A Deadwood listicle!

What makes the western so intriguing and just straight-up instructive is its purity, a word I am loath to employ. But "purity" gets at how the western boils down the complexity of a nation state to its scrappy origins (and yes, that includes the lies told about said origins). No zip/tax codes, no gerrymandering, no urban planning, sometimes no dwellings of any sort, e.g., The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1953), none of the contrivances of modernity that obscure like cobwebs the socio-legal carving up of space. The western is so spare that, at its best, it forces you to ponder why you are sitting where you are right now, a land acknowledgement avant la lettre. 

The benefit of a western series is that it has time to trace the processes by which initial land grabs congeal into a modern nation state. And HBO's Deadwood is peerless in that category. Despite the coruscating personalities on display (Al Swearengen is as attractive/repulsive as Tony Soprano), Deadwood makes it easy for once to think in the macro, to swerve away from the micro concerns of the characters and ponder the changes wrought by the newspaper, the railroad, the telegraph, etc. The latter accoutrements threaten to bring not only law and order but transformations in consciousness the residents of Deadwood could never have foreseen. My favorite moment in this regard is one lasting not even a minute, as evanescent as a stranger passed on the street. 

In Season 3, Episode 9: "Amateur Night," Samuel Fields (Franklyn Ajaye) visits the bank on his way out of town. He's chatting with owner/teller Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) but a line of customers has formed behind him. Alma eyes the line with concern as Fields babbles on. "I got a life to live of my own," he tells her. "As do all here in the camp," Alma responds tartly, causing Fields to notice at last the impatient customers snaking to the rear. "Sorry to hold you all up," he says sheepishly as he makes his exit. In an urban context, this exchange would prove too banal to narrativize. But to the denizens of a burgeoning 1870s town, waiting in close proximity to strangers is a new phenomenon requiring significant adjustments in expectations and behavior. It might even take on the contours of a novelty as it shades into loitering, a development which causes the ever-irascible Trixie (Paula Malcomson) to complain, "A lot of shitbags hang around a bank. Did you ever fuckin' notice?"

In short, Deadwood serves as the Prestige TV version of Wolfgang Schivelbusch's landmark 1977 tome The Railway Journey. As such, it doesn't lend itself well to listicling. The transformation of "our very perceptual experience of nature itself," to quote Wiki, takes precedence over individual gripes and local skirmishes. But below is an attempt to schematically rattle off the lows and highs of the series.

What's Bad About Deadwood (not much!):

1. Native Americans are, at best, a structured absence in Deadwood. The most prominent Native American character is a severed head in a box which Al uses for autotherapy like Yorick. Local tribes could have at least populated the margins as an ironic presence à la Beau Travail. Or they could have functioned as a nagging reminder of the bloody conquest of nature at the hands of white settlers.

2. Creator David Milch did not know what to do with his women characters. Once free of their respective pimps, Trixie and Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens) are unmoored and never self-actualized. Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) should have been in every episode (see below). Alma has nothing to do in the 13-years-aborning movie. Etc.

3. Viewers could have used more glimpses of the indifferent Deadwood public along the lines of the bank scene described above. We know controlling the newspaper and, later, the wire is crucial for Al. But scenes of the public reading the paper would have driven home that importance.

4. No fault of Milch (from what I gather) but ending the series with Season 3 in 2006 left us unmoored. And while Deadwood: The Movie (Daniel Minahan, 2019) was a welcome wrap up, it came off as a preposterously tardy half-measure more than anything.

What's Great About Deadwood (not much!):

1. Every damn thing else!

Other notes:

Best character: Calamity Jane (below), easily. Robin Weigert, we are not worthy of your ability to remain barky and hammered for so long.

Character I initially hated but came to appreciate because he was so crucial to the narrative(s): E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson). What a worm, though!

Character who improbably turned out to be a hottie: Whitney Ellsworth (Jim Beaver)

Obviously essential character but one who remained a usually inert cipher: Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant)

Ian McShane as Al let off most of the fireworks but don't sleep on this astonishing performance: Powers Boothe as Cy Tolliver

Time it would take you in each episode to require the emergency room if you took a shot every time some variation of "fuck" or even ("cocksucker") was uttered throughout the showy, Shakespearean dialogue: 20 minutes tops and that's a conservative estimate. More like 10 depending on the alcohol and one's tolerance.

A Game of Thrones listicle!

Lord of the Rings bored me to criminal distraction. The few Harry Potter films I saw failed to rise above standard-issue Oedipal hand-wringing. I'm not even all that ardent of a science fiction fan (if that matters), e.g., I cannot stand Star Wars even though I loved it when I was seven and the Death Star was my favorite toy ever. And I'm much more a film snob than a TV enthusiast even though I wrestle with the serial beast on the regular. So I was astonished by how much I adored Game of Thrones. I want to write more formally on it in the future. So herein please find a listicle that sums up my major thoughts/feelings on the experience. 

MASSIVE SPOILERS!

Coolest name (albeit a repulsive character): Septa Unella (played by an unrecognizable Hannah Waddingham)

Character I’m so not mad at for blowing up the Great Sept of Baelor because it wiped out the evil Sparrow religious sect and their leader the High Sparrow (played with icy, face-punchable cruelty by Jonathan Pryce) even though it also killed Loras and Margaery who was playing the Sparrows to get out from under their torture: Cersei

Great Canadian theorist whom I would like to apply to an analysis of the communication systems of Westeros: Harold Innis

Slight structural problem/Catch-22: Killing Ned Stark so early in the series. It was a Wun Wun-sized shock. But once you off your Tony Soprano, any character is fair game to get eliminated. Which is to say that while I didn't predict the Red Wedding, its shock was (somewhat!) diluted by the series' structure. Similarly, I thought Arya was dead for sure when she was stabbed by the Waif.

Funniest line of the entire series: Wun Wun the Giant to Eddison Tollett: “The fuck you lookin’ at?”

Single most redolent line of the entire series: Beric to Jon Snow: “I’m not fighting so some man or woman I barely know can sit on a throne made of swords.”

Second most redolent line of the entire series: Tyrion to Cersei: "Your reign is over. But that doesn't mean your life has to end."

Genuinely scary: the Night King especially the staring contest with Jon Snow after the wight hunt

Coolest voice: Davos'

Character I severely underrated early on because I thought Robb Stark was hotter and more confident: Jon Snow

Hottest character: probably Renly Baratheon

Most underrated (maybe even never rated) character: the officious clerk Samwell encounters when he first gets to the citadel 

Favorite character: Choosing a favorite character goes against what I loved most about the series which was a critique of power-besotted individualism. I would've chosen Tyrion early on but he got too emo towards the end. I adored Samwell and Brienne of Tarth so I was happier to see them on the small council with Tyrion than whoever wound up on whichever throne. Is it cheating to choose Ghost? He's such a good boy!

Aspect I could've used a bit more on but not too much for fear the series would tumble into world-building dreariness: the Iron Bank of Braavos

Level of anger I experienced re: the later seasons and the finale: Almost non-existent. As a non-fan of fantasy and world-building, I probably enjoyed the series overall more than its most foam-drenched fan-detractors.

Shorthand I used to describe locales and characters because I couldn't remember them all: Quality Court (the place where Arya trains to be all face pulling and badass), Celine Dion ([visits Wiki of Westeros to find name] Ellaria Sand), Pedro Pascal (whoever he played), Daktari (Dothraki), etc. 

Number of predictions that proved incorrect: Many, mostly concerning Arya. I thought she would transform into a White Walker to kill the Night King or Jamie Lannister to kill Cersei. And I thought Bran would do something more than just send out ravens and get all moony.

Number of George RR Martin books I've read: 0

Number of George RR Martin books I may read: 1

Number of George RR Martin books I will probably finish: 0

Remotely related (please don't start a genre border skirmish with me) type of book I'd like to read now that I've finished Game of Thrones: The Once and Future King by T. H. White 

Masterpiece YOU should watch after you've finished Game of Thrones: The 47 Ronin Parts 1 and 2 (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1941-1942)

Numbers of episodes I've currently seen of House of the Dragon: one and digging it 

Dreary franchise I may now finish in the spirit of open-mindedness, Joan grant me the strength: Lord of the Rings

Item: Mad Men Series Finale a Disappointment!

To be sure, Mad Men is one of the great experiences in television history - trenchant, consistently surprising, enormously provocative, delivering the narrative goods while bedizening the entire edifice with modernist trills, all that and so much more. Unfortunately, it couldn't escape the attendant disappointments of that most dreaded televisual necessity - the series finale. 

In this, the creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, who wrote and directed the series finale, "Person to Person," is hardly alone. Even an underseen show like Rectify (Ray McKinnon, 2013 - 2016, SundanceTV), which matches Mad Men in subtlety and overall brilliance, junked its hard-won delicacy with a trite, utilitarian ending. Such is the fate of most serial narratives; by their very nature, they are bound to disappoint. They borrow the structure of soap operas but unlike soap operas, they must end at some point. We then mourn the loss of the interplay between episodic verticality and serial horizontality that gripped us over several seasons and years. The series finale of Six Feet Under circumvented this problem since the show concerned death, the most final ending of all. And The Sopranos ignored the problem altogether by stopping, not ending. But, in general, from what I've heard about shows I haven't seen (Game of Thrones, Lost) to shows I've completed (Breaking Bad, Succession, Ozark), serial television will one day let us down. 

To start with the godawful, Weiner brings Peggy Olson's (Elisabeth Moss) story to a close with...wait for it...the formation of a heterosexual couple, the most rote method of ending any narrative. Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson) professes his love for Peggy and Peggy professes back. "I want to be with you. I'm in love with you...I love you, Peggy." "I can't believe it. I think I'm in love with you too. I really do." What, is this the Friends finale? It's not as if the coupling was an unforeseen development; certainly, one could glean some sexual tension between the two throughout the series. But apart from the fact that this ending apes the ending of literally hundreds of thousands of other narratives, the device comes off as cheap and mechanical for two reasons.

First, the formation comes not just in the last episode but almost at the very end of the final episode, with barely ten minutes to spare. Apart from a brief peck between the two before the final scene, this is the last we see of them. The eleventh-hour nature of the device registers a panic over Weiner's apparent need to get the formation in under the wire. Like the ending of an Harlequin romance novel, it arrives as an unexamined imperative rather than a reasoned dénouement. In fact, it's actually worse than a Harlequin because at the very least, we can pick up another Harlequin novel and get back to the tensions we so desperately loved, forgetting the clockwork coupling that occurred on the last page. Here, we enjoy no such luxury since there are no episodes left. Weiner strands us with the most cliché method of tying up loose ends imaginable. 

Second, the formation fails to preserve any of the ambiguity that made Mad Men such a compelling watch to begin with. As Sean O'Sullivan writes, "the synthetic unity of a show...depends fully on...the specific ways in which the variances and interruptions force us to navigate seriality’s inevitable lacunae of space and time – the negotiation among different physical environments, and the temporal omissions within and between episodes, and within and between seasons." (120)* The keyword here is "force" because Mad Men required the viewer to do more narrative bookkeeping than most series - filling in gaps, making connections, gaining one's bearings, determining time and even space, etc. With Stan and Peggy expressing their love for one another (finally!), Weiner shuts the door on this story thread. There's nothing left to negotiate. 

This may seem a preposterous thing to say about a series finale. But negotiation need not cease with the literal end of an episode or series. Indeed, one measure of a great TV show is its ability to keep us negotiating with it long after we've taken it all in. Compare how Weiner afford us a last glimpse of Betty Draper (January Jones). We know she will soon die of cancer. But instead of a Terms of Endearment-caliber death in a hospital, Weiner shows her smoking at the kitchen table while her daughter Sally  (Kiernan Shipka) does the dishes. No dialogue. Sally's future is unknown and thus the moment vibrates with possibility instead of clicking into a preordained narrative position. Even Roger Sterling's (John Slattery) coupling with Marie (Julia Ormond) has a breezy, almost matter-of-fact aura to it that lies in marked distinction to the doctrinaire formation of the Peggy and Stan couple. In Broadway terms, Roger and Marie sing a fine number that only Great American Songbook scholars recall whereas Peggy and Stan blast out the 11 o'clock number or the bombastic Act One showstopper. 

As for other preordained narrative developments, it seemed inevitable that the series would have to end in the west and not just the west but California. And not just California but the very edge of the continental United States. With America fully colonized by 1970, the only frontier left for Don Draper (Jon Hamm) to conquer is the one within. So he must perform yoga on a rocky precipice, the Pacific Ocean raging behind him. Weiner then cuts to the infamous Coca-Cola ad repurposing the New Seekers' "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)." Robert Christgau deemed the song the worst single of 1972 presumably in disgust over how easily Madison Ave. was able to commodify the 1960s counterculture. And indeed, that's how it sits at the very end of the series. 

Most critics and viewers (and Hamm too) assume that Draper goes back to McCann Erickson to create the ad (indeed, McCann Erickson is the agency that did actually create the ad) and co-opt the inner light for the soda-swilling masses. I find the maneuver too conceptual for such a tight connection. And pinning its effect to a Draper cause drains the device of its ambiguity. Given the gargantuan disappointment of the Stan/Peggy thread, I'm inclined to ignore the final moments and even main characters and flash back over the ambiguities and expansions I loved so dearly. 

For instance, Bob Benson (James Wolk) was a far more compelling creation than Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt). If a character is known to be gay, then you can punish that character, a fate that befell Salvatore and, of course, Batt who was out of a job once Salvatore was axed. But Benson never showed his cards and was thus fascinating from the jump. With his fixed smile and potentially evil machinations, he was queer not gay, unable to be categorized or commodified. And the secretaries served as an unexpected Greek chorus to let some air out of the main stories. Ida Blankenship (Randee Heller) and Caroline (Beth Hall) were desexualized workers who could get away with not being unduly preoccupied with the allure of Don and Roger. Shirley points to a world outside when she exits the series by telling Roger "advertising is not a very comfortable place for everyone." And while Meredith (Stephanie Drake) initially came off as a ditz, she revealed more layers as the series progressed. In the final episode, she echoes Shirley when she tells Roger that “there are a lot of better places than here [i.e., advertising].”

As for Joan (Christina Hendricks), probably my favorite main character, I wanted more of and for her. She always deserved far more than she got but Weiner used her as a measure of the two-steps-forward/six-steps-back nature of women in the workplace. Still, I hope what I'm detecting is happiness in her final moment as she runs her own business out of the apartment she never moved from despite financial windfalls below her station. 

Once more - one of the greatest television series of all time. Now to check out The Sopranos again to see if it's still toppermost in my eyes. 

* Sean O'Sullivan, “Space Ships and Time Machines: Mad Men and the Serial Condition,” in Mad Men: Dream Come True TV. Gary R. Edgerton, ed. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).

The Many Saints of Newark (Alan Taylor, 2021)

The problem with Peak/Prestige TV's serial narrative form is that, at some point, the shows have to end. And like the de facto soap operas that they are, they can't end, not without upsetting their rabid audiences. The Sopranos circumvented this problem with the (genius, godlike) decision to have the show stop as if it were a Warhol film rather than end like a traditional narrative. Naturally, that pissed off most of the fans. But they needn't have fretted. In the franchisescape that is mainstream media today, you simply have to wait fourteen years for another installment. Hence, The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel which David Chase is trying to pass off as a standalone film. 

Qua film, it's a mess. Taylor/Chase parade so many characters in front of us for the first twenty or so minutes that even seasoned Sopranos freaks will need a family tree (a common problem in many films, though, cf. Sidney Lumet's 1966 film adaptation of The Group). Eventually, though, it settles into a story about not a young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) but rather his idol Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), infuriating some fans all over again. 

But The Many Saints of Newark is not a film; it's a cog in the Sopranos franchise, one that will no doubt inspire another series especially now that David Chase has another HBO deal. After all, Chase will have all of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to play with. So it doesn't matter how uneven or clipped or messy this particular film is. It will get ironed out with The Sopranos II c. 2023.

I will say that the use of music in The Many Saints of Newark continues Chase's mastery of distance. Van Morrison's title track from Astral Weeks plays over a romantic scene with Dickie and, at first, it sits uncomfortably on top. But the romance soon turns horrifying so that the Morrison track serves more as an ambiguous portent than a bucolic reverie. Even more bewilderingly, the scene ends with Mountain's hard rock "Never in My Life," a complete sonic 180. But it's a sound advance from the following scene with a young Tony in his room listening to Mountain through purloined speakers given to him (forced on him, really) by Dickie. It catapults the viewer out of the scenes in an attempt to gain some distance from the psychoses of these character-idols.

And there's a hilarious moment when Dickie visits his uncle Sally (Ray Liotta) in prison. Sally has become woke in lockup (meditating, eating healthy foods, listening to bebop) and asks Dickie to get him a copy of Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool. He brings him one along with other albums such as The Happy Trumpet by perennial dollar-bin artist Al Hirt ("He's on Carson all the time."). Sally tosses it aside as "not jazz" along with the rest of Dickie's clueless choices (anyone know what the other album is in the first screen grab?).

 Still, I'll be able to accurately assess The Many Saints of Newark only once HBO Max makes the inevitable/perpetual third act available. 

Grade: B+, the classic holding pattern grade