Written by Regina
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
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:
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: I want to help myself. If Liberia
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
ELLSWORTH: Not having me in this house is
gonna improve your odds.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment