It’s a mystery to me why good shows get cancelled on television and bad ones seem to go on achingly forever. Friends and ER have been on the air longer than I care to remember, but Arrested Development, Deadwood and Firefly get cancelled at their peaks. Firefly didn’t even make it through an entire season. In Deadwood’s case, HBO couldn’t afford another season of the $60 million show. I get it. But, Fox’s Arrested Development and Firefly were the network’s best shows then and for a long, long time. But viewers who “think and watch” are so much fewer than those who’d rather watch (without thinking) the watered down drivel of Friends and ER. What’s the world coming to? Well, we have our memories, no?

When I was in college I wrote a paper for a film class. The paper was titled “Homo on the Range”. I proposed that My Own Private Idaho, like a typical western was an homage or simply a commentary on the outsider’s struggle with identity, estrangement and perpetual search for a place to belong. I proposed the struggle was not reserved for anyone group of people, just typical human crazy. You know, the human condition where we stupidly believe there is a distinct line between good and bad (not that either really exist) and crossing the line to either side means you have no trace left of the side you left behind. A good film rides that line until there is no line ’cause good filmmakers know, there are no lines in the real world. Just the ones we make up.

But, as a viewer, there has to be a line to begin with to see how vague or how clear are the lines we make up. A good filmmaker knows that. The creator and writers of HBO’s Deadwood know this. In the beginning, lines were drawn in the muck of the thoroughfare. The good guys and gals wore invisible white hats, while the bad guys and gals wore invisible black hats. The signature old west was obvious. Seemingly. Still, while these distinctions seemed clear, you always felt something looming, not so far away, and that would occasionally swoop down, oh so subtly, blanching the line as the seasons wore on.

Now in the third season (and very sadly the last), pending a battle to save the Deadwood camp from a seemingly evil enemy, though the line should be most clearly drawn between the pros and cons for the honor and preservation of the camp, even the enemy at times seemed to have a heart. Almost.

What most other television shows on primetime network television lack, Deadwood (and most shows on HBO) makes up for ten-fold:

The characters are so nuanced and engaging no matter how vile or strange some of them might be, I wonder, almost every time I watch an episode, ‘Where did they find these actors?’. The compulsory cursing mixed with the refined British-influenced language is so distinct I can only assume this was indeed how the west was spoken and no man ever called another man “pilgrim”, ala John Wayne. The plots are so seamless, sometimes quite surprising and never disappointing, most episodes I wish I wrote myself. The setting, though quite foreign to our concept of the old west in that it’s more raw and ugly, less shiny and romantic, seems more believable than most other films or television shows set in the same time because the characters, the language, the plots are all as raw and complementary as the haphazard buildings, streets and forms of entertainment that make the backdrop of Deadwood.

It is a shame that the curtains will be drawn by HBO on this show so early. I have the sense that all the mini plots were building, and characters developing towards a total obliteration of the line between “good” and “bad” that would have left only a faint trace in the aftermath of whatever would have been if we had just one more season (or two).

Summary:
Deadwood is an HBO original series about the birth of a frontier town and the power struggle that ensues to run a town where no laws exist.

“The story begins two weeks after Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn, combining fictional and real-life characters and events in an epic morality tale. Located in the Black Hills Indian Cession, the “town” of Deadwood is an illegal settlement, a violent and uncivilized outpost that attracts a colorful array of characters looking to get rich ‹ from outlaws and entrepreneurs to ex-soldiers and racketeers, Chinese laborers, prostitutes, city dudes and gunfighters.”
–from TV.com