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What's Not Wrong With Deadwood
This post starts out as some wrongheaded Deadwood-bashing and then veers off into total madness:
Part of the problem for me, I'm sure, is just the setting. In fact, I think setting accounts for a lot of the differences in taste in TV shows that we've been talking about lately. No matter how awesome Buffy might be, the hocus-pocus and fight scenes just bore me. Ditto Battlestar Galactica, which I've watched enough to know is really well done, but which bores me because spaceships and laser guns bore me.For one thing, there are no laser guns in Battlestar. What's more, spaceships are a great setting for a show because they're just like submarines (especially when not equipped with lasers) and submarines are the best setting imaginable. Plus, who finds fighting boring? In comments we learn that this would be the very same person who says Deadwood's "dialogue seems unremarkable to me." I can imagine someone who doesn't enjoy the dialogue, but unremarkable? Was he watching?
I should say that, personally, I'm growing increasingly disgruntled with Deadwood. I love the (obviously remarkable) dialogue. The setting is interesting. There's good themes, good characters, solid acting, all to the good. But at the end of the day the lowbrow consideration of story is important. Season Three seems to be running with a decent one, but it suffers from egregious pacing problems and lots and lots of disconnected stuff. I know from experience debating the relative merits of the later Sopranos seasons that not everyone agrees with me about this, but I think the sort of lassitude we're seeing in Deadwood 3 is the characteristic flaw of the better (i.e., HBO-style, if not literally on HBO) programs. The shows get made, at least in part, because the writers will able to pitch a coherent, well-done story arc along with various other good qualities. Once that initial arc is done, the show's other merits are still with it, but the deployment of a solid story arc needs to be done all over again. And it's hard to do. The temptation becomes to slow down the action and basically stretch your plotting out as far as it will go and just lean on well-executed more-or-less random scenes to fill out your screen time. This generates decent results when done by good writers and actors, but it's still unsatisfying in a way that tighter stuff isn't.
August 21, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
Does this mean that season 4 of The Wire is doomed, or do David Simons & Ed Burns have enough material?
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Aug 21, 2006 5:40:35 PM
Yglesias, you partisan hack, if you'd kept reading you would have seen the comment where I said "I think I'm about ready to take back what I said about the dialogue." And the bashing doesn't strike me as wrongheaded in light of the fact that the show's apologist's response boiled down to "that gets cleared up later." Anyway, slightly past halfway into the first season, I'm enjoying the show, so we needn't rumble further.
Posted by: ogged | Aug 21, 2006 5:56:54 PM
Oh wait, I'm not finished.
there are no laser guns in Battlestar
The ships have laser guns, do they not? (If you say they have something else, like phaser guns, then we really will have to rumble.)
Posted by: ogged | Aug 21, 2006 6:01:25 PM
The ships have laser guns, do they not?
Nope. This is part of what makes the show distinctive. The ships fire more-or-less standard bullets (and possibly missiles?) -- the super-deadly weapons the cylons use to devastate the human worlds are . . . nuclear bombs. No exotic weaponry of any sort.
Posted by: Matthew Yglesias | Aug 21, 2006 6:03:23 PM
"Does this mean that season 4 of The Wire is doomed, or do David Simons & Ed Burns have enough material?"
Contra Yglesias, good HBO shows get better and richer with time, not worse. Season 5 of the Sopranos is better than season 1. And season 3 of The Wire was better than season 1.
I expect good things on The Wire going forward. (Although I will miss Stringer Bell. He was the heart of the show to me.)
Posted by: Petey | Aug 21, 2006 6:04:35 PM
Ok, I realize the laser guns thing is an ancillary issue, but if you watch the episode they have online and go to the dogfight at 6:15 remaining, those sure don't look like bullets or missiles to me. In any case...
Posted by: ogged | Aug 21, 2006 6:11:49 PM
"Although I will miss Stringer Bell."
Just surfing, I caught the only five minutes of the Wire I have ever seen last night. It was at the end of the show, and I kinda said uh-oh.
Deadwood:having just visited a historical site today, I saw that the actors and the Gem Theatre is a beloved part of of the real history of Deadwood. For instance. If they kill George Hearst on Deadwood, will Citizen Kane the movie suddenly disappear? Milch is a little limited in his plotting by history, and I think it is showing up this year. The opening premise could be flawed.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Aug 21, 2006 6:14:20 PM
do David Simons & Ed Burns have enough material?
From what I understand, one new focus of the show is going to be the education system in Baltimore, and they're going to tell the story of four kids. Burns was a schoolteacher in Baltimore for seven years.
Posted by: ogged | Aug 21, 2006 6:14:43 PM
Season 5 of the Sopranos is better than season 1. And season 3 of The Wire was better than season 1.
Season 3 of Entourage is better than Season 1. But Season 1's aren't usually that good, because everybody is still figuring out what makes the show good. You need to compare to Season 2.
Posted by: Al | Aug 21, 2006 6:50:59 PM
Ok, I realize the laser guns thing is an ancillary issue, but if you watch the episode they have online and go to the dogfight at 6:15 remaining, those sure don't look like bullets or missiles to me. In any case...
The flashy things that shoot out of the fighters are tracer bullets. There are no lasers, phasers, et al. on BSG. There are plain old projectile weapons (bullets, missiles, nukes).
There were lasers on the old version of BSG. The new show has discarded them, opting for less exotic weapons for various reasons (some of which are discussed in the commentaries to the mini-series and first season).
Posted by: Alex | Aug 21, 2006 7:08:28 PM
"But Season 1's aren't usually that good, because everybody is still figuring out what makes the show good."
Quite true. The amount of rudimentary exposition necessary in season 1 is almost always the enemy of complex thematics.
----
Separately, I am convinced that the lack of enthusiasm for the most recent seasons of The Sopranos among smart folk is almost exclusively a reverse-snobbery reaction to the show's mainstream acceptance and success.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 21, 2006 7:49:01 PM
The flashy things that shoot out of the fighters are tracer bullets.
I stand corrected.
who finds fighting boring?
People who didn't go to effete Manhattan prep schools?
Posted by: ogged | Aug 21, 2006 8:39:19 PM
I agree that the pace of Deadwood is agonizingly slow this year. I remarked to my wife last night that I hate the theater ladies storyline, if you can call it that.
The temptation becomes to slow down the action and basically stretch your plotting out as far as it will go and just lean on well-executed more-or-less random scenes to fill out your screen time.
I worry this will happen to Lost.
Posted by: Just Karl | Aug 21, 2006 8:50:40 PM
This is why, much as I like Deadwood, I think calling it quits now is a good idea.
Posted by: Tom Ames | Aug 21, 2006 9:24:54 PM
Plus, who finds fighting boring?
Apparently you didn't see Pirates of the Caribbean II.
Posted by: Christopher M | Aug 21, 2006 9:30:27 PM
I worry this will happen to Lost.
This has, in fact, already happened to Lost.
Posted by: Christmas | Aug 21, 2006 10:35:28 PM
but I think the sort of lassitude we're seeing in Deadwood 3 is the characteristic flaw of the better (i.e., HBO-style, if not literally on HBO) programs. The shows get made, at least in part, because the writers will able to pitch a coherent, well-done story arc along with various other good qualities. Once that initial arc is done, the show's other merits are still with it, but the deployment of a solid story arc needs to be done all over again. And it's hard to do.
If I can embarass myself for a minute, this kind of thing happens even on shows like The O.C. Really for the first season and a half or so it was a pretty good show if a bit trashy. They actually had a story to tell and did a decent job with it. But after the original story arc was about wrapped up, all that was left to do was just keeping jerking the characters around into increasingly bizarre situations until it got kind of hard to give a crap about any of them.
Ditto actually for Six Feet Under, which basically became a soap opera in its last couple of seasons. The first season was great but once they basically finished the main story arc, they just had the main characters do increasingly bizarre and unlikeable things until I didn't really like any of them anymore.
Posted by: Gabe | Aug 22, 2006 8:54:45 AM
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out on THE WIRE. THE WIRE was initially conceived of as a show that would have one self-contained case per season. Four episodes in to the first season, David Simon and Ed Burns decided to scrap that idea and make a three-season long arc as a kind of trilogy. Each season is self-contained, but together they tell one overarching story.
Unlike with The Sopranos or Six Feet Under, however, Simon and Burns made it clear that they had already figured out two more seasons of plot arc after season 3. You get the sense with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under that they just started making it up/scrambling to figure something out after the first couple seasons.
This gives me a great deal of hope for The Wire. That Simon and Burns knew they were going to wrap up (to some extent) the initial plotline at the end of season three and keep going, and had already mapped out how is news that gives me some faith in the coming seasons. Of course, the only way it seems like it'll work is if they sideline Daniels and McNulty, and hold off for the most part on Omar. Which would be a ballsy, difficult decision on their part.
Still, The Wire is hands down the best show on television, and may in fact be the best (and most sophisticated) hour long American drama well... ever. So I'll hold on until the bitter end.
Posted by: isaac | Aug 22, 2006 11:15:40 AM
Oh, wow...story is now a "lowbrow" consideration? Look who's been drinking the pomo kool-aid.
Don't be stupid, Matt. Live up to your alma mater and leave LeMan at Yale where he belongs.
Posted by: collin | Aug 22, 2006 11:22:58 AM
Oh, wow...story is now a "lowbrow" consideration? Look who's been drinking the pomo kool-aid. Don't be stupid, Matt. Live up to your alma mater and leave LeMan at Yale where he belongs.
While -- thank God -- I have not read any Paul de Man in over ten years, I'm fairly sure that his insights about the inability to assign real-world meaning to literature (unless I'm conflating him with Derrida, which I don't think I am) didn't prevent him from appreciating story. (Although I believe most of his work was with German poetry, so who the hell knows if there's any plot in there or if they just spend all their time mooning about frauleins past?) More to the point, Matt was kidding and is a big wimp who screamed during "The Descent". Wimp.
Posted by: Steve | Aug 22, 2006 4:19:59 PM
Once that initial arc is done, the show's other merits are still with it, but the deployment of a solid story arc needs to be done all over again. And it's hard to do.
I think the Swearengen/Bullock axis vs. Hearst is an awesome story arc. But maybe that's just me.
As for The Wire, I think Season 4 will be excellent. I rank the seasons 2-1-3, but even Season 3 was the best thing on television at the time.
I will miss Stringer Bell, though.
Posted by: Tom Hilton | Aug 22, 2006 5:53:54 PM
The ships have laser guns, do they not? (If you say they have something else, like phaser guns, then we really will have to rumble.)
They have RAIL guns! Google it and find out what it is!
Posted by: chris mankey | Aug 22, 2006 9:17:38 PM
>> Ditto actually for Six Feet Under, which basically became a soap opera in its last couple of seasons. The first season was great but once they basically finished the main story arc, they just had the main characters do increasingly bizarre and unlikeable things until I didn't really like any of them anymore.
>> I think the Swearengen/Bullock axis vs. Hearst is an awesome story arc.
I agree wholeheartedly with both of these, in fact my opinion of Deadwood this year is that it has avoided the insufferable slumps of Six Feet under and the Sopranos in their later/final seasons.
Posted by: JackSC | Aug 23, 2006 1:47:25 PM
I cannot tell whether or not Deadwood has dropped off. It remains, to me the best thing on TV. I look forward to the Wire as well (I am an Yglesias convert on the Wire, having bought the first two season DVDs, to get up to speed for the third).
Matt makes an interesting point regarding the HBO shows having a diminishing story after the inital story arc has concluded. I am not sure I concur, but I certainly would argue the reverse for sitcoms.
Normally, the first season of a sitcom involves one dimensional characters and the stories are based on some kind of hook. As the writers and actors get to know the characters on successful shows, they fill them out with more complexity and understand the scenarios that 'work'.
Posted by: theCoach | Aug 23, 2006 2:22:57 PM
Deadwood is the best thing on TV (or at least the best thing that I watch). I'll take it over The Sopranos, The Wire, anything else on HBO. And, although I guess I'm in the minority given the ratings, I think that Season 3 is the best yet (other than the Alma on drugs subplot). Interesting storylines, unexpected twists, and magnificent moments between minor characters. My only beef with the show is with Sheriff Bullock -- I find his character (maybe Olyphant's portrayal?) uninteresting. Smoldering only gets you so far.
Posted by: FullCount | Aug 24, 2006 10:03:27 AM
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