Jim Brown was the greatest running back professional football has ever seen. And he left at the peak of his career, in large part, due to a dispute over money.

Let me be the first to make the assertion that HBO's incomparable Western series "Deadwood" is the Jim Brown of drama. We have never seen anything like it, and it's unlikely we will ever again.

Oddly, I am at peace with Deadwood ending at just the current three seasons, with a promise of two more 2-hour movies to come. This way, nobody can ever claim that the show "jumped the shark" or collapsed under its own preposterous story lines.

Even better is that we can re-live the show from start to finish on DVD and not cringe at early episodes that might have missed the mark (Seinfeld) or be bored by things we already know (Lost).

Deadwood's glory lies in the details. The rich, layered and often "too-hard-to-understand- completely-on-just-one-viewing" kind of details. Deadwood didn't spoon-feed you like you were some moron on the couch who needed his hand held through another CSI episode.

In fact, I can't wait to go back and remember when the only real dangers in camp were catching a cold or getting shot while playing cards. I want to remember when Al Swearengen was the meanest mother****** you had ever seen. I want to relive every glorious curve of creator David Milch's visionary story arc.

Milch always wanted to make the actual town of Deadwood, the central star of the show, not any one person.

He succeeded.

The fictional camp of Deadwood, S.D. (not unlike the real camp and now city of the same name) was a perfect microcosm of what America was then, is now, and will always be: an aggressive, power-driven, money-obsessed, lustful, free-wheeling, fun loving, violence-laced society that somehow retains its civility and better virtues throughout it all.

Sure, there were lots of ways to die in Deadwood. Shall I count them?

Having your throat slit.

Being thrown off a mountain.

Being stabbed in the (pick your body part).

Being shot in the (pick your body part).

Being pushed onto antler horns.

Having your eyeball pried out and bashed with a board.

Being drowned in a tub.

Having a brain tumor.

Blowing your own brains out.

Bashing an Indian's head in with a rock.

Getting run over by a horse.

And that doesn't even count the ways to ALMOST die in Deadwood, which were often worse than just buying the farm.

Like having a kidney stone treated with something called a "gleet." Or being dropped off in the woods to die of the plague. Best yet, getting kicked square in the temple by a horse.

Amidst all that savagery, Milch constantly showed the American impulse for self-betterment. Whether it was Joanie having her own whorehouse (then schoolhouse), Trixie with her accounting, Bullock as the Sheriff, E.B. Farnum as "Mayor," or even the Little "N" General with the livery -- the characters were all STRIVING for something more.

And the characters' more generous personality traits were always right there beneath the muddy surface of Deadwood. As Charlie Utter said in that meeting about Bullock's condolence letter in the paper: "It says that's the kind of people we are, and we don't give a f*** who knows it."

In addition to being one of the most violent shows in TV history, it was also one of the most profanity-laden shows in TV history. Thank God it was safely out of reach from the FCC and snooty parents protest groups.

Throw in some gratuitous, late 19th-century whorehouse boobies, and what was there NOT to like about the show? The fact that Milch eagerly employed the two nuclear "C-Bombs" of modern English (both the four-letter one that women hate, and the ten-letter one which will start a fight between men) was brilliant.

 Page 1 of 2 (view all on one page)

Next >>

26 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...