S1, E5: The Trial of Jack McCall

Most of the episodes don't have memorable titles, but this one certainly does (did).

Now, the trial itself was far from a memorable event--it was so far from being memorable that I've taken no screen caps from it. There weren't witnesses. Nobody disputed that McCall had "done it", but he alleged to his lawyer--and his lawyer passed on to the court--that Hickok had killed his brother in Abilene, Kansas. So if his killing of Hickok was done to avenge a previous killing, it wasn't murder. During an abruptly-called recess, Al Swearengen had a word with the judge, but it was a little oblique and I didn't really see what Al was after. He seemed ultimately happy with the "innocent" verdict, though--he didn't want bigshots in D.C. taking notice of the camp's having set up its own law and order. He wanted them to be continued to be ignored--I presume so that he could stay as powerful as he was. In any case, the judge saw his point, and instructed the jury in a way that helped them come to the "innocent" verdict ... McCall wandered around downstairs all happy, till Swearengen told him, in so many words: "there's a horse outside you can jump on--and get the fuck out of here before somebody who cares about the difference between right and wrong kills you--or I do." And that's the end of the trial of Jack McCall.

Elsewhere ...

E.B. Farmum's soliloquy laying out his futile resentment of Al Swearengen, delivered as he attempts to remove a blood stain from the floor of his own hotel, is a great example of what makes Deadwood Shakesperean. William Sanderson is Farnum.

Calamity Jane reacted to the murder of Wild Bill by retiring to the woods for a drunk to end all drunks. However, she can't stop doing great things, like care for Andy, a customer at the Bella Donna who was left for dead by Cy Tolliver--Tolliver ordered him ejected from his room and had one of his employees dump him out here. 

When Tolliver told the Doc that the guy in Room 8 would no longer be needing to be cared for, the Doc said in angry tones, under his breath, that Cy had better send for a goddamn vaccine, because Andy was contagious, and if the Doc himself had to procure the vaccine, then he'd see to it that everybody in camp knew about it. Cy seems angry--at having to have made the decision he did about Andy, and simply about having to run a business--the same shit Al has to do across the street. 

Cy shows his anger by being sullen toward Joanie, the one in this photo with clothes on. He got huffy with her because she went outside to Hickok's funeral without asking his permission. In this scene, he pokes in the door and says to Stubbs, "You get all that praying out of your system?" and she responds by kissing the brunette shown here, but I guess she won't be easily mollified.

The Reverend who presides over the funeral is all kind of interesting. It's hard to focus on his speech, as we know as we see him giving it that McCall's just been declared innocent, and when Bullock finds out, he's likely to want to seek vengeance himself. His sermon is about not knowing God's purpose, and yet believing He has one. By one spirit, are we not all baptized into one Body? We are all one, essentially. The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee. The feeble and/or dishonorable parts of the body--all are necessary. There should be no schism in the body--the members should have the same care, one to another. If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. "I believe in God's purpose, not knowing it."

He asks to be allowed to see God's purpose. "Let us sing How Firm A Foundation as Hickok is laid to rest." I don't know--the starry-eyed Reverend Smith, played by Ray McKinnon, he's a memorable character; it's a memorable performance. He seems truly taken with the gospel. And oblivious to real-world concerns. So when he speaks with Bullock after the funeral, he is unaware of Bullock's agitation till the latter practically tells him to shut up.

However, it was only after this conversation, above, where the Reverend started to quake with tremors--a seizure of some kind he was experiencing, the shakes--some kind of plague.

But it [Bullock's anger] boils over again moments later as he talks to Sol--and it turns out that what's on his mind is what's on our mind--is he going to go after Jack McCall? Is it "his part" to do so? That's what the Reverend may have been asking. Or the Reverend may have just been crazy. That's what Bullock starts saying as he hangs up his clothes before talking to Sol.
"The man is a lunatic. ... never made much sense. But now, he's just uttering pure gibberish. What part of my part is your part? Is my foot your knee? What about your ear?"
"Yeah, I don't know," said Sol.
"You don't know what?"
"What you're supposed to do."
"I'm not supposed to do anything!" Bullock rages, "Alright, Sol?"
But then Sol reminds him that he forgot to put on his suspenders.
"GOD DAMMIT," he rages. Then in the next moment: "If I kill the droop-eyed son of a bitch, and my part's getting hanged for it, good luck with the fuckin' store."
"Alright," says Sol. His calm is impressive, but it's probably just the result of not knowing how to act anything else. Meanwhile, Bullock has seen to his course of action, and he tells Sol to see after the widow.
"Can I impose on you to pack a bag or me to cut down on the cock sucker's head start?"

Oh, P.S. ... The title of the next episode is "Plague," so let's see how THAT works out. We know Andy is the one who brought it to the town. Now who's going to get infected? There's really one suspect. It's Merrick, the newspaper reporter. He was coughing wildly as he showed up at the funeral with the news of McCall's acquittal. 

We'll see if Cy Tolliver's assistant got back from Nebraska with that vaccine, like he was supposed to. ... 

[I now realize that Merrick's coughing is actually sneezing--he is taken with allergies every time he goes out to the edge of town where funerals take place. In this instance, his symptoms are compounded with mental anguish he's experiencing over seeing McCall set free.

A few more notes: What makes E.B. Farnum's soliloquy Shakesperean is in part because it is an eloquent impassioned speech uttered for an audience of no one--he is on stage alone. And then there is the jealousy and the rage expressed therein: "You have been tested, Al Swearengen--and your deepest purposes proved: There's gold on the women's claim! You might as well have shouted it from the rooftops! That's why I'm jumping through hoops to get it back--Thoroughly as I fleeced the fool she married, I will fleece his widow to. Using loyal associates like Eustice Baily Farnham as my go-betweens and doops! To explain why I want her bought out I'll make a pretext of my fear of the Pinkertons. I'll throw Farnham a token fee. Why should I reward E.B. with some small fractional participation in the claim? Or let him even lay by a little security and source of continuing income for his declining years? What's he ever done for me--except let me terrify him every goddamn day of his life till the idea of bowel regularity is a forlorn fuckin' hope? Not to mention orering a man killed in one of E.B.'s rooms. So every fucking free moment of his life--E.B. has to spend scrubbing the bloodstains off of the goddamn floor! To keep from having to lower his rates. GOD DAMN the mother fucker!"
It's the kind of deep, fierce, unpolluted resentment found in Shakespeare, found in our deepest hearts. And it's strange because, it comes directed at a character who seems mostly unconcerned--a character who has no idea that his "loyal associate" is so resentful. Indeed, a few episodes ago, Al appeared to be merciful in forgiving E.B. some amount of disloyalty. Perhaps what the monologue highlights, then, is the way Al uses fear to great effect in having power over E.B. And yet the resentment that engenders speaks to the limits of that power. Al is, after all, seldom satisfied with the services that E.B. provides him. And E.B. becomes every more a tragic character, perhaps because of these soliloquys but also certainly in spite of them. Or he becomes an inconsequential buffoon in spite of them, mocked by nearly everyone at every juncture--but he also becomes a tragic figure because of them. A sad clown, hear given voice.

I would also note this about Jane's meeting the sick to near death Andy Crane on the outskirts of town--the things that happen on the outskirts of town in Deadwood are in many instances (this one included) miraculous, making these outskirts--which I at first imagined as actually hundreds of miles of wilderness leading to the next town--into something more like a special room, a room just off stage (and this is more like the truth--since this is a TV production, after all--no one went hundreds of miles off site--rather, they have another location where all these outskirts scenes are filmed ... and several of these scenes are of great consequence and somehow miraculous--and thus, this "room" has almost a heavenly quality to it, like these characters when they leave town they come close to death--and this is in fact what does happen to the characters. This may reflect some actual historical truth, in that travelling from town to town may have been an adventure of great danger that many did not survive. 

In any case, Andy Crane was left on the outskirts of town and Jane Cannery, Calamity Jane, stumbles upon him, and begins talking to him in that unguarded way of hers. Crane, seized by a kind of dementia, or in the midst of his own religious experience as near death as he is, repeatedly utters, "I apologize." "I apologize!" After answering in various ways to his first three utterances of the phrase, Jane finally yells on the fourth time, "Shut the fuck up!!!"

But then she leaves Andy to go fill her canteen with water, and this is our first clue that Andy is not far from the town--because Jane, in her trip to get water, stumbles upon the Hickok funeral and is in the background listening to the hymns. Later in the episode she stumbles upon Andy again. This time, he appears unconscious. "Mister, are you dead!?" she asks aggressively. Then she cautiously pours water into his mouth, and he comes to and spits it out. Jane smiles broadly, happy that Andy is "coughing and sputtering like the rest of us," and she sits down and starts talking to him, about her late friend Bill Hickok. 

It is touching in a way not too different from the way it was touching seeing her and Charlie put "the little squarehead" to sleep out in a wagon on the edge of town. Just ... their surroundings are so meager--it's like showing a friendship between bums under a freeway overpass today, little things they might do for each other. They are so far from the institutional safety many of us so often seek, but they are still cared for by God, I suppose.]