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”Deadwood”: Some new blood

As if the shifting alliances and drawn-out power plays in our favorite mining camp weren’t hard enough to follow, two new characters stepped off the Deadwood stagecoach this week, along with Wu, who had been in California hiring new Chinese workers for Hearst. (Missed yu, Wu!) First we met Aunt Lou Marchbanks (Cleo King), Hearst’s apparently beloved cook; then Swearengen’s old friend Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox), a theatrical promoter. Although neither one seems to be threatening to advance the story in any significant way, they both served nicely to show us a different side of the camp’s two warring alpha males. (As for this week’s third newbie, me, I’m subbing for your usual frontier guide, Paul Katz, who is experiencing technical difficulties — something about a differential duplex. When I asked him to explain what was wrong, he just started talking in a really high voice.)

As Hearst told the Ellsworths in their abortive business meeting, Aunt Lou turns him into ”a boy from Missouri…I quite quake before her.” Watching him surrender his dirty boots to her in order to get some peach cobbler, you could almost like the greedy, murderous [bad Deadwood word goes here].

But the Hearst we know and hate came back soon enough when Alma met with him alone to offer to sell him 49 percent of her holdings. He first responded, ”I’m afraid I lack the qualities that minority participations require,” then elaborated: ”A vulgar man would ask before proceeding any further if you would require him to produce his jackknife and make himself a capon before you.” He countered this affront to his masculinity by implicitly threatening to rape her.

Hearst confessed to that intention in his later conversation (a monologue, really) with his new employee Tolliver, during which he also explained that human interactions only interfered with his pursuit of gold and silver: ”My proper traffic is with the earth. In my dealings with…people, I ought solely have to do with niggers and whites who obey me like dogs.” (Let me apologize for Hearst’s language, although he wouldn’t.) Tolliver, acting from some mysterious mix of Christian pacifism and the realization that his attempt to blackmail Hearst was a bust, replied, ”If he hadn’t meant me to wag it, why would the Lord give me a tail?” (Contrast this with Bullock’s saying that Hearst has turned everyone in the camp into ”dogs — for him to laugh at while we chase our tails.”)

Cut to Aunt Lou, whooping it up while gambling with the Chinese workers in Wu’s neighborhood. (I’m assuming that Aunt Lou’s unexpected knowledge of conversational Chinese will interfere with Swearengen’s plan to serve as an interpreter for Hearst and Wu.) Hearst, she says contemptuously, is just like a badger digging up nuggets of gold even though he has no use for them. So much for the one human bond in Hearst’s life.

By contrast, the arrival of Jack Langrishe humanized nasty old Al. (Unless Langrishe speaks conversational Cornish, I have no inkling of how he might figure in future plotlines.) For once, we saw Al with someone he regarded as neither a pawn nor a threat, and the two friends’ tour of the camp opened a window into Al’s soul — okay, maybe it broke a hole through the wall. Swearengen seemed to feel some actual pride and affection when showing off the grubby society he had helped build, and his desire to hold on to his piece of it was almost touching, at least compared with Hearst’s pure will to power. But as Al confessed to Langrishe, he was worried that his failure to confront his enemy showed he was weak, although he wasn’t concerned about being a capon or a dog: ”I begin to wonder if I mightn’t be f—in’ queer.” This set up a rare joke ending for an episode of Deadwood: Langrishe gave Al a goodnight swat on the butt, then said, ”Don’t misinterpret that.”

Earlier, Langrishe’s arrival had inspired another gem from Swearengen, who was talking to his gang in the bar but really addressing us viewers. Al described one of Langrishe’s ”amateur nights” in Virginia City: ”Guy farted seemed near an hour.” That’s a fair description of much of the summer reality programming on HBO’s rival networks and a pretty good reminder of why Sunday nights are such a breath of fresh air.

What do you think? Is Ellsworth looking to get killed by Hearst or divorced by Alma? (Are you concerned that her temperament is labile?) Who’s going to take on Hearst first — Swearengen or Bullock — or are they going to join forces? And is this the first time someone has pointed out that the bacon in the camp would have a ”human aftertaste”?

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