Community #3Deadwood's first season, elsewheres.

Over at Vinyl Is Heavy I wrote up some initial reactions to Deadwood's first season. I'm thinking we will try to continue the DeCal in Spring 2008, replacing Seinfeld with Deadwood for the semester. I wrote this in an email to Cuyler earlier today:

by starting with 'seinfeld' we can show these people as completely divorced from the community, living with their heads up their asses in new york city. in continuing with 'deadwood' we can show a set of people who are building a community literally one plank at a time, each highly motivated by individual needs. the idea of community in 'deadwood' is the proactive rewrite of the non-community in 'seinfeld'. except, it hates laws, even if it thinks them necessary. it says, you build your own covenant one plank, one word, one body, one bloodletting, one beating, one fucking, one day at a time -- and it's bound to change, as ever. nobody is resolutely good or bad or right or wrong. the ostensible hero of the show is the angriest man ever who tries his damnedest to reject the law, until he sees how he thinks he can make it right, in his own way. the real hero of the show is a fucking cold-blooded knife-man saloon keep who runs whores and sells booze and murders and deals out murder in every show, every day. he's despicable but he's also heroic: he's always shifting terms. it's not really selfish, either. you gotta watch the show. i can't wait to see where it goes.

Here's the link to the essay. Final note: Brad Dourif is the best. --RWK