Deadwood · Season 1 · HBO
Deadwood Season 1
Deadwood Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 8.6/10. 12 episodes on HBO from 21 March 2004.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Deadwood premiered on HBO in March 2004 to an 85 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a Metacritic of 80 - solid but not yet reflecting the series' full ambition. Creator David Milch constructed a Western where historical figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane share scenes with fictional operators and grifters, all speaking an invented vernacular that blends anachronistic profanity with Shakespearean cadence. Critics praised Ian McShane's Al Swearengen as one of television's great villain-protagonists and Timothy Olyphant's Seth Bullock as a foil of quiet moral force. Variety called it HBO's next great dramatic addiction. Season 1 is a slow accumulation: the camp of Deadwood drawing water, commerce, and violence from the same source, gradually becoming a society that resembles nothing else on television.
BollyAI hasn't watched this. BollyAI has read everyone who has.
The Room
“HBO just might have found its next great dramatic addiction - a vulgar, gritty, at times downright nasty take on the Old West.”
Variety
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1Deadwood8.5
The pilot drops Bullock and Sol Star into Deadwood a day after Wild Bill Hickok's arrival, establishing the town as a place where every transaction is also a negotiation for survival. Milch's dialogue announces itself immediately: dense, foul-mouthed, and oddly musical. The power geography of the camp is mapped in a single episode.
The moment: Swearengen delivering orders from the balcony of the Gem Saloon - the town's true power structure visible in his posture and everyone else's deference.
Full review of E1 → - E4Here Was a Man9.3
The episode whose outcome the show's entire mythology hinges on - the consequences confirm Deadwood as a drama willing to discard narrative safety nets in the first month. Everything that follows is shaped by this hour's decisive violence.
The moment: The moment that removes the series' most famous historical figure from the board - a choice that announces the show's refusal to protect its audience.
Full review of E4 →