I found it somewhat darkly comic that a script written by
someone with dementia` had so many flashbacks on it, but after ten years and so
many events, we need them. The whole movie is about how statehood of South
Dakota represents the end of an era(not least because former sometimes-evil
mastermind Al Swearingen is laid up with what may or may not have been
cirrhosis) Technology, in the form of the telephone, has made inroads and some
townsfolk are uneasy.Statehood festivities attract the attention of fabulously
corrupt businessman-turned-California Senator Hearst who doesn’t let his new
eminence distract from his ability to do dirt(the more things change, the more
they stay the same, right?)
It was so great to see Tim Olyphant’s Seth Bullock stand
uncowed by Hearst’s attempts to muscle
in on everyone… I hope nobody will read into anything about my feelings about
real-life police reform from the satisfaction I got when Bullock let the
townsfolk whale on Hearst for a while before locking him up.
I wonder if Milch’s own condition made him more likely to
write about life as more fragile, or if it makes sense because the frontier,
for good or ill, is not something that is built to last.(Have to admit, it was
on my mind to finally watch this because of the epidemic and Calamity Jane’s
heroism in Season 1. Are there Janes coming from this crisis?) Slightly less
cursing and graphic language compared to the series overall…wonder if that’s a
reflection of the settlement’s maturation or Milch having to share writing
duties. Possibly both.
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