A friend at The Post the other day described “Deadwood,” HBO’s swearladen Western, as the complete opposite of HBO’s swear-laden Eastern, “The Sopranos.”
“The Sopranos,” she said, is about an organization devolving into chaos. While “Deadwood” is about chaos devolving into organization.
And that’s exactly what sets these two dramas apart from almost anything else on the air – they’re not just about outlaw characters, but about how the law is creeping into the lives of these outlaws.
While you’ll have to wait a while for “The Sopranos” to return, you’ll be happy to know that “Deadwood” returns this Sunday night and it’s as lean, mean and wicked as ever, with the aptly named Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) managing to snarl the “f,” “s” and “c” words about eight times in his first 60-second scene.
What’s Al so mad about? Nothing in particular – he’s Al Swear-Engine and he’s just angry for a living!
But even before Al gets to swearing, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant, who has the best walk in the world) visits the (now very rich) widow Alma (Molly Parker) in her hotel room so they can tend to some business.
And before you know it, order devolves into chaos and Bullock stops walking long enough to start, er, lying down and tending to monkey buisness. Since he never smiles, Alma delivers one of the great apre-sex lines ever uttered on TV. (No, I’m not going to tell you.)
Meantime, mean ol’ Al, none too happy with the couple’s developing relationship, ends up in a brutal public brawl with Bullock, which nearly kills them both.
As they are lying in their own blood and guts, the stagecoach pulls into town filled with a bunch of new characters.
There’s a litter of new whores – but they aren’t heading for Cy Tolliver’s (Powers Boothe) highclass whore-and-gambling joint, the Bella Union. Instead, they’re going to work for Tolliver’s favorite whore, Joanie (Kim Dickens).
Joanie – who has until now been Cy’s trusted employee (after all, didn’t he buy her fair and square when she was 14?) – has come into some dough and is ready to cut loose and open her own cat house on the hill. Not good. Really.
The other two passengers on the stage are Bullock’s dead brother’s widow and little son. Sure, fine – except that Bullock, we’re reminded, has fulfilled some kind of bizarre biblical or familial obligation and married the woman!
He hardly knows her; he doesn’t love her; and Alma’s going to go nuts. Ah, nothing like the Old, New West.
While the cursing in “Deadwood” is wa-a-ay out there, we’re told that the writers spent a huge amount of time researching it. They swear, this is the way they talked way out West, way back when.
Of course, there weren’t any reality shows in the 19th century, so really, who knows?
What I do know is that “Deadwood” is not only nutty, but insanely watchable.
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“Deadwood”
[****] (Four stars)
Sunday night at 9 on HBO
