Season 2 finale
I have yet to see the third and final season of Deadwood but I'm already feeling nostalgic. Sometimes when a show is that good you wish you could be a newbie all over again to discover a tv treasure. With the return of Breaking Bad next week I've decided that I would save the third season of Deadwood for the time when I will be deprived of brilliant shows.
Once again there was so much to parse and mull over in that episode. "Boy the Earth Talks To" is an episode about odd and unlikely alliances, unions made out of necessity.
"Today is the day", Sol says, for it's wedding day in Deadwood, so I guess that some time has passed between "The Whores Can Come" and this episode.
The episode opens with Wu escaping and going to the Chinese alley to confront his rival. Two men are killed (one is Lee's, one is Wu's) but Johnny steps in when Wu and Lee are about to fight...it's a funny moment for Johnny is also carrying a lamb (I think it was lamb) on his shoulders, but he manages to drag Wu into the Gem. In other words, disaster aborted. Al is still angry for Deadwood's future might be on the verge of being sealed. The last thing he needs is a war between the two Chinese leaders.
Hearst's arrival is anticlimatic, but Al spots him immediately in the street.. By the way I found Ian McShane especially attractive at the beginning of the episode...
So the odd alliances, the main and parallel unions made out of necessity are of course Alma marrying Ellsworth and Al closing the deal with Jarry (Bullock, or "His Holliness the Sheriff" as Al brillantly put it, serving as witness for that union) and therefore making Deadwood part of Dakota territory (on terms that Al considers the most favourable).
But in a way, there's also the alliance between Mr Wu and America, with Wu accepting that it is his true home now, after he and "the fabulous three" (I mean Dan, Johnny and Silas) took care of Mr Lee. It's a funny moment when Al's three men wear Chinese dresses and masks to sneak into the alley, the hilarious bit being Johnny asking Silas "wanna swap masks?" and Silas shaking his head! I loved that exchange because it showed a very childish side (after all they are playing dressed-up!) and I think it's one of the key themes here, hence the title "The Boy the Earth Talks To".
To explain what I mean, I need to talk about the odd Martha/Seth scene as they are awkwardly sitting on parallel chairs. The scene tells me that there's a gap between them, but they share tea and they have a conversation (not a "morning conversation" yet but season 3
might go there...). Martha is wounded but willing to stay and teach the camp's children, and Seth is "delighted". Despite the fact that Alma's wedding is obviously very painful for Seth, there's hope for the Bullock couple. But the most important thing is what Martha says concerning the mourning and her fears about wearing black while schooling the kids. I might be wrong but I understood it in a meta level, as if Milch was using that conversation to say something about the episode, and actually about the writing of the show. Martha doesn't want "to lose him", meaning her child of course, so she will remain in mourning clothes but she says that it will be fine and her pupils won't be scared by all that black, as long as there's love and joy in her teaching.
The same thing seems to work for the camp and for a show that can be dark and gritty but that still provides moments of joy and love. The metaphorical children, who must not be afraid, are both the characters - often childish in behaviour in the episode - and the viewers that we are. And the ending of the episode made the point, mixing, in a final sequence on a cheerful soundtrack, a dance that was a pure moment of joy, reminiscent of Tom's bicycle race, and deaths (Lee is murdered, Wolcott commits suicide); pain and regret (Bullock drinking to drown his sorrow; Alma's walk and eventually her watching Seth watch her and then go back home; Francis Wolcott on the verge of tears), and hope (William's seeds have begun to grow; elections are on their way). It is summed up in Al's "love and comfort await" or his gentle smile in the last shot.
And, speaking of Martha's speech, I found very interesting that Hearst keeps calling gold (or is $?) "the colour", "securing the colour" being his motto. It looked like the counterpoint of Martha's mourning, black actually being a lack of colour.
Love and joy then. Joy came from the comic reliefs. E.B was his usual grotesque self (Hearst had him right when he said: ""Looks like he stepped out of a specimen box" after E.B mentioned having a "digestive crisis"), and Jarry was quite a clown too (Al didn't laugh though and I loved that Seth wiped off his hand after shaking Jarry's!). Seeing Jane wear a dress and be so ill at ease with underwears was fun too (Joanie totally made up the supertition about undergaments!). But the most funny scene was of course the scene in which the trio put the Chinese dresses and the masks on. E.B's behaviour was very childish between his sharing with other his bowels' issues (as if his usual verbal diarrhoea needed a physical match!) and his behaviour with the money he got from selling his hotel to Hearst (who takes anything he wants and who even started making changes, tearing a wall down during the wedding!).
As for love, there it was, in the way Ellsworth danced with Sophia, Al talked Tom into quitting drinking and made him laugh with his "Every so often there's a love match", or in that sweet scene between Trixie and Jewel, and even sweeter scene in the end when Cochran hugged Jewel from behind while dancing along. And when Sol came to take Trixie to the wedding, Al, talking to them from his balcony ("Whirling her around's OK, Star. Just don't turn on her fucking toes")sounded as if he was giving his blessing to that true love match (what a change compared to season 1!). By the way I really like Paula Malcomson as an actress and to think that that lucky bitch got to be John Hawkes's lover on Deadwood and Eric Stoltz's wife on Caprica! BITCH !!!!
"The Boy the Earth Talks To" is revealed to be Hearst's Indian name, because of his skills, but other characters behave like boys in the episode: Wu, E.B, the trio (Dan and Johnny have always been boys and Silas seems to be contaminated by the boyshness now that he is a member of the team), the dancers...and of course Francis Wolcott. The Hearst/Francis scene is rather sad. Here we have Hearst whom Cy Tolliver told about Wolcott's killings (kinda blackmailing him), and who obviously didn't know the specifics of his geologist's bad habit until now. Or at least he didn't want to know. Then Wolcott has great lines like "What if the Earth talks to you to get us to arrange its amusements?" and then he becomes the boy Earth talks to and says that Earth whispers to his ears that "there is no sin". So, because Francis is now a weakness instead of being an asset Hearst decides to severe their connection. Hearing that, Wolcott goes all teary, like a boy whose heart has been broken. Their alliance wasn't a love match, at least not from Hearst's side. I knew then that Wolcott's fate was sealed and he would die - on the contrary the one thing that I didn't expect was Andy stabbing Cy's guts.
Later, we see Francis Wolcott as he is writing a letter in his room, a scene that recalled a similar moment in a previous episode (he wrote to Hearst at the time) but there's a rope in the background, and the scene mostly reminded me of Hickock writing to his wife before his murder...and also I couldn't help thinking of the razor scene just before Charlie came in the same room to talk about Wild Bill's last letter and how he threatened to throw Wolcott through the window...so all those echoes made the whole thing quite poetical and it was obviously a last message from a suicide.
Francis walking in the street afterwards, and seeing the joyful dancing around him, also reminded me of his smile during Tom's bicycle race, except that this time he walked away from the community he was never part of, towards his death. It is as if the moments of joy shared by the community were to be followed by a boy's death over and over. Of course Wolcott was a killer, and his suicidal tendancies have been there for a while, so his death isn't as tragic as William's, but seeing his body drop from the window where he hung himself was still sad. At the same time, another killer, Moses, seemed about to start a new life...
Speaking of touching moments, Alma's walk towards the graveyard with the voice-over revealing her confession to her late husband was a beautiful scene, one of Deadwood's best monologues, filled with poetry and melancholy. I found especially poignant her "I am afraid. I am so afraid that my life is living me and that it will soon be over and that not a moment of it will be my own" which seemed to echo what Trixie told her in the previous episode about making choices that are ours. But Ellsworth is a good man indeed.
The episode and the season ends with Al's watching the joyful dance, after another disaster has been averted (Bullock turned right and went home), and smiling, but to be honest I prefered the ending of season 1 with Cochran and Jewel dancing together in the Gem. I get that the community theme demanded that there would be many more dancers this time and it would take place in the thoroughfare, and that it was a way to balance William's funeral (love and joy to make up for the mourning as Martha said!) but I loved the quiet moment of kindness of the season 1 final scene.
And for some reason, Stapleton (another comic relief in the show) watching the bison's head and saying "Something strikes me fucking melancholy about that creature" is also one of my favourite scenes in this episode.
There, in the Bella Union, there's typical totem of the Wild West, another head matching, in a way, the Indian Chief's head that Al keeps in a box and talks to. The building up of a civilization, the making of a community is a beautiful thing indeed, but there's always a price to pay, compromises to make, and there are outcasts and losers for whom there's no happy ending.
Once again there was so much to parse and mull over in that episode. "Boy the Earth Talks To" is an episode about odd and unlikely alliances, unions made out of necessity.
"Today is the day", Sol says, for it's wedding day in Deadwood, so I guess that some time has passed between "The Whores Can Come" and this episode.
The episode opens with Wu escaping and going to the Chinese alley to confront his rival. Two men are killed (one is Lee's, one is Wu's) but Johnny steps in when Wu and Lee are about to fight...it's a funny moment for Johnny is also carrying a lamb (I think it was lamb) on his shoulders, but he manages to drag Wu into the Gem. In other words, disaster aborted. Al is still angry for Deadwood's future might be on the verge of being sealed. The last thing he needs is a war between the two Chinese leaders.
Hearst's arrival is anticlimatic, but Al spots him immediately in the street.. By the way I found Ian McShane especially attractive at the beginning of the episode...
So the odd alliances, the main and parallel unions made out of necessity are of course Alma marrying Ellsworth and Al closing the deal with Jarry (Bullock, or "His Holliness the Sheriff" as Al brillantly put it, serving as witness for that union) and therefore making Deadwood part of Dakota territory (on terms that Al considers the most favourable).
But in a way, there's also the alliance between Mr Wu and America, with Wu accepting that it is his true home now, after he and "the fabulous three" (I mean Dan, Johnny and Silas) took care of Mr Lee. It's a funny moment when Al's three men wear Chinese dresses and masks to sneak into the alley, the hilarious bit being Johnny asking Silas "wanna swap masks?" and Silas shaking his head! I loved that exchange because it showed a very childish side (after all they are playing dressed-up!) and I think it's one of the key themes here, hence the title "The Boy the Earth Talks To".
To explain what I mean, I need to talk about the odd Martha/Seth scene as they are awkwardly sitting on parallel chairs. The scene tells me that there's a gap between them, but they share tea and they have a conversation (not a "morning conversation" yet but season 3
might go there...). Martha is wounded but willing to stay and teach the camp's children, and Seth is "delighted". Despite the fact that Alma's wedding is obviously very painful for Seth, there's hope for the Bullock couple. But the most important thing is what Martha says concerning the mourning and her fears about wearing black while schooling the kids. I might be wrong but I understood it in a meta level, as if Milch was using that conversation to say something about the episode, and actually about the writing of the show. Martha doesn't want "to lose him", meaning her child of course, so she will remain in mourning clothes but she says that it will be fine and her pupils won't be scared by all that black, as long as there's love and joy in her teaching.
The same thing seems to work for the camp and for a show that can be dark and gritty but that still provides moments of joy and love. The metaphorical children, who must not be afraid, are both the characters - often childish in behaviour in the episode - and the viewers that we are. And the ending of the episode made the point, mixing, in a final sequence on a cheerful soundtrack, a dance that was a pure moment of joy, reminiscent of Tom's bicycle race, and deaths (Lee is murdered, Wolcott commits suicide); pain and regret (Bullock drinking to drown his sorrow; Alma's walk and eventually her watching Seth watch her and then go back home; Francis Wolcott on the verge of tears), and hope (William's seeds have begun to grow; elections are on their way). It is summed up in Al's "love and comfort await" or his gentle smile in the last shot.
And, speaking of Martha's speech, I found very interesting that Hearst keeps calling gold (or is $?) "the colour", "securing the colour" being his motto. It looked like the counterpoint of Martha's mourning, black actually being a lack of colour.
Love and joy then. Joy came from the comic reliefs. E.B was his usual grotesque self (Hearst had him right when he said: ""Looks like he stepped out of a specimen box" after E.B mentioned having a "digestive crisis"), and Jarry was quite a clown too (Al didn't laugh though and I loved that Seth wiped off his hand after shaking Jarry's!). Seeing Jane wear a dress and be so ill at ease with underwears was fun too (Joanie totally made up the supertition about undergaments!). But the most funny scene was of course the scene in which the trio put the Chinese dresses and the masks on. E.B's behaviour was very childish between his sharing with other his bowels' issues (as if his usual verbal diarrhoea needed a physical match!) and his behaviour with the money he got from selling his hotel to Hearst (who takes anything he wants and who even started making changes, tearing a wall down during the wedding!).
As for love, there it was, in the way Ellsworth danced with Sophia, Al talked Tom into quitting drinking and made him laugh with his "Every so often there's a love match", or in that sweet scene between Trixie and Jewel, and even sweeter scene in the end when Cochran hugged Jewel from behind while dancing along. And when Sol came to take Trixie to the wedding, Al, talking to them from his balcony ("Whirling her around's OK, Star. Just don't turn on her fucking toes")sounded as if he was giving his blessing to that true love match (what a change compared to season 1!). By the way I really like Paula Malcomson as an actress and to think that that lucky bitch got to be John Hawkes's lover on Deadwood and Eric Stoltz's wife on Caprica! BITCH !!!!
"The Boy the Earth Talks To" is revealed to be Hearst's Indian name, because of his skills, but other characters behave like boys in the episode: Wu, E.B, the trio (Dan and Johnny have always been boys and Silas seems to be contaminated by the boyshness now that he is a member of the team), the dancers...and of course Francis Wolcott. The Hearst/Francis scene is rather sad. Here we have Hearst whom Cy Tolliver told about Wolcott's killings (kinda blackmailing him), and who obviously didn't know the specifics of his geologist's bad habit until now. Or at least he didn't want to know. Then Wolcott has great lines like "What if the Earth talks to you to get us to arrange its amusements?" and then he becomes the boy Earth talks to and says that Earth whispers to his ears that "there is no sin". So, because Francis is now a weakness instead of being an asset Hearst decides to severe their connection. Hearing that, Wolcott goes all teary, like a boy whose heart has been broken. Their alliance wasn't a love match, at least not from Hearst's side. I knew then that Wolcott's fate was sealed and he would die - on the contrary the one thing that I didn't expect was Andy stabbing Cy's guts.
Later, we see Francis Wolcott as he is writing a letter in his room, a scene that recalled a similar moment in a previous episode (he wrote to Hearst at the time) but there's a rope in the background, and the scene mostly reminded me of Hickock writing to his wife before his murder...and also I couldn't help thinking of the razor scene just before Charlie came in the same room to talk about Wild Bill's last letter and how he threatened to throw Wolcott through the window...so all those echoes made the whole thing quite poetical and it was obviously a last message from a suicide.
Francis walking in the street afterwards, and seeing the joyful dancing around him, also reminded me of his smile during Tom's bicycle race, except that this time he walked away from the community he was never part of, towards his death. It is as if the moments of joy shared by the community were to be followed by a boy's death over and over. Of course Wolcott was a killer, and his suicidal tendancies have been there for a while, so his death isn't as tragic as William's, but seeing his body drop from the window where he hung himself was still sad. At the same time, another killer, Moses, seemed about to start a new life...
Speaking of touching moments, Alma's walk towards the graveyard with the voice-over revealing her confession to her late husband was a beautiful scene, one of Deadwood's best monologues, filled with poetry and melancholy. I found especially poignant her "I am afraid. I am so afraid that my life is living me and that it will soon be over and that not a moment of it will be my own" which seemed to echo what Trixie told her in the previous episode about making choices that are ours. But Ellsworth is a good man indeed.
The episode and the season ends with Al's watching the joyful dance, after another disaster has been averted (Bullock turned right and went home), and smiling, but to be honest I prefered the ending of season 1 with Cochran and Jewel dancing together in the Gem. I get that the community theme demanded that there would be many more dancers this time and it would take place in the thoroughfare, and that it was a way to balance William's funeral (love and joy to make up for the mourning as Martha said!) but I loved the quiet moment of kindness of the season 1 final scene.
And for some reason, Stapleton (another comic relief in the show) watching the bison's head and saying "Something strikes me fucking melancholy about that creature" is also one of my favourite scenes in this episode.
There, in the Bella Union, there's typical totem of the Wild West, another head matching, in a way, the Indian Chief's head that Al keeps in a box and talks to. The building up of a civilization, the making of a community is a beautiful thing indeed, but there's always a price to pay, compromises to make, and there are outcasts and losers for whom there's no happy ending.