Deadwood Season 1 Episode 1 Review: “Deadwood”

Over the course of the next few months, many of us at TVOvermind will be participating in our summer rewatch project and reviewing some of our favorite series of all-time that have left a major stamp on television and pop culture in general. One of the shows Hunter Bishop will be taking a look back at is “Deadwood,” which ran from 2004 to 2006 on HBO. 

Deadwood is as much a classic as Mad Men or Breaking Bad, and yet, like The Wire, I hadn’t seen it either. Perhaps my TV knowledge is not as airtight as I’d like to believe. Let’s get started.

The law is corrupt; of that, there is no doubt. The laws are made by those in power, and oftentimes those in power take great pains to disenfranchise those who are not. It’s tempting to think that anarchy would be a better solution; that it can’t be any worse with people making their own rules than having rules set upon you that are designed to hurt you.

Corruption pervades the law and twists it. But it’s not because law itself is inherently corrupt. No, rather, law imposes order on the power vacuum that is human behavior. Law rests in the blackest, darkest void of human nature, and it serves as a floating city for everyone to live on. It isn’t perfect, but it is better than the alternative.

Seth Bullock does not say this out loud, but I think that he believes it. This is a man who is so committed to the letter of the law that he will lynch a man with his bare hands instead of allowing a mob to kill him because that’s what the law says. It’s not a matter of right or wrong, personal or impersonal; he and the horse thief have a pleasant conversation, even as Bullock’s arm is in a sling from a would make by the thief’s gun.

It’s strange to watch as Seth Bullock and his partner Sol Starr hold off a liquored up and armed mob, just so that they can kill the thief themselves. The only thing that can possibly come to mind at that moment, for everyone but Bullock, is why? What’s the point? It would be safer, easier for Bullock to just hand him over. The result is the same, and he keeps himself and Starr out of danger. But he can’t. He strings him up and hangs him and then pulls his feet so that his neck breaks and the man doesn’t suffer.

Bullock reminds me of Wyatt Earp, and I’m sure that’s not a coincidence. Both were lawmen who left the law to try and make a living otherwise. But while both eventually returned to the law, there was no reluctance on the part of Bullock. While Earp drug his feet until he could no longer ignore the situation, Bullock turned back into a lawman as easily as he breathed. I realized then that he hadn’t turned on his back on the law so much as he turned his back on being a lawman. He didn’t want to be a Marshall, but he believed in following the law.

It’s not so surprising, then, that he was drawn to the town of Deadwood. Where else would he go but to a place that has no law? The law thrives best in a place that has none; that is when it can function without interference, or compassion, or gray-area moralizing. No, in a town with no law, only the law can exist without impunity. Seth Bullock may have believed that he was running from the law when he took his wagon into Deadwood, but he was really running towards it.

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And indeed, Deadwood does have laws. The first thing that Bullock and Starr come across is construction regulations; they can rent the property for ten dollars a day, but they can only have a tent, no construction allowed. The law around those parts is a saloon/brothel owner named Al Swearengen, about as close to the Western white male archetype as possible. He’s everything you want in a dictator: ruthless, callous, and fair. His interest is self-interest, and that means keeping his customers alive and spending. He doesn’t want chaos, he doesn’t want murder (unless you cross him and threaten a business deal); he wants things to continue along the status quo.

His word is law. If you are on his good side, you will have a good time. If you aren’t, he’s as much a swindling two-timing killer as the rest. Everyone is out for themselves, and nobody knows that better than Al.

But his biggest issue is that his grip is tenuous, and will always be tenuous; it’s not hard to regard his role in the taking of Brom Garrett as a simple con, but it’s more than that. He set up that deal so that he could bleed Bron Garrett dry slowly, consistently. What Tim Driscoll, in his infinite stupidity, could not see is that $20,000 is great, but that’s all they’ll get now. The key to a good pyramid scheme is to slowly take money from donors, not all of it at once. That way, you always have money coming in, and the marks don’t get suspicious. Now, he’ll have to give some back, so that Brom can give more later, and that’s a really risky proposition.

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I think that you can split Al Swearengen and Seth Bullock into two neat categories: Corporate Law and The Law. Al has rules that can bend, and possibly break, if they serve a larger purpose; he would’ve given up the horse thief without a blink of an eye. He is Corporate Law. Bullock, on the other hand, is The Law. The rules are rules, no matter the cost, because the rules are the guide to better living. But this lacks compassion and nuance. That man on the horse might have been part of the raiding party that killed that family. Hell, he probably was. But he had no choice but to fight, to pull his pistol and take his chances, because there was no doubt that he was going to be hanged. The Law stated that he needed to get off his horse, and he didn’t comply. So The Law ended him; a bullet through the eye from Wild Bill Hickok, and he lay on the round with his finger still curled around the trigger of his gun.

The Law is scarcely better than Corporate Law, because over time both will rack up their fair share of bodies. It’s only when you combine something like the two do you create anything resembling a peaceful society, but we’re a long, long way from that. People like Wild Bill Hickok are revered and feared because they have impunity. That cheap metal badge gives them power over others, and that power is as black as night and as white as snow. There are bad people who do good things, and there are good people who do bad things. Corporate Law can differentiate, but only if it feels like it. The Law cannot, and wouldn’t care if it could.

We’re in a world of frontier justice now. A world that feels so romantic and stylized. A road with language that spews forth from even the lowest of men and women. There are real people here, all trying to find their way in a place that would drop them off a cliff if it meant surviving another day. I suspect that Seth Bullock is going to try and change that. I suspect that many, many people will die. I suspect that many of them will deserve it, and that Seth Bullock is going to come face to face with a situation that will cause him to reconsider his commitment to The Law.

But that’s all for later. All we have now is one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen, and man, is that enough for now.

[Photo via HBO]