I could see Bullock atleast confronting Al and saying something “There might have been another way.” and Al give him a derisive look. Bullock not reacting at all didn’t ring true.
I half thought one of the Pinkertons would have known that Jen couldn’t have been the shooter for some reason and then the shit would have hit the fan. Alas …nothing happened… at all… bunches of guys with guns and we never once get an ounce of tension out of it.
He did say he wanted to contact the girl’s family, let them know she’d passed. Al started out with, “I don’t contact family.” But then he told Seth that Jenny had a sister at the Yellow Bird that he could write to.
I’ll probably have a different view every time I rewatch the episode. Right now, the impression I got about Al is that he was bone tired and couldn’t figure a way to beat Hearst. Second best thing is to save the camp. He did that.
As for Seth, he was at a loss too. Hearst had the miners killed, and then Ellsworth, and Seth couldn’t do a thing about it. He recognized that Hearst was the cause of all that misery, not Al. Did you see the look he gave Sol and Trixie? He understood that what Al did to Jen saved Sol and Trixie.
I think we’d have found out in the first episode of Season 4 that Wu’s men swung the election for Seth and Sol, and that was Al’s primary reason.
Damn, I’m going to miss that show.
Maybe the movies might shed some light on the lose ends?
I’m still not satisfied with the killing of Jenny.
In addition, Hearst has what he wants as he now owns the most important thing in Deadwood: The gold.
I thought it was a fine finale.
No fireworks. But nothing is really hanging. Alma’s claim has been resolved. Trixie & Sol are where they’re going to be. The elections kind of indicated that Deadwood isn’t really as much a place of power anymore – Bullock got flat out neutered. There’s nothing to do with Doc. Nothing to do with Cy.
You can’t really do anything with Al anymore. His character has been through EVERYTHING over three seasons, and this episode was a real exploration of that. How easily would that killing have been in season one? A viewer wouldn’t have blinked.
Alma & Seth are finished. Joanie & Jane had nothing to do this whole season anyway.
It was funny to see EB step out through the hole in the wall.
With Hearst gone and him taking Alma’s claim, the tension between his and Wu’s men is diminished, and to create a conflict would now feel like an afterthought.
I really don’t know what they can do now except start introducing new stories out of whole cloth. Really, what’s left to see. . .a “Good Times” style wrap-up with Deadwood in flames? Bullock, and his 25 voters stage a protest?
No fucking idea; I was thinking the same thing. They may as well have called it “Doc wears surgical gloves” for all the sense that description made.
Now I’ve seen it again. I’m even more upset. I completely agree that almost everyone was out of character. No Mose, no Doc, one lame scene with Dan…bah.
They better make those cocksucking movies, s’all I’m saying.
Although the way it was addressed was meant to imply that Bullock would have lost… the results they talked about were only from Sturgis which was the only place established that Hearst had any sort of voting pull because of the soldiers. Bullock would have carried Deadwood and possibly some of the other towns. And doubtless Harry would have stepped aside in favor of Bullock. I think it was engineered to make it even more of a down ending.
I hope that they take some budget risks with the movie(s) and have one set in winter. I’d love to see a Deadwood christmas.
What I’d like to know (and it probably would have been answered in Season 4), is, whose body was in the coffin that came for Hearst? Could it have been Odell? Maybe he wanted Aunt Lou to be able to have a funeral? And for what purpose? Does Hearst care deeply enough about Aunt Lou? Damn those cocksuckas at HBO. Maybe we need to take Wu’s men to them. Along with Hawkeye’s 17 1/2 men.
I assumed it was.
He seems to care for Aunt Lou as much as he can care for anyone.
If we don’t get our movies, then yeah.
I also would love to see a Deadwood Christmas. That would be fucking cool.
There’s a lot of things I don’t get.
Alma caved and sold out to Hearst to STAY in Deadwood? So Sofia could have an inadequate ducation in a deadly shithole, when they could have lived well anywhere in the world? And so Hearst could lord things over her every day? – Remember she didn’t know he was leaving when she sold.
I agree that Seth would NEVER let a murder like Jen’s go unchallenged. Someone like Charlie might have talked him out of arresting AL, but to swallow that silently was totally beyond him.
And Al… by the end of year three he was almost a pussy. Personally I think he was a GREAT evil chracter, far better then Cy or Hearst. Where’d he get a conscience?
And Cy basically started and ended batshit crazy, but he had all these loyal people? They would have left or be dead.
Most of all, why didn’t they KILL HEARST? Trixie almost managed it. He was forever hanging out on that makeshift balcony – a shot could come in from anywhere. at night, and there were probably hundreds of pissed off miners around to take the blame. Hell, they could have sniped him off his coach on his way out of town. Rich fucks often went out to the wilderness never to be seen again, I would think that would be fairly easy to arrange in a place like Deadwood, They certainly managed it with Alma’s husband with hardly a second thought.
That was not clear to me either. They hadn’t signed the contracts yet; it was pending the arrival of the gold to a safe place. I kept hoping that she would change her mind and not sign. The only justification in re: Sofia that I saw was that she didn’t want to leave Ellsworth behind; presumably he’s buried in Deadwood. Still seems a bit unlikely to me.
Maybe Seth, like Al, saw Jenny as the price to be paid to be rid of Hearst. It was a high price, but blood was going to be shed. They probably saw one death as getting off easy. Collateral damage. I also don’t think Bullock is as righteous as everyone seems to think. He is a pretty violent guy himself.
He started to set down roots and give a damn about people. Also, he had respect, was part of a real community. He also seemed to love Trixie, which led to all kinds of changes in him. But the latent conscience was always there-- remember, he bought Jewel from the orphanage back in Chicago.
The hookers couldn’t go anywhere. Eddie Sawyer and Joanie did leave, and Andy Cramed stabbed him. Con was useless, Leon was a junkie. The Bella Union was pretty sad.
I don’t know. Fear of reprisal? Hearst had some serious pull in government as well as his own little army of Pinkertons.
Alma sold because she had no one she could trust to oversee her holdings. Once Alma sold, she had no reason to leave Deadwood, but she did have a reason to stay. She didn’t want to uproot Sofia, who has had a lifetime’s worth of trauma in her few years.
I stated earlier that I think one of the reasons no one seemed to get too upset with Jenny’s killer is that she may have been viewed as ‘just another whore’. That was certainly how Al viewed her. Trixie, having left the Gem and Joanie, having left the Bella Union, had risen above ‘just a whore’. Given the needs of the situation, she was the most expendable.
Hearst’s small Pinkerton army were a deterrent to the outright murder of George Hearst. However, in a recent episode they addressed that killing him outright was not really an option, as another would take his place. Presumably, some other Hearst would pay the Pinkerton’s to burn Deadwood to the ground with the inhabitants still in it. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
12 slit throats
11 clenchy faces
10 crippled servants
9 Indian heads
8 fuck yous
7 vicious dwarves
6 tumored priests
Fiiiiive loopeeeey cuuuuuuuuuunts,
4 cocksucker,
3 dead whores
2 hang dei
and a dissapointiing eeeennnndiiiiinggg
Anybody else think that Hearst was going to bare Jen’s tits and realize they weren’t the same as the whore who shot him?
The thought crossed my mind. Except he’d have to get her upright to really be able to tell, cuz horizontal boobs don’t look the same as vertical boobs.
An eagle-eyed hoople at the HBO board noticed that Jen was wearing Trixie’s brooch, there in the box.
Baba Booey, Christmas will never be the same. 