Rating: - Of course the show is awesome. I won't write yet another review. Here are some fun facts and comments:
Deadwood is one of the best TV shows ever made. If we consider it with films thrown into the mix as well, it would be the best western of all time. Its dramatic impact as well as the depth and complexity of its characters are almost unparalleled. It easily puts other, more popular shows to shame, making The Sopranos, for instance, seem sophomoric and silly in comparison. Obviously the show is awesome, so instead of writing yet another review, I will offer some random comments and fun facts.

-First, the cast is almost flawless. Almost. What would have been a flawless cast suffers greatly because of one of its leads: Timothy Olyphant. How did he land that role? He can't act and he's goofy looking. Watching him walk around the streets of Deadwood throwing his pseudo-menacing glances around with the acting depth of Steven Seagal is laughable. Even more laughable are his constant attempts to imitate Clint Eastwood. Too bad.

-Many people objected to the profanity in the show. It is both anachronistic and accurate. How? Well, it's accurate in that people would have been cussing, a lot. They just wouldn't have been using the words that we today like to use. Milch thought it would be too comedic to have a bunch of people running around saying things like "You dern varmint" and sounding like Yosemite Sam, so he opted instead for the anachronistic, modern profanities used instead. This fact is poked fun at in one episode when Farnum makes a comment about an ancient Italian maxim fitting a situation. Wolcott says the gist is "s#!t out of luck," to which Farnum asks, "Did they speak that way then?" (By the way, the guy who plays Wolcott also plays McCall on the show--I don't like it when shows "recycle" actors, but oh well.)

-Other than the anachronistic swear words, the language used is pretty authentic in my opinion. The language would have been a mixture of rough miner talk and Victorian-era discourse. Educated people were much more eloquent back then than they are today, a fact that is well represented in the complex dialogue exchanges in the show.

-Deadwood is high on the verisimilitude scale. It feels authentic, but is full of historical inaccuracies. Many of the characters are based on real people, such as Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Calamity Jane, Hickok and Charlie Utter. In real life, however, Bullock was married to his childhood sweetheart, not his sister-in-law. The Bella Union was owned by one Tom Miller. Cy, Joannie and Eddie are fictional characters. So is Alma.

-The guy going around with the "soap with a prize inside" scam is based on Soapy Smith. He would attract large audiences with this claim. An accomplice in the audience would buy a bar and find that cash was in the wrapper. Audience members saw Smith placing large bills in certain wrappers and then placing those soaps in with the others, but, through sleight of hand, none of these were actually sold to customers. He would sell down the stack of soap, with accomplices "finding" cash in their soap wrappers. He would then announce that the soap with the $100 bill hasn't been purchased yet, and auction off all the rest of the bars at a high price. In reality none of the wrappers had cash in them. In real life Soapy Smith was very successful, running criminal enterprises larger than Swearengen's. I do not think he ever operated in Deadwood. His most famous scam was a "telegraph office" in Alaska where he would charge people to send telegrams. Apparently nobody realized that there were no telegraph lines leading to the town (or the telegraph office for that matter).

-Some other interesting tidbits on factual characters: In real life Charlie Utter was very dashing and charismatic. He only wore the finest suits, was very particular about his long, blond hair and moustache, and insisted on bathing each and every day--something that was quite unusual then. If accurately portrayed, Utter would have perhaps been the most dashing character on the show. In her autobiography Calamity Jane claims that she is Wild Bill's ex wife. (Why they make her a lesbian in the show I don't know.) Hickok's funeral was a big to do in real life, not a small ceremony. History has it that Hickok always sat with his back to a corner to avoid being attacked from behind, and that on that night in Nuttall's No. 10 saloon there simply wasn't a seat available with its back to a wall. The show, however, suggests that Hickok had a death wish and knew that McCall was going to kill him.

-Deadwood magazine claims that the real Al Swearengen was much more sinister and brutal than how he is portrayed in the show. He would lure women to Deadwood with false promises and then beat them until they agreed to work as prostitutes. He was married when the show takes place, but his wife left him on the grounds of abuse. He was married two more times. Both wives also left him because of abuse. Swearengen's original saloon featured "prize fights" between miners. The winners never actually received prizes. When he opened The Gem Variety Theater he made as much as $10,000 a night, which would today be equivalent to as much as $180,000 a night! The original Gem burned down in 1879, two years after season three of the show occurs. It was later rebuilt much larger. The real Swearengen was from Iowa, not England, and Wikipedia reports that a recently recovered obituary shows that he was found dead in Denver in 1904 with a massive head wound.

-If you're like me, and like your whiskey, watching this show will want to make you drink some. I tried to find what whiskey they would be drinking on the show. Another anachronism emerged: Whiskey bottles would not have had printed labels on them back then. There would be some glass, embossed bottles, but the whiskey at The Gem would come in barrels and likely be served in ceramic jugs. Some whiskeys that may have been drunk: They mention Basil Hayden on the show. Beam produces a pricy Basil Hayden whiskey, but know that Basil Hayden's recipe is today sold as Old Grand-Dad (Grand-Dad being Basil Hayden). Old Overholt was the most popular whiskey in Tombstone, and is the best (and cheapest) rye still made today. Rye was probably more common than sour mash, though in one episode Wolcott specifically orders "Kentucky Bourbon." Hickok however, liked rye. Old Overholt was also Abraham Lincoln's favorite drink. Old Crow is another (they all start with "Old"). Old Crow was Ulysses S. Grant's favorite. It is said that someone reported on Grant's drunkenness to Lincoln. Lincoln said, "I wish you knew what kind of whiskey he drank. I'd have a barrel sent to all of my generals." My wife suggested the drinking game of getting one of these whiskey's and drinking whenever they do on the show. Others have commented on the mythic feats of drinking portrayed on Deadwood. Just keep in mind that the whiskey they were drinking would have been very watered down.

-Fans are rightly pissed at the show's being cancelled. Deadwood was better than The Sopranos and was also better than Six Feet Under, both of which were given six seasons. A year or so ago HBO still said there was about a 50/50 chance on the two, two-hour TV movies it promised to rap up the show's plotlines. In a recent interview, however, Ian McShane (who played Swearengen) said that these TV movies will never be made, as they are tearing down the show's elaborate set already. He said this officially means that "Deadwood is Dead," and added something to the effect that "if this makes you upset, imagine how I feel." I would add, however, that contrary to popular belief, David Milch did NOT abandon Deadwood for John from Cincinnati. JFC was written before Deadwood, and Milch fully intended for Deadwood to continue after JFC started. It was HBO that cancelled Deadwood, as Deadwood cost a lot more than JFC. I've heard that a lot of fans then cancelled HBO. Good for them. Deadwood was about the best damn TV show ever made.

-In the end, the theater owner Jack saves the day by telling Hearst he has more important things to do than messing around with the likes of Swearengen. Hearst is convinced and leaves camp. Thus Jack saves the town from a struggle and spares viewers from any sort of climax or payoff. As some have commented, the series finale is one of the worst of all time. Sure, they didn't know that it was going to be the series finale. It just so happened that the last episode happened to be one of the worst episodes in the entire show's run. Too bad. In real life what happened next is that Bullock lost the election but refused to give up his star, until he was taken to court.