it on.

When the last season ended, Grace and Frankie (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin – who else?) had broken out of their ‘assisted living home’ to return to their beach house and found that it had been sold. Most of the amusement for the first two episodes centered on their back and forth with an acidic realtor (RuPaul cast way against type), as they tried to find a way to get their house back. This involved their decision to ‘squat’ there, which led to Grace finding herself having her first slumber party – ever. The series also demonstrated its own level of poignancy – we finally learnt about Grace’s mother, the level of depression in her own life, which may have led to so many problems with her own children. There’s also a certain level of frustration between the children now, after last season’s plotting and planning ended up with Grace and Frankie in the retirement village in the first place. Briana (June Diane Raphael) is still particularly bitter, but also because the company that she inherited from her mother is now on the verge of bankruptcy. She ends up getting her mother’s help again, and in grand Grace tradition, she ends up overwhelming her on the first day back.

Considering all the stress that has been going on with our leading ladies, its actually encouraging that the leading men are doing better. Robert and Sol spent much of season 4 going through a level of awkwardness with their own relationship, which led them to consider the idea of an open marriage – which lasted until a naked ‘friend’ showed up in their kitchen. The two now seem to know what they are suited for, and what they’re not. But they don’t seem to be doing much of a better job with other people. In the season opener, they found Peter, the head of the local theater association on their couch. Peter had been married for fifteen years, and apparently has been cheating with a friend – a situation neither helped when they inadvertently learned they didn’t have an open marriage. Robert (Martin Sheen) agreed to keep him around the house, mainly because he wanted the new show of the season to be Man of La Mancha, because ‘I’m finally old enough to play Don Quixote.’ Sol (Sam Waterston) is still struggling to find his place in the world, even if it doesn’t involve the law.

It’s true that Grace & Frankie has never been particularly groundbreaking. And these days, it’s not even the only series on Netflix where you can see a lot of senior actors doing great comedy mostly about the problems of getting old. (I raved about The Kominsky Method just a few months ago.) But in a world, and particularly on a service that revives older shows to diminishing returns (witness Fuller House and the constantly flagging Arrested Development), there is something to be said for a series that manages to tell stories portrayed by experts at their craft that makes you laugh. A lot. And considering how much of the series is about aging and the inevitability of death, its amazing how cheerful it is, considering how bleak some of the same contemporary comedies based on younger actors are.  Fonda and Tomlin have managed The Odd Couple act to a level that even Randall and Klugman never quite reached. And there’s something comforting in seeing these two actors find a way to prevail. They can barely stand each other, but it’s telling that they can’t think of being apart. I’m not sure I could imagine Netflix without them either.

My score: 4 stars.

Emmys Goes Hostless!

I’ll be the first to admit: when the Academy Awards decided to have a ceremony without a host, I was concerned. I’m sure fans of a certain age had memories of Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White in their head. But those doubts disappeared about halfway through Queen’s second number.

Even the most generous of reviewers must admit it’s been hard to watch the Oscars the best decade. No matter how gifted the emcee is – whether its Ellen DeGeneres or Chris Rock or Jimmy Kimmel, no matter how hard they try to make their material work, they were unable to puncture the balloon of self-importance that the Academy inevitably surrounds its awards shows with. They do their level best, but they just can’t seem to hold their natural level of comedy with the often insane level of self-importance these shows just keep to handle.

All of that was absent this February. All of the problems that the Academy had getting there seemed easier to handle without a host. The presenters were more light-hearted, they seemed to be having more fun without having some ridiculous introduction, and it showed for a lot of the recipients as well. All of the ridiculous montages for film is the universal language nonsense, all of the unnecessary speeches about causes, frankly, all the pretension was gone. It helped immensely, of course, that there was genuine suspense about what film was going to win; we genuinely didn’t know until Julia Roberts announced Green Book as Best Picture. And for the first time, in I don’t know how long, I was happy with the results of the show as much as I enjoyed the show. You could see the surprise in the reviews that came out, and it didn’t hurt that ratings, which have been on a downward trajectory all decade, went up by nearly twelve percent. (Having nominated pictures like Black Panther and A Star is Born didn’t hurt either.)

This is a roundabout way of saying that I actually think that the Emmys going without a host is a good idea as well. The Emmys hasn’t had quite the same problems as the Oscars the past decade – though admittedly the fact that they seem to give the same awards to the same people year after year hasn’t helped – but it’s definitely there. Some have done well – Stephen Colbert and Andy Samberg have been doing a good job in particular – but a lot of time, the Emmys can be even more arduous to go through than the Oscars. If Michael Che and Colin Jost can’t make the Emmys funny, something’s wrong. Will getting rid of the emcee solve the problem?

It’s not the same issue as the Oscars, of course.  Television has been generally a lot more interesting than a lot of the films that have come out over the past decade, and TV famously doesn’t hold firm to the same patterns that the Oscars do. They’ve been doing a much better job giving awards to people of color than the Oscars have over the past decade, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of the Oscar-winning actors this years had a sizable amount of success in TV before they came here. Viola Davis and Regina King would almost certainly have never been considered for Oscars without the Emmys.

What I do think would be the better habit would be, without a host, the Emmys would concentrate less on stupid self-congratulation, and make it about the shows, stupid. I’d actually like to see something like the Oscars, where they pay tribute to some of the nominated series. Someone should be talking up Ozark and The Good Place. And maybe without a hosts monologue, they’ll let some of the winners talk longer than 45 seconds. I’d have been more than willing to go without Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen last year, if I could’ve heard the writers for The Americans have a two minute speech.

More to the point, I think there’s a certain logic in awards shows going hostless. The Golden Globes went without a host for more than a decade, and I never saw anybody complain about it. The SAG awards only started having a host last year, and they were often far more entertaining that a lot of other award shows.

What is a host of an awards shows job, anyway? They have to stroke the egos of the people attending, and mock them just enough so that the people at home are entertained. It’s a precarious balance, and none of the hosts seem able to maintain it. (Well, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can, but those women can make anything funny.). The Oscars, almost by blind luck managed to solve this Gordian knot with a slash of their swords. It’s been a long time since I’ve said this about anything, but maybe it’s a good thing that the Emmys is going to take a page from the Oscars this year. Just no Game of Thrones dance numbers, please.

Deadwood Episode Guide: A Two-Headed Beast

Written by David Milch

Directed by Daniel Minahan

In a rare personal interjection to this guide, a short time past when I was engaged in compiling a list of the 50 greatest episodes of the 21^st century, and the time came to consider what entry from Deadwood would best suit the list’s needs, I ultimately came to a rest ‘A Two-Headed Beast’. There were many episodes that could have filled that void (in retrospect, ‘Boy-The-Earth-Talks-To’ might have been a better choice) but in many ways it is the best option, not because it best represents what makes the series great, but because it shows that it didn’t need the key element – Milch’s dialogue – to make it outstanding.

The major event of the episode deals with the tension between Dan and Hearst’s main representative, Captain Turner. Hearst uses the opportunity of meeting with Adams to have Turner call Dan in a coward and to carry the message to Dan. Dority is already pissed to no end, and this message sends him to a boil, to the point that when Al tells him to wait, Dan stops just short of calling him on his paralysis. Al then moves back to his quarters, and tries to figure things out, talking to the Chief:

Watching us advance on your stupid teepee, Chief, knowing that you had to make your move, did you not want first to fucking understand?

He then does he hasn’t done all season, and has a conversation with Farnum. By this point, E.B. has basically been put into exile by Al and his cohorts, who basically tell him when he shows up that the sale of his hotel has labeled him persona non grata, where he was barely tolerated before. (“We was never boon companions, E.B.”, Dan spits at him.) Al admits his utter inability to figure out what is going on in Hearst’s mind, and that he doesn’t know why he wants Turner and Dan to throw down. That said, he clearly doesn’t trust Farnum anymore, and basically sends him on his way.

Bullock is similarly angry at Hearst, albeit for a more direct reason. Another of the Cornish organizers is murdered, and if Hearst’s people were barely being subtle in their actions before, they’re now flaunting it by leaving the third man’s body in the thoroughfare with a knife in his chest. Bullock storms into the Gem saying that he plans to act against Hearst. Al persuades him to wait a bit (at this point, Adams is basically speaking for him). He doesn’t know that by doing so, he will be a practically impossible situation impossible to resolve.

Al then finally says that he can’t figure out what to do, so he tells Dan: “Go and fight.” In the preparations, Johnny offers to shoot Turner if things go wrong,  Dan basically tells him, he’ll kill Johnny if that happens. Turner and Hearst have a polite conversation (one of the few Hearst has with a man he clearly respects), with the understanding that they’ve done this before and will be over quick.

The fight that unfolds is the centerpiece of the episode, and unlike any that would unfold on the series, or for that matter, in television before or since.  It puts to shame all the choreographed ballets of so many of the battles such as The Matrix  and indeed, like so many of the ones we were seeing on 24 and Alias at the same time.  This isn’t Asian kung fu, this is a street brawl, and its fricking ugly. As Milch himself would put it about Dority and Turner: “They are champions who represent their masters and both men are stripped bare in their fighting.” All of the mud and filth that is the camp, Dan and Turner are literally rolling around it, and it is telling that even in a place where violence is second nature, no one even tries to interfere with what is happening. The resident may not know why this is going on, but they see Hearst in his veranda, and Al on his balcony, and they know that this is a clash of titans.

By the end of the fight, both men are throwing punches from their gut. Turner momentarily gains the advantage on Dan, but he looks to Hearst to give him a signal, and he doesn’t get it. Dan takes the advantage to gouge an eye out of its socket, and after Al gives the signal that Hearst failed to, Dan puts Turner out of his misery.

In the aftermath, Dan literally sits alone in his room. He refuses to let the Doc treat him, and when Johnny asks to bring him a bottle or a whore, he refuses them to. Johnny is so concerned that he visits Swearengen near the end of the episode:

JOHNNY: I wish you’d look in on Dan, boss, not for being poorly as down.

SWEARENGEN: Johnny. Some shit’s best walked through alone.

JOHNNY: Dan’s killed people before, and you have too, and neither been solitary after.

SWEARENGEN: Fair fight – something Dan and I both look to avoid – the light goes out their eyes, it’s just you and death.

Al is still contemplative, and does something rare and asks Johnny to sit with him: “to see what hell breaks loose.”

And to understand just what kind of hell breaks loose, we must go back to the Sheriff.  He has followed through with Sol’s idea, and has arranged for both Hostetler and Fields to sign their names to the loan simultaneously. Hostetler and Steve go to the bank, and follow through with the rest of the procedure. (Everyone is so on edge in the payout that none of them seem to notice that Alma is clearly not herself. She seems to know that a handshake would be a bad idea, and not only does she ask for it, she spent several seconds waiting. The only one who picks up on it is Trixie.) But even this fails when Steve demands the chalkboard where several months ago, he wrote ‘I fucked Bullock’s horse’.

What happens next is a clear symbol of just how implacable even the possibility of civilization is in the camp. Bullock, Steve, Fields and Hostetler spend hours searching the livery for the board, which Fields hid months ago. When they finally find it, the writing has been worn away by time. Steve refuses to accept as the actual board, and Hostetler driven to extremes tells Steve angrily: “I will not be called a fucking liar. I did not live my life for that.” Even given that, no one expects Hostetler to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Bullock, seeing his efforts at reconciliation end so tragically, decides to act against Hearst. And in his typical way of acting, he has done so at the worst possible time. Hearst enters the Bella Union looking subdued for the only real time in the series. He goes to the bar, and asks for “Whiskey please, leave the bottle, I just saw to a friend’s remains.”  He then introduces himself to Jack the bartender, treating him with none of the arrogance we have come to associate with him. Tolliver comes in, hears to what has happened, and in a rare moment of subtlety for him, actually fulfills to duty of a bartender as sympathetic ear, with no hidden agenda. There is the briefest of moments when we actually think this mind end peacefully.

The Bullock storms in and provokes Hearst. All of Hearst’ placidity fades away in an instant:

HEARST: When I say to fuck yourself, Sheriff, will you lay that to drunkenness or a high estimate of your athleticism?

BULLOCK: Did you just tell me to fuck myself?

HEARST: I think I did, and to shut up or I’ll quiet you myself.

BULLOCK: You’re under arrest.

HEARST: Fuck you, and shut up or I’ll shut you up for good.

BULLOCK: Threatening a peace officer. I’m taking you into custody.

In a rare moment of lucidity, Tolliver tells Bullock not to be stupid. Bullock ignores him and drags him out of the Gem and down the thoroughfare. Swearengen, watching with Johnny, says: “The sheriff eliminates several of our options.” The two men at complete loggerheads for the length of the series know just how huge a mistake Bullock has made, but it’s unlikely either could have stopped him.

The last real domino in these events involves Alma. In an interview with Merrick discussing the bank, and in the scene the exchange of title involving Hostetler and Steve, only Trixie seems able to tells that Alma is clearly high.  She’s still stewing over it when she comes to see Sol later that night. She finally reaches the limits of it when we see her mixing opium that night, and then making a weak attempt to seduce Ellsworth. In a critical moment, she moves the mirror opposite her bed, so she doesn’t her performance with Ellsworth in it. Her husband, however, is to clear-headed to be fooled by this, and when it happens, not only does he reject her, he effectively ends their sham of a marriage.

Earlier in the episode, Tolliver confronts Leon and reads that he has been feeding his habit. He misreads the situation, and assumes that he has been copping for Lila, who is still on the needle. Threatened with pain, Leon confirms he’s been getting drugs for Alma.  Tolliver now has information that can be used to get Hearst what he wants, and given what happens at the end of the episode, there is every inclination that in doing so, he will lay the entire camp to ruin.

Why Are The Emmys Recognizing Game of Thrones Even Though It Sucked? Part 1, A Critical Comparison

I have made it clear numerous times on this column that I have no patience for Game of Thrones. I think it’s ridiculously violent, overly sexual, and so misogynistic towards its younger female characters that I’m rather amazed #MeToo never set up a criticism. But my biggest problem with the series is that for more than a decade, it has dominated the Emmy nominations and awards so much that a lot of my favorite series have basically been denies any form of recognition during its run.

So understandably, I was upset when the Emmys gave the series 32 nominations this year – a record for any program. What makes this even more remarkable is that throughout the final six episodes, the cacophony from critics and many of the series biggest boosters was at a crescendo before the final episode. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that the series will win again (I’ll get to my logic there in the article), but it does kind of beg the question: why are the Emmy judges, especially in the middle of the Golden Age determined to over-recognize a final season that not only destroyed many fans faith in the series, but made just as many question why they watched the series in the first place?

Now, as a historian of television in general, and of the last twenty years in particular, I decided to see if there was another angle to this that other commentators and bloggers have not yet approached. So I decided to consider, has this kind of overreaction to a final season have any historical precedent? In order to do so, I decided that I would compare Game of Thrones final season, to four other series that have claim to the list greatest of all time, received a considerable amount of recognition from the Emmys, how they handled the build up to the final season, and how that final episode played out. I will then compare and contrast them to the last season of Game of Thrones.

The four series I have selected are, in order of their premiere dates, The Sopranos, Lost, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.

(Note: I am assuming that everybody in the world knows at least some of the details of how these five series played out. For those of you who don’t: Decade Old Spoiler Warnings Ahead!)

1.      How the Final Season Was Planned

The Sopranos: David Chase announced in late 2004 that the sixth season would be the last and HBO would air 16 episodes over two years.

Lost:  Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announced in 2007 that there would be three final seasons, each sixteen episodes long, concluding in 2010.

Mad Men: Showrunner Matt Weiner planned for the show to end after seven seasons. AMC eventually decided to split the seventh season into two seasons of seven episodes each, ending in May 2015 because…

Breaking Bad: Showrunner Vince Gilligan decided to air Season 5 in two blocks of eight episodes, which concluded in October of 2013.

Game of Thrones: Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decided, after much debate to end the series after eight seasons. Season 7 aired in June of 2017, Season 8 started in April of this year.

2.      Did the Writers Have A Plan?

The Sopranos: It’s hard to say. One of the many things that made The Sopranos a groundbreaker is that so much of the series had no overarching narrative. Chase and his co-writers were notorious for planning to have major characters be at the center of later seasons, only to kill them off before they reached their full potential.

Lost: Cuse and Lindelof went to great detail to say that they the final season mostly planned out by the time they got there, but while they were writing it, they cut bait on a lot of ideas. For example, the Temple storyline, which the series had spent several seasons building two, ended quickly when the writers realized the folly of introducing new characters this late into their story.

Mad Men: Yes. Matthew Weiner had always planned to end the series with the end of the 1960s.

Breaking Bad: Yes. Gilligan opened the first part of Season 5 with a flashforward that played out in the final episode, and ended that same sequence with Hank finally learned that Walter White was Heisenberg.

Game of Thrones: In theory, Benioff and Weiss were working off the notes that George R.R. Martin had for A Song of Ice and Fire. But they had left the books in a couple of key instances in the fifth season, so it’s hard to say for sure.

3.      How Did Critics and Fans React to The Last Season Initially?

The Sopranos: Mostly critics were impressed. There was disappointment with some storylines (Vito in New Hampshire and Christopher’s heroin addiction), but some of the strongest episodes (Kennedy and Heidi, where Christopher dies, and The Blue Comet, the penultimate episode) are regarded as among the series best.

Lost: What is generally forgotten is how much fans were taken up with the flash-sideways timeline at least for the first half of the season. Ab Aeterno, the episode which reveals Richard Alpert’s history is considered one of the greatest episodes in the shows history. The problems began in The Candidate, when Sayid, Jin and Sun were killed in the sub explosion. After that, there was a real backlash.

Mad Men: Harder to measure because Mad Men had been one of those series that built up over the course of a thirteen episode season, and now they were cut in half. Still, the general consensus is by the middle of the second half, the show was firing on all cylinders.

Breaking Bad: Worked all the way. Watching Walter White finally complete his rise to power was exceptional TV. And the second half of the final season may be the greatest final season of any series in history. Some critics have mentioned that any one of the last four episodes could easily have served as a final episode, and fans would’ve been satisfied.

Game of Thrones: Fans and critics started complaining almost immediately. There had been gripes in the penultimate group of six episodes that the characters were starting to act afield. But when the final contestants for the Iron Throne began to campaign, people started to get royally pissed.  They thought the romantic storylines were not playing out, they didn’t like how the alliances were being arranged, and they were incredibly angry that Danerys Targeyen, the character that had spent much of the series being built up as the heroine of the story, turned into a monster in the final few episodes. By the time of episode 5, there was a petition online signed by nearly a quarter of a million fans of the show demanded that HBO reshoot the final season.

4.      How The Ending Played Out

The Sopranos: When the show ended, or didn’t, millions at home wonder if the cable had gone out before Tony got shot. Even now, people are still arguing what happened, and David Chase will not enlighten anyone. The overall effect was that many people consider the ending diminished the series as a whole, though time has been a lot kinder to it than many of the others.

Lost: Oh boy. It’s been nearly a decade, and people are still pissed off about it ended. To the point that Lindelof and Cuse keep getting hate mail. There are those like Nikki Stafford, who thought that the final episode really did make sense, and helped bring the show to a satisfying conclusion, and there are those like Emily Nussbaum, who believe the entire series came down to a fight over a glowing cave and a bereavement holodeck. I have a feeling no one’s ever going to be happy with this.

Mad Men: As a general rule, critics were satisfied with how many of the individual storylines (Joan’s opening her own business; Roger settling down with a woman his own age) But the final shot of Don Draper seemingly using his enlightenment to come up with the idea of a Coke commercial, there are a fair amount of fans angry.

Breaking Bad: About the only complaint anyone gave about Felina was that it was Ozymandias, which many people (myself included) consider one of the greatest TV episodes ever made. Still, seeing Walter tell Skyler: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. It made me feel alive” is still one of the greatest moments in TV history.

Game of Thrones: The nuclear fallout from The Iron Throne is still descending. But I think it’s safe to say that the writers have royally screwed up. It’s one thing to isolate the critics. It’s one thing to alienate the fans. But when your lead actress tells magazines she doesn’t like how her character’s arc played out, you’ve reached a special level of mucking it up. The only series on this list with a similar level of controversy over its ending is Lost, and even now, nearly a decade later, none of the cast has ever publicly commented that they were disappointed with how the show ended. This is, to quote some friends of mine, next level shit.

There’s one last aspect about the final episode of Game of Thrones that I’d like to note for this article, and that as the official fan ranking for the series at imdb.com

Now, while imdb.com has many virtues, I’m not always wild about their system of ranking television. This is, after all, a system that has so few safeguards its easy to imagine the millions of die-hard fans coming aboard to buck up a series they love against all reason. However, that very shortcoming may illustrate better than anything else just how badly Game of Thrones screwed the dragon.

For comparison, I’ll list the final marks for the four series finales I previously mentioned:

The Sopranos, ‘Made in America’: 9.2

Lost, The End: 8.2

Mad Men, Person to Person: 9.3

Breaking Bad, ‘Felina’: 9.9

And for Game of Thrones, The Iron Throne’ (drum roll please…) 4.2.

Consider that for a very long moment. Some of the most divisive finales in history were still regarded very highly by their fan base. But ‘The Iron Throne’ was so loathed that it has the rating of badly made porn movies. Hell, this is literally at the same score that Plan 9 From Outer Space.  Which means this episode was considered nearly as bad as the worst film ever made.

And it’s actually more astounding than that. For the previous four series finales, I mentioned, the average number of critics was between 1500 for Mad Men and 75 thousand for Breaking Bad.  ‘The Iron Throne’ had over two hundred thousand people critiquing the final episode. It’s pretty clear that even the most rapid of Game of Thrones followers, the writers clearly and truly took a dragon-sized dump on what millions previously had considered one of the greatest series of all time.

So, if critics hated how the series ended, and the fans loathed how the series ended, why the hell did the Emmys go so overboard to recognize the show with 32 nominations? I’ve racked my brain for weeks trying to come up with a solution, and I can come up with only one plausible explanation.

The narrative coming out of Hollywood for the nearly two years leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones was that this was going to be a flashpoint in modern culture. Game of Thrones was, in the minds of many, the last true ‘water cooler’ series we would ever see on TV, the last show that would be a critical and ratings hit for the entire world. (I could make a strong counter argument for The West Wing or Lost, but let’s that go.) When it came to an end, it would be the end of an era for television. And when the final season turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments in the history of television, the Emmys decided, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

That and the overall laziness of the Academy voters in general. As I have mentioned over and over, Emmy voters have the habit of nominating the same series year after year, no matter how much the quality of the series declines. It was true for House of Cards, for Will & Grace, and The West Wing (the series whose record the Emmys broke), and there’s no particular reason the Emmys should stop now when they’re considerably behind the curve.

So, this begs the question: will the Emmys follow their own track record, and decide to give Best Drama to the final season that alienated people so much that any hope HBO has of continuing the franchise in prequels may be seriously damaged?

Well, let’s consider as an example the four previous series. It worked for The Sopranos, which prevailed in 2007. (Hell, the voters even gave ‘Made in America’ the Best Writing award.) They were more than willing to give Breaking Bad its due. However, the final season of Mad Men didn’t do as well (mainly because Game of Thrones was the big winner the last year.)  Lost had its best year at the Emmys, getting twelve nominations, but the stigma of the finale may have loomed so large that the Emmys didn’t recognize it. (Then again, the competition included Breaking Bad and Mad Men both of which had enjoyed superlative seasons, so it’s hard to say here.)

Casual observers may say: well the Emmys gave the show 32 nominations, so it’s a done deal. But this is not necessarily the case. The series that set the original record that Game of Thrones broke – NYPD Blue in 1994 – was an even larger groundbreaker than Game of Thrones ever was. Yet it ended up losing Best Drama to Picket Fences that year. The very next season ER - which was a far bigger popular success than Game of Thrones can ever claim to be – got twenty nominations, but lost Best Drama – to NYPD Blue. The Emmys is notorious for setting up overwhelming favorites in the nominations, and then having them end up doing very badly when it comes to the big prize. Game of Thrones knows that better than most: during the years the series was at its peak – the first four seasons – it would constantly dominate the nominations, but end up losing –twice to Breaking Bad.

And there are signs that many critics feel the same way. As I mentioned in an earlier article, the TV Critics Association chose not to even nominate the series for Best Drama and give its top prize to Better Call Saul. The Peabodys chose to honor Killing Eve and Pose. And earlier this year, the SAG Awards chose to give their top prize to This is Us. All of these series are up for Best Drama, and all have a better argument for winning than Game of Thrones does, much of which comes down to Game of Thrones has won three times. None of them have.

So, is it likely that Game of Thrones is going to end up winning the prize for Best Drama in about six weeks? Unfortunately, it is. But it is possible that Emmy voters, having seen the episode, and more importantly, knowing just how bad the critical response is, might decide to go with another, better series? You can’t rule it out, which is one of the reasons I like the Emmys so much. Let’s hope that they remember the Starbucks cup in Westeros before they decide just how great this series was.

Deadwood Episode Guide: Full Faith and Credit

Written by Ted Mann

Directed by Ed Bianchi

Another problem with the third season of Deadwood is that, more often than not, there are episodes like this where things seem to be happening, but they are buildup with no apparent climax. Where the season works is when it calls back to the past and reveals the harsher divides in the camp and, in a larger sense with society.

This is clear in the major action of the episode. Fields and Hostetler, who left the camp in search of the horse that trampled William Bullock  now return. (Fields has sent a telegraph to Jane announcing their eminent return, but Jane who knows what a bad idea this is, can barely read it to Charlie before the two have ridden back in. In the interval, the overly angry Steve has been caring for horses in the livery. We see him in a rare moment of peace, but the second he sees Hostetler back, he returns to the Number 10, and starts berating his bad fortune which he blames on blacks in general. He becomes so belligerent that after he leaves, Tom actually gets a gun which he holds beneath the barn.

Hostetler’s immediate concern is to bring back the horse and to apologize to Bullock for what he has done, and to try and resume the plans he discussed with Fields when we last saw them. The possibility that Seth is channeling whatever residual grief he may have over William’s death into the rage that powers him is a possibility, but it is more likely the inexorability of the conflict he sees coming is filling him with anger. When Hostetler and Bullock enter the Number 10, and Hostetler simply tries to offer thanks, Steve basically tells Bullock ‘to translate for him’, and continues to ‘indirectly’ use every single slur imaginable – ‘ape’ is the kindest word he uses. Bullock practically has to yank Hostetler outside to stop the two from coming to blows right there.

Bullock then tries to negotiate a ‘plea agreement’ – Hostetler, who was planning to go to Oregon will sell the livery to Steve. He manages to get both parties to agree to it, then goes to the new ‘Bank of Deadwood’ (we’ll get to that in a moment) and negotiates a loan and papers. But when the time comes for both parties to sign off, each man wants the other to sign first – a clear point that the two can’t coexist in the camp. Sol comes to a solution – have them sign simultaneously the next morning ‘when their dicks are down’. But that night Seth confides in bed with Martha that he just can’t see this ending well, though I’m pretty sure not even could foresee what was coming.

Swearengen is still in recovery from Hearst’s attack on him. When the episode opens, Hearst waves at him from his ‘veranda’, and Al doesn’t even acknowledge him. Dan take on itself when Hearst says good morning:

“Best time of day to go fuck yourself.”

He doesn’t provoke Hearst, but he does provoke Turner, who comes to the Gem with a message for Swearengen. When Swearengen makes an offhanded remark about his attack, Turner ignores him, and concentrates on the offense Dan gave, which he considers more pressing.  Dan has now decided that he’s going to ‘kill that cocksucker’, and Al responds: “All in good time”

But Al is more disturbed by this then he lets on. The message Turner comes says for him to meet with Hearst and Tolliver later, and he is clearly unmanned by it. This leads to another monologue while Dolly is trying to fellate him, only this time he is angry because he is unable to ‘come and clear his head’. He blames Dolly for her technique, and then, for small talk asks who does she favor in the election. She tells him Starr for Mayor and Manning for Sheriff, and when he tells her he prefers Bullock, she says: “Bullock yells at you.”

At the meeting, Tolliver is fully willing to act as ‘Hearst’s dog’, but by now Al has given up even the niceties of negotiating. He refuses to kowtow to Hearst any more, and finally gets to the point where he says he will not even meet with Hearst, and that he will have Adams as his representative from here on out. Even at a loss, Al is still the strategist. He demeans Silas in a public, and then makes it clear that the reason he’s chosen Adams as his second is because, not knowing him, Hearst might think Silas will betray his boss – something that Dan, for example, would never do.

But Al is still trying to deal with his own sense of impotence. He ends up confiding in Langrishe – the last person who’d understand and yet already the one person Al is willing to confide in – about the situation, and Jack suggests trying a different hour. Al does so, and then starts blaming Dolly again, and then gets to the core of the matter, by telling another story, comparing how Turner held him reminded him of a similar situation at the orphanage, where he says the proctor stopped him from getting to go with his mother on a ship to New Orleans. This sounds wrong (Milch himself said in his writing that this is Swearengen lying to himself) and that he doesn’t like being held back. Dolly tells him that she doesn’t like it either, and in  a rare moment of self-realization, he realizes he’s been doing the exact same thing to Dolly. When she doesn’t hurt (Milch says by this point ‘she has fallen in love with him’, he hands her some whiskey, and adds ‘Bless you for being a fucking fibber.”

There are other actions going on within this episode, one critical, one less so. As I mentioned earlier, Alma officially opens the Bank of Deadwood, a move that will eventually lead to Hearst escalating his war against her. Unfortunately, at this critical juncture, Alma has decided to impede herself again. This episode confirms what the Doc suspected before – Alma has become addicted to laudanum. And if she was subtle in a way that Trixie didn’t suspect, she flaunts it now. Leon, Tolliver’s opium addicted craps dealer, comes to the bank to secure a loan. Trixie immediately picks up on what is going on, and if Bullock wasn’t so caught up in the Hostetler-Steve drama he might too,. That night, we see married and engaged in the luxury of a new house, but rather than spending time with her child, she is watching for Leon to show up. When she appears, the impression is of a vampire detecting the scent of blood. In a matter of days, all the progress she has made since coming to the camp is gone, and she is the ‘haughty cunt, weak for dope’ that Farnum related to Hearst in the last episode.

The other story going on involves Langrishe’s search for a theater for his troupe. In the last episode, he approached Joanie, and she basically told him to ‘fuck off’ before he could make his intentions clear. In this episode, he comes forward and tries again. Joanie is still unsettled, but goes to Charlie first with her own doubts. As is the case in their unlikely friendship, Charlie (who is dealing with the mess with Hostetler’s arrival) takes the time out of his schedule to try and work the issue out. Joanie admits that she’d been willing to do it, if Langrishe would be willing to build a schoolhouse for the children to replace the Chez Ami’s role. Charlie then approaches Bullock in the midst of his crisis, and in dealing with the idea, Seth actually manages to calm down for a moment. Jack then goes to talk to Al about it, and again we see some insight into his own character. Despite the fact she worked for Tolliver, and was, however, briefly a rival to him, he understands what happened to her, and gives his opinion: “She’s all right.” Considering he can only tolerate Bullock in small doses, this is praise from Caesar.

That night, Joanie agrees to the sale of the Chez Ami at a more than fair price. One of the sweetest moments in a dark series comes when Joanie tells Jane about it, and Jane says that she can sleep anywhere ‘south of the graveyard’. By now, it has become crystal clear that the two are falling in love, even if neither is acknowledging it, even to themselves.  Only when they say their niceties does Jane ask: “So where do you think they’ll put the stage?” Joanie admits: “I don’t know. Ain’t our calling, I guess.”

Perhaps in retrospect, ‘Full Faith and Credit’ is the last bit of calm before the storm. The events involving Hearst are bubbling beneath the surface, and starting in the very next episode, every single problem is going to erupt.

This Spinoff Doesn't Suit Gina Torres: Pearson Review

As I have said, and will continue to say, there are so many series on the air that even very successful series I will have no choice but to bypass. One such show was USA’s Suits. A legal drama ostensibly centered on a New York law firm, involving two protagonists, one of whom (Patrick J. Adams) was hired even though he didn’t have a law degree. I have a fan of the legal-based drama, but this series sounded a bit one-note, and frankly, I was kind of astonished how successful was the longer it stayed on the air. Even though it had several actors whose work I admired, and even though actual royalty worked on the series (I’d never heard of Meghan Markle before she marked Prince Harry), I just couldn’t bring myself to get involved.

However, there was one actress on the series who I did admire before she appeared on suits: Gina Torres. Known to me for her work on two of Joss Whedon’s cult classics, as well as the early years of Alias, another series dear to my heart, I have always admired Torres’ capabilities, and have always figured that she deserved to play the lead of something. In July, my wish was fulfilled, as her character from Suits actually got the title role in Pearson.  And she is every bit as good as I thought she could be. I just wish she had better material to work with.

Jessica Pearson apparently lost her law license in an earlier story on Suits, but still seems to have a lot of the savvy that her character had. She has landed the role as the Mayor of Chicago (Morgan Spector) fixer – a job she seems to have landed in order to drop a lawsuit against developers tearing down a housing project, where among others, her estranged cousin and her family live.

In what is becoming a rather tired gimmick for so many of these series, no one is happy when she takes her new job. Not the Mayor’s legal counsel Keri, who in the grand tradition of so many series, is having an affair with the mayor. Not the mayor’s bodyman, Nick, an ex-cop, who seems to be the mayor’s half-brother. And certainly not Pat McGahm (Wayne Duvall), the construction magnate who seems to be the power behind everything in Chicago, and is clearly holding something over him. Her family seems to bear a grudge, and her boyfriend, a U.S. Attorney (DB Woodside) thinks taking the job is suicidal. Only the mayor’s idealistic press secretary and Jessica’s intern seem to give a damn about what she does.

By far the best thing about the series is Torres’ work as Pearson. It would be easy enough to write her off as a poor woman’s Olivia Pope. But Jessica actually seems to give a damn about people almost despite herself. Her whole reason for taking the job was to get her family a new place to live, even if none of them are particularly warm to the idea. And Jessica still seems to have a level of idealism mixed in with her realpolitic – she is willing to give a person who trashed her on social media a job, not so much to help herself, but because there is a genuine connection there.  And she does seem to worry about what this job will do to her soul – something no one in Shondaland ever seemed to care about.

Unfortunately, everything else connected to Pearson is rehashed from other series. So much of the politics involved were done so much better in The Good Wife, particularly to bit done with Peter Florrick and Eli. Talking over each about perception versus policy is basically a poor man’s Aaron Sorkin. Even the idea of a show about the Mayor of Chicago was done better in the failed Starz series’ Boss. None of the other characters seem capable of rising above two dimensions. Even the efforts to show that McGahn, who everybody in this town quakes at, is basically a big fish in a small pond, is something we’ve basically seen on other USA shows.

I don’t know if Pearson has a life as a series. One wouldn’t think Suits could’ve lasted eight seasons, much less inspired a spin-off. It has some intriguing ideas, but it’s hard to know of they’d go anywhere. Pearson seems to be stuck between the dark anti-heroine types of cable, and the crisis a week idea of network shows, and frankly is more successful with the latter than the former. Maybe if Jessica were just a fixer the series would be more solid, but there’s so much baggage attached – there’s a killing, and at least one formal investigation into the Mayor – that it doesn’t seem willing to stand on its own merits. Torres is resplendent – she is what Kerry Washington spent seven seasons on Scandal trying to be – but ultimately, this show plays far too small to be a success at either.

My score: 2.5 stars.