Deadwood Episode Guide: Amateur Night

Written by Nick Towne & Zach Whedon

Directed by Adam Davidson

Hearst spends much of this episode, and the remainder of Season 3, trying to assume the position that Swearengen held at the end of Season 2 – the master of all events, and controller of the town. Having brought his pistoleros into town last night, he orders them to ride throughout the town as a symbol of brute force. He orders Barrett, his replacement for Captain Turner to supervise, and to beat Merrick for his actions the previous day. As he puts it: “That I authored his discomfiture should come clear only as events accumulate. He now seems determined not to communicate with anyone else in the town, as it is now clear that Tolliver was completely in the dark. When Adams comes to see him, and asks about the riders, he replies:

TOLLIVER: Tell Al as we didn’t wake to the Apocalypse I s’pose we only need fear their Winchesters.

Bullock knows that trouble is on the horizon and tells Martha the combination of the safe. He spends much of the episode holding his temper in check, and doing his best to try and live up to his badge. This comes at the most critical juncture when Morgan Earp has a series of angry interactions with one of them, which leads to Morgan killing him. Barrett tries to cause a scene, but Seth intervenes, and manages to jail him for his interference. When Johnny comes bearing Al’s message, he managed to express almost entirely what Al would say, and manages to convince the Earps to leave the camp. It doesn’t take much persuasion; the timber lease they came to work is a dud, and they don’t want any more conflict to ensue.

Al’s main problem this episode is trying to stay on top of events, and not realize how behind things he is. Commissioner Jarry returns from Yankton, and Al is agitated (though still content enough to send Adams to talk with him) and he spends much of the episode trying to deal with Wu, who is set upon in the thoroughfare, and comes in with his usual display of drawings. It is a measure of just how irritated Al is that Johnny manages to successfully interpret that Wu has 150 Chinese fighters in Custer City waiting on Al’s orders.

Hearst does everything he can to disrupt and sow discord throughout the camp. So perhaps the most important action anyone can take at this point is to act like nothing has changed. Throughout the episode, time and again, the characters do their best to act as if everything is normal. The most symbolic event involves the schoolhouse. Langrishe and his theater company have finished their purchase of the Chez Ami, which tonight they convert into the Deadwood Theatre. Langrishe goes throughout the camp promoting an ‘Amateur Night’. He goes to the bank, and charms Alma and Trixie with the information, then goes to Charlie and tells him the same. In order for this to happen, the children must walk from their old schoolhouse to the new one. Joanie spends much of the episode looking for Jane, who is sleeping off one of her alcoholic stupors. Mose encounters her in an alley, and in what is a rare display of asperity for him, shoves her and yells to get her up and dressed. She then wakes up, goes to Joanie, and because she still has the shakes (that’s what she’s telling herself) takes Joanie’s hand. Bullock finishes seeing to Barrett, and joins Martha in bringing up the rear. The entire camp stops and watches the action, with Hearst looking disturbed. To quote the script: “he observes them with brave, private resignation, that by dint of his greatness, Life and Destiny have denied him the simple joys of having to do with his fellow and their pain-in-the-balls offspring.” Al has nothing to do with it, but this is his best response - education and growth against authoritarian power and control.

Hearst is incapable of human interaction, so he does the only thing he can: he brings about destruction. This is perhaps the most clear in what he does to Aunt Lou. In the previous episode, after doing everything in her power to stop Odell from getting involved with Hearst, she makes a last, desperate effort to intervene:

AUNT LOU: I’d pay a man three weeks of my wages, Mr. Hearst, ‘rode quick to catch my son and give him this from his Mama. Searched and searched before he left, come to find it with him gone.

HEARST: Lovely garnet. It does seem a moral law we find that we seek only tardily.

AUNT LOU: Would you send someone Sir?

HEARST: My imagination resists the approach, Aunt Lou, in that however quickly he might catch Odell, until he did, the man would know he rode in service to a colored person. I’d suggest, having packed the brooch securely, we ship it to New York…

AUNT LOU: All right.

HEARST: Are you afraid that by his not receiving today the token of your love something untoward might befall Odell? Are you superstitious that way?

This is a person he claims to care about, and he treats her with barely held contempt. And while what follows is inevitable, he deals with it in one of the cruelest and most poignant scenes in the show.  Aunt Lou is teaching Richardson how to prepare and bag a ham for smoking, and Hearst enters and tells her that Odell is dead. She runs from his pathetic attempt to comfort, into the arms of Richardson, who weeps: “I’m sorry Mama”, while all she can say is: “I can’t take it, I can’t take it.” The far more telling scene comes afterward, when she continues to make supper despite Hearst’s attempt to tell her not to carry on; when he leaves with Jarry, she mutters over and over: “I’d kill you, George Hearst.” In her own way, by denying him action, she is doing what the rest of the town is trying to do.

Hearst is incapable of dealing with this. So as the entire camp (almost) gathers around to watch the Amateur Night in another great scene of unity, he does the only thing he can, and makes further plans. Jarry has come to camp with the purpose of informing Hearst that the Governor has provided soldiers with the sole purpose of voting in the upcoming elections exactly as Hearst wants. (He has also come to escape the odors of scandal of Indian agents like him, siphoning off government assistance. As Adams puts in with great irony: “If it was less than ninety cents on the dollar, you fucked generations of Indian agents to come. “ Jarry doesn’t even bother to hedge that it was less than that.)

As the entire camps observes moments of genuine frivolity and joy (my favorite moment remains Richardson’s impressive skills at juggling, which last until Farnum sees it, and jealously orders him off the stage), the two main bosses of the camp deal with this unity in their own way.

A critical scene in this episode involves what seems at first to be something innocuous and almost a rare display of padding. The new school was built around a tree, and Joanie spends much of the episode trying to get information on who built it around the tree and why he did it. As Charlie asks:

CHARLIE: Why does she need to know where the man got to Mrs. Bullock to tell the children about the tree?

JOANIE: To finish the story.

CHARLIE: More than where the man got to once he was through, I’d think the story was of the tree and the schoolhouse built around it. I guess you’re right though. I guess children are like that, wanting to know all the information. I guess that’s how they are.

As the night progresses, Jane and Joanie discuss the question, noting one of the children has built a house in the tree.

And then Tolliver shows up. No doubt pissed at being on the outside of events (with Hearst and the camp as a whole) he dares breach the perimeter of the schoolhouse, and looks at this tree with vitriolic contempt:

“Is that a darling fucking treehouse in the precious fucking branches for the shitheel little kids to play amongst in jolly joy?”

It takes the nervous combination of Joanie, Jane and Mose to get him out of the school.

 Al, who has had his hands full during the day, allows all his workers and colleagues to attend the Amateur Night, but even though Langrishe is his friend and The Gem is deserted, he seems to regard with contempt. But in the last scene of the episode, he stands behind the bar, and softly sings the old ditty: “The Unfortunate Rake”. He sings at well, and there’s no attempt to milk it for humor. (Indeed, where as every other episode of Deadwood ends with a record of an appropriate folk ballad, this episode alone ends with Swearengen’s song, and some timely guitar.) It is the rare exposure of a gentle side of Swearengen (something Milch and his colleagues very rarely let us see) and we realize that it is something that he would not even admit to the Chief. Like Tolliver, he stands apart from the camp, but it is because he is a leader, not because he isolates himself. It is a beautiful moment, and it stands as the final one as the calm before the inevitable storm.