Deadwood came back for its third season tonight, and not a minute too soon. Where Sopranos is the master of incorporating the small banalities of everyday life into the overall scope of a mob drama, Deadwood is equally adept at asking great philosophical questions about life, the universe, and everything.
"Instead of running for office and tending bar, why don't you tend bar and let people punch you in the face?"
Running up to the season premiere, they showed reruns from the end of last year, and I watched the funeral episode. The ladies of negotiable affection who work at the Gem saloon attended, and were all in tears at the tragic death of young William. Which got me to thinking: "Some of the time, they're prostitutes who sell their bodies for cash, and some of the time, they're just young girls who laugh and fear and love and ache and everything else." In another episode last season, one of Cy Tolliver's girls tells him that she prays for him every night.
Tonight, Joanie Stubbs (a prostitute and aspiring madam herself) asks the Lord who she is. She rents a room for a few hours a day and converses with the Almighty. It's tempting to ask ourselves how such a terrible sinner has the nerve to talk to God. Then I remember a passage I read in a book about four writers: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor. I forget which figure it was about (I think it was Dorothy Day), but there was a passage about how the troubled sinner is closer to God than the saint. They experience struggle and anguish and tribulation, and dealing with all of this exposes them more to the true Christian life than the saint who never doubts and always does everything right. I love that stuff.
And just to review, only one person got killed and there was no sex on screen. I didn't count the number of f-bombs, but you can probably visit this site, which keeps a running tally. A hearty welcome back to Bullock, the angriest man on TV.
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