Deadwood Episode Guide: Tell Him Something Pretty

Written by Ted Mann

Directed by Mark Tinker

Let’s be completely forthright here: even if Tell Him Something Pretty had been only the final episode of Season 3, I imagine there would still have been a significant amount of disappointment among the loyalist fans of Deadwood. Those who complained about all of the flaws that made up most of Season 3 would still complain here – after the season long struggle against Hearst, which all signs had been leading up to an epic final battle, the series ends with only blood we see being shed on the floor of the Gem. The fact that this would’ve been disloyal to the history of Deadwood as a whole would not have deterred those in the slightest.

Indeed, to do so would be going against the action of Season 3 as a whole – the inability of the camp to stand against the force of capitalism, manifested by Hearst. Against her desire to give the bastard what he wants, Alma agrees to sell her claim to Hearst, so that she and Sofia can remain in the camp safely. Even the final transaction between the two, with Sol and Bullock standing as seconds, two of Hearst’s men on his side is filled with all of the tension of the season, reflecting when Bullock demands to oversee the final payment:

HEARST: May I hope, Madam, you do not subscribe to this insulting and juvenile protection?

ALMA: I do not find the protection juvenile, so many have been murdered with whom you’ve had dealings in this camp.

HEARST: At least you acknowledge the insult

ALMA: I acknowledge the pretense of civility in a man so brutally vicious as vapid and grotesque. (Hearst takes this in, Alma rises, and Hearst does the same.)

HEARST: See the gold taken to her bank, Newman. Have its purity assayed. Let her or her seconds choose the man. When that tedium is completed have the documents witnessed as if we were all Jews and bring the business back to me. Excuse my absence, Mr. Star, as I hope you forgive my thoughtless aspersion upon your race. You stand for local office, but certain contests being county-wide, I await wires from the other camps. (Then as Alma leaves) You’ve changed your scent.

BULLOCK: Can’t shut up. Every bully I ever met can’t shut their fucking mouth. Except when he’s afraid.

HEARST: You mistake for fear, Mister Bullock, what is in fact preoccupation. I’m having a conversation you cannot hear.

Now that all of this chaos is unfolding, Hearst doesn’t even seem to care that he’s realized his objectives. It has been made inevitably clear that Hearst only cares about the earth, as it made so abundant in his final conversation with Langrishe. Its unlikely Hearst’s nickname was ever made known to anyone in the camp, so when Langrishe discusses “a vestige of childhood take in which not only humans spoke but other creatures too. Mountains and streams.” When Hearst tells him, “I imagine she speaks to me still,” Langrishe tells him that such a conversation can be isolating. And the way Hearst considers it an insult means that he doesn’t care to talk to anything else.

The major business of the episode seems to be in preparation for war, and what Al fears will eventually lead to the final conflict comes down to the failed assassination attempt on him. Hearst has realized that it is a whore who shot at him, perhaps figuring that Al arranged for it to take place. He then demands from Al the life of the woman who shot him.  As is his nature, Swearengen gambles on one final deception: assuming Hearst paid more attention to her body than her face, he plans to substitute the body of Jen rather than Trixie. If Hearst falls for it, he will stay his hand.

Of all the whores, next to Dolly, we’ve glimpsed Jen the most over the season, and it is evident from the moment he makes his intentions known that it becomes clear that Johnny has fallen in love with her. Sean Bridgers has spent much of the series as comic relief, playing the idiot foil to Dan and Al, but in this episode, he gives a truly moving performance. He makes the offer to Al to do it himself, tears in his eyes. He then has Jen go into a separate room, and tells her to look at a blank wall, as he tries to muster up the balls to do it:

JOHNNY: In that wall… are ants. The soldier ants and the workers ants and the whore ants to fuck the soldier and the workers… baby ants… everyone’s got a task to hew to Jen.”

This is the poorest model of society, no doubt ones that Yankton and Hearst and the America they are preparing to join believe. It has neither the morality nor love that stills Johnny’s hand on the knife. He even makes a valiant, muted stand against the man he believes in. Al reluctantly tells Dan to knock Johnny out, and send Jen in. In his final monologue with the Chief, he admits that this will lead to the ruination of his operation, but nevertheless he can’t do the easy thing and kill Trixie, because:

SWEARENGEN: I ain’t killing her that sat nights with me sick and took smacks to her mug that were some less than fucking fair. And the hour’s passed for a try with a knife at him. I should’ve fucking learned to use a gun, but I’m so fucking entrenched in my ways. You ain’t exactly the one to be leveling criticisms on the score of being slow to adapt. You fucking people are the original slow fucking learners.

We don’t actually see Al kill Jen, in a rare act of modesty for this show, which has seen so many bloody murders. We are far more concerned with the aftermath, as is the entire camp which gathers in the Gem before the final viewing of the body. Al knows that all of this depends on Hearst’s inability to tell one human being from another. Prior he makes one final instruction:

SWEARENGEN: We show united in the prelude when he’s making his entrance and the fucking like. Comes to the viewing the body, I stand for virtue alone. The deception failing, I’ll make a pass at him with my blade, in the aftermath, play the lie as mine, knowing I speak of you in heaven. Others owe thought to the future – their thinking straightforward don’t come that naturally to.

Al is willing to sacrifice his life for the camp. Hearst is satisfied, and makes to leave wiping his bloody boots on the floorboard.

But even in departure, Hearst can’t resist talking like a bully. He taunts Bullock about having lost the election for sheriff, all the way to Al’s door. When Merrick tries to talk to him about not mentioning his shooting in his paper, Hearst casually says: “I’ve given up reading your paper, Mr. Merrick. I’ll have my people start another one, to lie the other way.” (He has literally begun his publishing empire out of pure spite.) And he takes a final look at the town, not knowing he courts one last bullet, before casually riding off.

He has also committed one last action that none of the group knows about – he has ‘rewarded’ Tolliver to be in charge of the camp. Throughout the series, Tolliver has become more and more isolated. It is telling that everyone converges on the Gem in penultimate episode, while in the last one, the Bella Union, save for Tolliver’s workers, is empty. When Joanie comes in to see Tolliver, as if to express some thanks for saving her from death all he offers are insults: “Do you have to drive cattle to eat your pussy?” and “Help me understand cunt, Lord.” His last actions are to stab Leon in the leg for no apparent reason, and then pull his gun to try and shoot Hearst, knowing full well it will lead to his death afterward. And when he loses his nerves, he points the gun at Janine, the last employee he hired, who exposes herself to him, before he storms off. He has completed the action he did since arriving: he has destroyed his family.

Yet again, the camp is in peril. Neither Tolliver nor Hearst is capable of the leadership qualities that even Al is capable of providing. And it is hard to imagine any man – this is Deadwood, after all – being able to stand against the world at large. One is reminded very vividly of the final image of the episode – Al on his knees, scrubbing out the blood he’s spill. Johnny’s asks him if Jen suffered. Al says: “It was as gentle as I could make it, and that’s all I’ll fucking say of it.” When Johnny leaves, Al has the last words: “Wants me to tell him something pretty.”

But for all of the bleakness in the episode, there are bits of hope. Jane comes as close as she can to find home in the camp, when Joanie brings her a gift from Charlie – the coat of Wild Bill. Sol and Trixie are seen running together through the thorough, Trixie still feeling the shame for Jen’s death (one of her last scenes was dressing Jen in her clothes to complete the deception). But the fact that Sol cares for her, and was willing to consider raising Sofia with her, offers a sign of renewal.

And then, there are the elections themselves. One could make the argument that they are an irrelevant backdrop – Hearst has bought them out, even though the end result did lead to Sol becoming Mayor. And yet, I couldn’t help but remember one of Aaron Sorkin’s characters in The West Wing saying in a similar context: “The process matters more than the result.” At one point, we see one of Hearst pistoleros making threatening gestures towards ‘General’ Fields’. Rutherford, the resident of Number 10, and town shit-stirrer points out: “that the right to vote shall not be abridged or denied… 15^th Amendment to the Constitution.” When they threaten Fields with a lynching, Charlie, who is a poll watcher, warns him that: “If he don’t make it, you’ll be eating your spuds running til I hunt you down.  And we see Richardson, dressed up neatly and for once without his antlers, proudly dropping his ballot in the box. There are no guarantees, but to quote Charlie one last time: “You do fucking good…in aid of the larger purpose.