“Yeah, that Hearst and his 10,000 Chink army are definitely a fuckin’ thorn which we shall need to pluck from our collective asses fuckin’ posthaste.”
“Swedgin!”
“Swedgin gets it, Wu.”
“San Francisco! PTOOO!”
“Wu, would you kindly refrain from spittin’ on my fuckin’ floor? My girls dislike getting on their knees in your heathen spittle.”
“Swedgin! HAWWWK! PTOOO! Cocksucka!”
“Goddammit, Johnny, would you kindly fuckin’ escort Wu the fuck outta here? And get that gimp up here before she’s cleaning blood off my floor instead of heathen Chinee spittle.”
Hell, I wish the show had stuck around long enough for Teddy Roosevelt to show up. I’d love to see him befriend Bullock and get cursed out by Swearengen (“Cocksucking Knickerbocker!”).
Anyway, great show - although it helps if you watch it with subtitles on.
I couldn’t say if he was good or bad technically speaking, but he definitely fit the role. Meanwhile the TV viewer-imposed nickname for his character on the show, “clench”, is probably the most hilariously accurate one of its kind in history :p.
Levdragon - I had a bit of a struggle getting into it at first as well. In fact I think that was a pretty common refrain. Try to stick it out for a few episodes and most seem to agree that it grows on you exponentially.
Top 5 TV show for me. Not number one, but a strong contender.
I’ll throw in a little monkey wrench. I thought the last season was really pretty boring, and it was running out of steam.
But I think the first season was absolutely the best western I’ve ever seen, and possbly the best television I’ve ever seen. IMO the only series that competes with it is Rome.
I made a copy of season one for my brother, who normally doesn’t like anything that isn’t on regular broadcast television and he thought it was the best thing he had seen in years. He went out and bought every season after that, and he turned his daughter onto it as well - and she hates westerns. In other words, YES!
I worked with a woman who was such a fan, she and her husband drove up to Deadwood and spent their vacation there!
It is a show that my entire family enjoyed. I enjoyed the Shakespearean verse that runs throughout. My mother enjoyed the constant political infighting and strong women characters. My father enjoyed, as he put it, “Al’s blowjob speeches”. Yes, something for everyone.
It’s a great series, in the running for my #2 TV show of all-time (behind undisputed champion The Wire, of course). The dialogue is not realistic, as characters speak in Shakespearesque rhythms and eloquence and the writers deliberately made the choice to use modern swear words (so as to have the same impact on the audience that the more old-fashioned stuff would have had on that generation… a decision I disagree with). But surprisingly, the dialogue works most of the time, serving the needs of all the subtle interactions quite well. The one problem is that sentences are sometimes constructed so complexly that you may have to watch it again (or rewind that bit) to really parse and make sense of it.
Like The Wire, it’s a dense show that makes use of every moment; turning away for a few seconds could cause you to miss a crucial interaction, be they words or a simple gesture or facial expression. Also like The Wire, virtually everybody is human and three-dimensional, capable of good and bad, depending on the situation.
It’s a brilliant show, and just gets better with multiple viewings. I’ll admit that a lot of the plot and, frankly, humor, went right over my head the first time. I’ve now gone through it about 4 times and there are still new elements that I pick up. Richly written and acted.
I have just finished re-watching season 1 on DVD. It is everything the other posters have said it is. No question it is something you will enjoy watching.
From texts I’ve read and have heard read, it seems to me that people back then were more eloquent than the common person today. Of course it’s diffucult to know if they actually spoke like that, or just wrote that way. Class was an issue back then, and I would presume that speaking eloquently was a tool people used to display their social standing or to give the impression of a high social standing. I think this is shown in the show.
Alma is from high class and behaves in a strict way and chooses her words carefully. (The way they try to say things in the show without saying them is interesting to me.) Al has his soliloquies, but often inserts coarse language into them. This would peg him as being of a lower social class. But since he is so good at it, has he risen in his position? E.B. Farnum uses his speech to attempt (unsuccessfully) to disguise his cravenness.
So I think it’s possible some people did speak that way in the Old West.
As for the cursing, I’ve heard that people did curse quite a bit back then. I’ve heard both that certain words existed, and that they didn’t. It would be interesting to get samclem on the case.
I’ve watched every season of The Wire and found it the best show I’ve seen by a country mile. One or two other shows were as enjoyable but typically were smaller in scope or episode number, for example Band Of Brothers. These are the only two drama series I’ve ever rewatched deliberately.