S1, E4

Wild Bill Hickok, as played by Keith Carradine, who--I learned on Wikipedia--is a member of the Carradine acting family. His father's an actor; his older brother David is the Carradine that played Bill in "Kill Bill" and was the martial artist who starred in "Kung Fu." 

This episode (I'm not quite finished with it as I write this) is mostly dominated by the final act of Wild Bill Hickok. It's a pretty unique stage in a character's life. We're all used to movies about the heroic gunfighter, but what about the past-his-prime gunfighter? The gunfighter who's won his share of gunfights but now doesn't have a higher purpose and is really too tired to handle the target on his back, and almost welcomes his own inevitable takedown?

There was a scene starring Hickok back in Episode Three where one town drunk tells him how lousy he was as an actor. Then another town drunk runs off the first town drunk and starts sucking up to Hickok which, understandably, he tires of. "I said move along!" he tells the guy. "I'm tired of listening to you."

And then the guy, also understandably, gives Hickok a piece of his mind. Like, "No, fuck YOU!" But he goes on to say--I hope you lose your next gunfight! I hope someone takes you down, pal!

The whole thing's made sadder because of Hickok's relationship with Charlie Utter, who tries but fails to get Hickok to put his life back together. Hickok cannot stop gambling, and so doing, he inevitably gets into confrontations--and potential gunfights--with other players. Throughout the last few episodes, we've heard his back-and-forth with Jack, a somewhat pathetic poker player in his own right.

By hanging out with degenerates, his claim to be the best gunfighter in the west is really just a claim at being the best of these degenerates, and he will inevitably fall to one of them--and I think Jack's going to be the one.

Here you see Wild Bill Hickok taking off his coat and sitting down to play poker; his trusty guns at his sides. 

Al was pretty quiet in this episode. He had a conversation with Wild Bill which he hoped would lead the latter to convince the widow Alma Garret to sell her stake of land back to him at a discounted price. And he fumes to himself about Wild Bill's failure on this score--and E.B. Farnum talks some sense to him about how just because he's got a lot on his mind he starts getting to feel "beset" when in reality not everybody's out to get him. Anyway, Al concludes that conversation by saying, "I need to fuck something ... Trixie!" And then, we are treated to shots of Al giving it to Trixie while in long underwear, while Trixie wears these prison socks. In some ways this show is profane not just in language but in every other possible way.

Here is the takedown of Wild Bill, by Jack McCall, the degenerate gambler. He then makes a run for it but fails to mount a horse properly, and as the show ends, a mob is taking him to the center of town, likely for a hanging. Not joining the mob are Bullock and Calamity Jane, both of whom find Hickok's body and mourn sincerely in its presence.

Mentioned last episode how the arrival of Cy Tolliver of his assistants (notibly Joanie Stubbs) seemed like too many characters. However, the arrival of this guy brought some interest to the Bella Donna; a guy by the name of Andy who is familiar to the high-end casino's management and yet who is hiding some strange illness which the Doc is called over to diagnose. No diagnosis is yet forthcoming. Contagious? Probably ... 

Aside from the shot of Bullock and Calamity Jane mourning Hickok, most of the final five minutes of this episode was a musical montage of all the town's slow motion reaction to Hickok's death. This guy came riding into town as a beautiful distraction, showing off having just beheaded some Sioux outside the town. Incidentally, Indians are simply spoken of as lower than scum. "Dirt-eaters"? Is that what I've heard them called by the characters? No love for them amongst the citizens of Deadwood ...