Deadwood and Stuff

[shipperx]

Have been somewhat useful this weekend what with overall housecleaning, plus (in reaction to my sister) closet cleaning, I went through the closet and threw out shoes which have been worn out and look awful but have hung around the closet for a couple of years anyway. I also straightened out my jewelry boxes and threw away broken necklaces and earrings which no longer have a match (we're talking fake jewelry, not the nice stuff). And, I've decided that, like I laid hardwood in my living room, dining room, and hall a couple of years ago, I'm going to do the same to my bedroom. ( Why is it that cats choose CARPET to throw-up on? I have hardwood throughout most of the house so she goes to the bedroom to throw-up and stain carpet. Why?).

Made it to the nursery and bought a few blue petunias to go with the pink oleander and orange snapdragons that I have in the pots at the front door. I even managed to plant them. My allamanda vine is beginning to bloom, but it's still the akebia that dominates. The damn thing seems to grow almost as fast as kudzu! (Well, maybe not as bad as kudzu, but it is a prolific grower and FAST!). The balloon flowers are blooming, but the mexican heather is looking a bit dry.

On a different note, the cable guy FINALLY came and replaced my DVR, along with upgrading my cable so that I now have HBO, so I can see the Deadwood Season 3 premeire tonight. In the meantime, I rented the first four episodes of Season 2 and watched the replay of the season finale on HBO last night. A few thoughts:



Joanie's hooker friend is the Borg Queen! I recognized her (even without the Borg get up.) And Joanie makes her escape from Toliver's brothel by setting up her own (as she claimed she would last year). I don't blame her for being afraid of Cy Toliver. In many ways, Cy always seemed more menacing than Al Swearengen. Cy just seems a step away from being psychotic whereas Al is just an animal. I was actually a bit surprised that Cy let Joanie go, and I kept expecting him to kill another prostitute when he decided to let Joanie go free.

Speaking of prostitutes, I totally sympathize with Trixie's exasperation with Seth Bullock ("Does he want to die?!") As well as her fuming about how selfish he is. Yeah, as Swearengen identified, Seth is a smouldering cauldron of passive aggression as he likes to pretend he's upstanding and good, but he compromises himself constrantly... not only with the affair with Alma (which, under the circumstances, is perfectly understandable) but also in his business dealings with Al (and even in his Sheriffing. How typically Deadwood was the murder that was a joke, the guy pissing in the spitoon being kicked out of the saloon, then hanging his jacket on another guy and telling him to go into the saloon as a joke only for the bartender to shoot him dead. There Seth, upstanding "good guy" sheriff, shows up, looks at the carnage and declares "You didn't kill the guy you meant to and didn't mean to kill the one you did" and then with a paternal "Watch it!" he walks out the door. Er... yeah... they don't still have that defense in most court cases these days. And Seth knows he isn't the man he wan'ts to be, so he's trying for death by Al Swearengen. (And Al figures it out and keeps him around due to Seth Bullock perhaps being an advantage later on.) But by trying to get himself killed, he nearly gets Sol killed! And like Trixie, that sort of pisses me off. As well as his nearly getting Charlie Utter killed. Charlie is one of the few men in town that's actually decent, so I also don't respect Bullock in dragging Charlie to his near death. And Calamity Jane is, as always, a complete drunken delight.

You know, though, Alma should actually be grateful in the long run that Bullock's wife showed up. As much as Alma and Bullock looked similar in Season 1 in that they were the "genteel" in the midst of the chaos, they really aren't the same. Alma would never, ever live up to Seth's expectations. There is that about Alma that is exactly like the rest of the people in Deadwood, there's something hard in her. There's something greedy in her. And she really isn't all that far removed from Joni and Trixie... and really, by having the affair with Seth, he sees her much as he sees himself -- compromised. His wife Martha is as tightly controlled as himself, and in the long run they're better suited. Alma will always be compromised in his eyes and whether he admits it or not, he'll look down on her. He isn't Sol who seems to be able to look past Trixie's being a prostitute. Even though Alma is just sleeping with HIM, it seems to me that Seth looks down on her (and himself) for not living up to his ideals. Martha's inability to even mention things that don't match-up to how things should be, is really exactly like Bullock.



Al Swearengen's situation is... HORRIFYING! The probing for the kidney stone makes me wince. It must be damn near impossible for any man to watch. His screams echoing through the town were just.. ::shudder::

Calamity Jane is hilarious (as usual) but there's also some sadness in the way she treasures sleeping under Bill Hicock's coat.

The Borg Queen is scary cold (can see why they cast her). Though this version is to be human, she's about as cold as a Borg as she knows good and well that "Mr. W" kills prostitutes and doesn't appear to care, and is in fact setting up that one prostitute even knowing what he'll do to her. I'm not really surprised by that, but I was surprised by Joni. She caught on about the Borg offering a 50/50 split on "Mr. W" meant that the prostitute will very likely end up in a grave, but it doesn't stop her. Joni seems softer than that, generally, and she seems generally to feel that prostitutes should have rights, so I was surprised by her reaction. (Though she did sort of help kill Veronica Mars last season, so it's not that she's incapable, just that it's somewhat of a surprise.) Also, if she's setting up a high class brothel, allowing her girls to be killed isn't exactly the way to keep them. They could just go down The Gem down the road).


Okay, this one played on HBO last night and I haven't watched the ones in between. Wolcott is exposed when Toliver tells Hearst that Wolcott has been murdering prostitutes. Hearst is quite the hippocrit because apparently he's bailed Wolcott out of similar things before, only he didn't want the details, and he's never been blackmailed over it. The ending dilemma of Hearst sending his man to discover whether Wolcott had actually written a letter looks fairly simple with Wolcott dying until Andy stabbed Cy. Cy might die therefore leaving Hearst with no problem.

Also interesting juxtaposition of the wedding of Alama and Ellesworth with the Bullock and Swearengen scenes, it was more a marriage of Bullock and Swearengen than Alma and Ellesworth.

Elsewhere, EB was pretty funny making out with his $100,000 dollars.

And clearly in the interim of the season I missed some stuff with Trixie and Sol as she was dressed quite prettily to go with him to the wedding.


And tonight is the season premiere of both The 4400 and Deadwood. I'm glad that cable figured out that summer is a good time to air series.

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that oleander could grow in pots, I thought it was just a big shrub. Very nice collection of plants.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's really according to your climate. In Florida they are big shrubs. In Alabama, the winter cold always bites them back so they don't end up becoming huge. It's sort of like the way that in Alabama Crepe Myrtles are trees, but in the north they are shrubs.