S1E4 Here Was a Man

Deadwood Episode 4 is the episode on which the series' entire mythology hinges, and its consequences - the removal of the show's most famous historical figure from the board in its first month of broadcast - confirmed Deadwood as a drama operating without conventional narrative safety nets. The episode was discussed at the time as audacious; in retrospect it was structurally necessary, because the show's real subject was never the historical figures but the town they were passing through. 'Here Was a Man' forces Deadwood to become what it was always going to need to be: a story about who remains when the legendary figures are gone. Keith Carradine's performance in his final episode was identified by critics as one of the season's finest individual character moments, and the decisive violence of the hour's closing was noted as the point at which the show announced its unwillingness to protect its audience through genre convention.