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chani"A Rich Find" and "Unauthorized Cinnamon" on the menu today.
Both have in common the Odell subplot and the "everybody's waiting for Hearst's move" A-plot.
The scene of Hearst in jail the morning after Bullock pulled him by the ear was terrific, especially his taking the knife off the corpse before leaving!
The Hearst we see afterwards is a very agitated one. I was struck by the scene with Tolliver and realised that Cy is now to Hearst what E.B used to be to Al in season 1, or rather his obsequious ways remind me of E.B's.
Except that Cy is smarter and more sinister than Farnum. His plans about Alma gave me the chills. Leon is reluctant to cause an overdose though. He must think of what Bullock would do to him if Alma died of an overdose!!!
The scene in which he talks to his reflection on a puddle reminded me of the Smeagol/Gollum scene in The Two Tours, my precious. It was weird but poetical and foreshadowed other scenes, or rather served as a symbolic scene that would have many echoes.
"Oh, you think you can shine on me like the sun? Oh, Leon, you’re good guy.You put me next to the bank lady. You got a great fucking future at my side.Oh, fuck you. Fuck you!" (He looks up quickly to see if Cy heard him)"Don’t you think I know the outcome of that? Once the bank lady dies from the overdose,you’ve had a good fucking day, I get a quick one in the ear. And of course if the day went bad, first you’re calm on me for a fucking while."(A hooplehead rideshis horse through the puddle.) "Oh! Fuck you, rube! You clean up? Your 83 cents? Or whatever you froze your balls for all day in the fucking stream! Yeah,I’ll get off right here if I want to! Don’t confuse me, Mr. T, with having no cardsup my sleeve. This scholar didn’t raise no stupid sons. Or that don’t know…how to…navigate a tight…"
In case you wonder, I'm using a helpful site that has Deadwood scripts!
So Leon tells Alma she'll have to find another dealer. And Trixie makes sure he won't change his mind. Trixie rocks! I loved how she dealt with Leon. She's become such a strong woman. BTW I realise that she is a lot like Bullock. She's got principles (at least when it comes to Alma and Sophia) and she is always so angry! That's probably the reason she can't stand Seth and she is drawn to the soothing Sol.
There are good moments in "A Rich Find" but I must say that I don't care about Aunt Lou and her son Odell much. I coud do without those extra characters that we barely know. They look just as superflous as the theatre troupe without the meta vibe. They are probably the main reason the two episodes aren't among my favourites.
Odell's pride and Aunt Lou's fears left me unmoved, although the scene between Aunt Lou and Jane was lovely. I enjoyed the gag of Steve being his usual paranoid self and being constantly afraid of retaliation after Hostetler's death and having fearless Odell to constantly run into him. He's a pathetic creature that Steve.
His fears echoed the main plot, the whole camp fearing Hearst's answer to the humilation he had undergone. Because everybody expects the response to be bloody. Charlie thinks they should strike first because it's what Wild Bill would have done.
Even E.B is worried and goes to Al.
"E.B: Save us. Think of something.
Al: Have I ever not?"
The scene between Richardson and Hearst, with E.B spying on them is another priceless moment:
"Richardson: My stomach hurt.
Hearst :I was discomfited otherwise.(Richardson just continues stirring)Stupid,aren’t you?
Richardson: Yes, Sir.
Hearst :Better than what some of these others are. This place displeases me. I’mtaking measures to bring it down.
Richardson: All right.
(Hearst turns and leaves. Richardson turns his head slightly and watches him go. E.B. has been spying from his room.)
EB: Does he speak of the hotel? Or even more?"
I love that Al calls himself Albert Swearengen when he's around Martha Bullock. I can't say why, I just love it. The scene between Martha and Seth as he tells her how he dragged Hearst to jail after Hostetler shot himself was a moment of grace, especially her asking the connection between Hostetler and Hearst and his answering with a joke that both names began with a "H". They do share something now, the intimacy between them is palpable. And Seth isn't known for his sense of humour so it was a precious moment.
At the end of "A Rich Find", Al and Bullock are heading to gather the elders, the town’s few remaining strengths, to a meeting at the Gem (something that kinda echoed the commitees the theatre troup set in the previous episode when Jack and his actors gathered around the table), while Joanie is taking Jane in to prevent her from sleeping on the streets.
Al and Seth see Hearst then:
"Hearts to Al: How's the finger?
Al: All right, Mr. Hearst.
Seth: How's the fucking ear?
Al: Good, Bullock, good. By dissembling our feelings, we keep the strategic edge."
The final exchange between Jane and Joanie is also one of my favourites:
"Joanie: I wondered where you were. I’d hoped you come stay with me instead of going back to all this.
Jane: Whatever you mean by this, I have been recently engaged in complicated negotiations with niggers…who equal any other creature walking upright being able to fuck themselves up.
Joanie: I got myself a room at Shaunessey’s. The offer still stands, Jane. I’dreally like it if you’d come stay with me."
Jane's drunken words are full of wisdom, as often, but it's what Joanie says that I find the most relevant. The room in question is the room where she kept attempting to kill herself. By inviting Jane in, Joanie is trying to overcome her depression and save herself. The scene actually echoes Leon talking to his reflection. Joanie doesn't want to "go back to all of this". What she tells Jane, is something she's actually telling herself. She wants to hang on and have some hope; by helping Jane she helps herself. The counterpoint of this is Ellsworth leaving Alma because he thinks that his presence is the cause of her addiction, or that she'll manage to quit if he isn't there. Oh Ellsworth...
All the final scenes suggest that there are things that can only be overcome when we partner up (Aunt Lou teamed up with Nigger General to save her son). You don't let the other down, you help each other.
"Unauthorized Cinnamon" develops the idea with the big meeting at the Gem being the central piece of the episode.
Chesterton is still dying and all the characters are contempling/fearing their possible upcoming death at the Hearst's hands, which can paralyze them. Doc is a good example of someone who's stuck, not taking even taking part in the meeting, unable to do anything...until Al wakes him up.
The bizarre title of the episode comes from Jewel's idea to offer cinnamon with Al's usual canned peaches and Dan's reaction to it:
"Jewel: I put out cinnamon.
Dan: Where?
Jewel: The meeting table.
Dan: On whose instruction?
Jewel: Cinnamon’s good with peaches.
Dan:Do not put unauthorized cinnamon on the Goddamn meetin’ table. That’s all the fuck we need.
Jewel: It’s available as a choice.
Dan: Which is not your province to offer, Jewel.
Jewel: Well, if food’s not my province, then you can make your own fucking breakfast."
Of course it's a metaphor, and also a way to serve a gag about allergies, as Harry Manning who ate the cinnamon, is showed collapsing and choking afterwards, which provides a mirror to Cochrane's own lungs issues. Looks like Doc's illness isn't contagious so it's probably asthma coughing. Doc leaves his house to treat Harry. Again with the "helping the other is helping oneself" theme. Al castigates him afterwards.
Methinks that Doc's sudden illness is a symbol of the whole camp's reacting to Hearst's presence.
But let's go back to the unauthorized cinnamon. Jewel changed things, improvised with the cinnamon, and it's excatly what the meeting goers choose to do eventually. They could have picked the old ways (Wild Bill's ways), following Charlie's advice and Al's instincts, or try something else. Available as a choice. The whores noticed that Mrs Ellsworth, however being the bank owner, had not been summoned to the meeting, and came to the conclusion that having a pussy rules anyone out, and yes the whole thing seems very sexist, but we know that Alma probably ruled herself out because of being on the dope and it's Jewel the Gimp who came up with the cinnamon thing!
Publishing the letter Bullock wrote, as a way to witness the sort of people they are, as a community, is an unexpected way to answer the threat that Hearst poses, but it's a very symbolical one and a turning point for the camp. They chose humanism and decency over the old violent ways; they chose optimism over the dread; they chose to move forward, not to go back to "all of this".
The scene between Al and Jack sums it up:
"Al: Fuckin’ Hearst---that took an axe to my left middle digit, sends for 25 more thugsto take the tool to the whole fucking camp. Why am I fucking optimistic?
Jack: Did your meeting find a strategy in counterpoise?
Al: We heard the fucking reading of a letter.
Jack: Ahh.
Al: Writ by Bullock, to a miner’s family after Hearst had had him murdered.
Jack: Exhorting they charge Hearst with the crime?
Al: Never once mentioning Hearst. Expressing sympathy to the family, respect for the way the man lived. We decided Merrick would publish in the paper.
Jack: Strategy some may call ingenuous, others merely off the point.
Al: I sit mystified I was moved to endorse it.
Jack: Mystified, Al, at proclaiming a law beyond law to a man who’s beyond law himself? It’s publication invoking a decency whose scrutiny applies to him as to all his fellows. I call that strategy cunningly sophisticated, befitting and becoming the man who sits before me."
Proclaming a law beyond law to a man who's beyond law himself. And it's a law man who wrote the letter! Ah the irony!
There are also three sweet/bittersweet scenes in the episode. The Trixie/Sol one, the Jane/Joanie one and the Alma/Ellsworth one.
The first one happens just after Trixie and Sol argued -- like old married about her smoking inside and his snoring and farting when asleep!-- but is the sweetest, as Sol suggested that the Bullocks could take Sophia if Alma is unable to or, that Trixie and he could care for the child. It's a big move towards becoming a "true couple", a pairing of partners instead of fucking buddies(but they are already much more than that despite everything that Trixie says in order to maintain the illusion it's just a fucking deal between them), especially since Sol put them on the same level as the Bullcoks who are a legally married couple. The scene ends with their joined hands with intertwined fingers. It couldn't be more romantic!
BTW there's another hand touching scene in the episode, besides the Ellsworth/Alma scene, when Blazanov grabs Merrick's hand before going to upstairs to see Al and crossing the line in terms of confidentiality of communications for the sake of the community, choosing ethics over rules and regulations (a law beyond the law in other terms!). He chose to metaphorically eat the unauthorized cinnamon too!
The Jane and Joanie scene is something that they seem to have been heading to for ages. We knew since season 1 that Joanie was attracted to women, so it was just a matter of time before the Jane/Joanie relationship turned into someting less platonic. And Jane is no fool, despite all the liquor she drinks, so when Joanie starts cleaning her up she brings the topic on and undresses:
"Jane: Now go ahead and sponge my fucking tits and get it over with if that’s what you fucking do.
Joanie: It’s nothing like that, Jane.
Jane: Well, what’s it like then. I never had a sister.
Joanie: I had two. And I slept with both of ‘em. I don’t know why God let me or…if he forgives me when I pray, but—but I’d never hurt you, Jane, or touch you if you didn’t want.
Jane : I believe that. But I don’t want to open my eyes. But you can go ahead and kiss me if that’s what you fucking do."
Here I wonder if the sister thing -- Jane saying that she never had a sister and Joanie's mentioning her two sisters with whom she slept -- is to be taken in a metaphorical way. Sapphic love could be seen as a sisterly kind of love. Personally I've always imagined it that way.
Or was the incest Joanie committed with her sisters the source of her depression? Perhaps, as she sounds like the guilt has been eating her away. If so, her turning the sisterhood she kinda had with Jane into something romantic, is bittersweet because it's actually going "back to all of this", repeating a pattern...
As for Ellsworth and Alma. Oh..Could Ellsworth stop breaking my heart?
"Ellsworth: For being gone, I—I notice I’m frequently back.
(Alma smiles)I come to kiss her good night
Alma:I tried to persuade her you’d done so last night.
Ellsworth:My beard always wakes her.
Alma:She said so, refuting me. The thing I did that made you leave last night, the thing I was coming home to do again…I pray now to forego forever.
Ellsworth:Not having me in this house is gonna improve your odds.
Alma:I started using spirits at 17, Ellsworth, with no premonition we’d marry.
Ellsworth:Well, my feeling’s that being vessel of purposes not your own, your eye was out for relief. But glimpsing since how being your own vessel is preferable,let the pressure come off and you’re liable to do all right.
Alma:You are no pressure.
Ellsworth: My…friendly hands’ll always be out to both of you.
(He puts his hand out to her and she grabs it in both of hers.)
May I interrupt her sleep with this beard?
Alma: She’d be so glad if you did.
(She gasps as Ellsworth releases her hand and walks upstairs."
So there's hope for Alma as she can still count on Ellsworth's helping hands. She is not as alone as she feared.
Yet there's Steve Fields on the verge of offering a job to Nigger General Fields (another play on reflection!) but finally backpedalling, and voicing new racist insults, going "back to all of this". Hopeless Steve, still stuck by fear.
Both have in common the Odell subplot and the "everybody's waiting for Hearst's move" A-plot.
The scene of Hearst in jail the morning after Bullock pulled him by the ear was terrific, especially his taking the knife off the corpse before leaving!
The Hearst we see afterwards is a very agitated one. I was struck by the scene with Tolliver and realised that Cy is now to Hearst what E.B used to be to Al in season 1, or rather his obsequious ways remind me of E.B's.
Except that Cy is smarter and more sinister than Farnum. His plans about Alma gave me the chills. Leon is reluctant to cause an overdose though. He must think of what Bullock would do to him if Alma died of an overdose!!!
The scene in which he talks to his reflection on a puddle reminded me of the Smeagol/Gollum scene in The Two Tours, my precious. It was weird but poetical and foreshadowed other scenes, or rather served as a symbolic scene that would have many echoes.
"Oh, you think you can shine on me like the sun? Oh, Leon, you’re good guy.You put me next to the bank lady. You got a great fucking future at my side.Oh, fuck you. Fuck you!" (He looks up quickly to see if Cy heard him)"Don’t you think I know the outcome of that? Once the bank lady dies from the overdose,you’ve had a good fucking day, I get a quick one in the ear. And of course if the day went bad, first you’re calm on me for a fucking while."(A hooplehead rideshis horse through the puddle.) "Oh! Fuck you, rube! You clean up? Your 83 cents? Or whatever you froze your balls for all day in the fucking stream! Yeah,I’ll get off right here if I want to! Don’t confuse me, Mr. T, with having no cardsup my sleeve. This scholar didn’t raise no stupid sons. Or that don’t know…how to…navigate a tight…"
In case you wonder, I'm using a helpful site that has Deadwood scripts!
So Leon tells Alma she'll have to find another dealer. And Trixie makes sure he won't change his mind. Trixie rocks! I loved how she dealt with Leon. She's become such a strong woman. BTW I realise that she is a lot like Bullock. She's got principles (at least when it comes to Alma and Sophia) and she is always so angry! That's probably the reason she can't stand Seth and she is drawn to the soothing Sol.
There are good moments in "A Rich Find" but I must say that I don't care about Aunt Lou and her son Odell much. I coud do without those extra characters that we barely know. They look just as superflous as the theatre troupe without the meta vibe. They are probably the main reason the two episodes aren't among my favourites.
Odell's pride and Aunt Lou's fears left me unmoved, although the scene between Aunt Lou and Jane was lovely. I enjoyed the gag of Steve being his usual paranoid self and being constantly afraid of retaliation after Hostetler's death and having fearless Odell to constantly run into him. He's a pathetic creature that Steve.
His fears echoed the main plot, the whole camp fearing Hearst's answer to the humilation he had undergone. Because everybody expects the response to be bloody. Charlie thinks they should strike first because it's what Wild Bill would have done.
Even E.B is worried and goes to Al.
"E.B: Save us. Think of something.
Al: Have I ever not?"
The scene between Richardson and Hearst, with E.B spying on them is another priceless moment:
"Richardson: My stomach hurt.
Hearst :I was discomfited otherwise.(Richardson just continues stirring)Stupid,aren’t you?
Richardson: Yes, Sir.
Hearst :Better than what some of these others are. This place displeases me. I’mtaking measures to bring it down.
Richardson: All right.
(Hearst turns and leaves. Richardson turns his head slightly and watches him go. E.B. has been spying from his room.)
EB: Does he speak of the hotel? Or even more?"
I love that Al calls himself Albert Swearengen when he's around Martha Bullock. I can't say why, I just love it. The scene between Martha and Seth as he tells her how he dragged Hearst to jail after Hostetler shot himself was a moment of grace, especially her asking the connection between Hostetler and Hearst and his answering with a joke that both names began with a "H". They do share something now, the intimacy between them is palpable. And Seth isn't known for his sense of humour so it was a precious moment.
At the end of "A Rich Find", Al and Bullock are heading to gather the elders, the town’s few remaining strengths, to a meeting at the Gem (something that kinda echoed the commitees the theatre troup set in the previous episode when Jack and his actors gathered around the table), while Joanie is taking Jane in to prevent her from sleeping on the streets.
Al and Seth see Hearst then:
"Hearts to Al: How's the finger?
Al: All right, Mr. Hearst.
Seth: How's the fucking ear?
Al: Good, Bullock, good. By dissembling our feelings, we keep the strategic edge."
The final exchange between Jane and Joanie is also one of my favourites:
"Joanie: I wondered where you were. I’d hoped you come stay with me instead of going back to all this.
Jane: Whatever you mean by this, I have been recently engaged in complicated negotiations with niggers…who equal any other creature walking upright being able to fuck themselves up.
Joanie: I got myself a room at Shaunessey’s. The offer still stands, Jane. I’dreally like it if you’d come stay with me."
Jane's drunken words are full of wisdom, as often, but it's what Joanie says that I find the most relevant. The room in question is the room where she kept attempting to kill herself. By inviting Jane in, Joanie is trying to overcome her depression and save herself. The scene actually echoes Leon talking to his reflection. Joanie doesn't want to "go back to all of this". What she tells Jane, is something she's actually telling herself. She wants to hang on and have some hope; by helping Jane she helps herself. The counterpoint of this is Ellsworth leaving Alma because he thinks that his presence is the cause of her addiction, or that she'll manage to quit if he isn't there. Oh Ellsworth...
All the final scenes suggest that there are things that can only be overcome when we partner up (Aunt Lou teamed up with Nigger General to save her son). You don't let the other down, you help each other.
"Unauthorized Cinnamon" develops the idea with the big meeting at the Gem being the central piece of the episode.
Chesterton is still dying and all the characters are contempling/fearing their possible upcoming death at the Hearst's hands, which can paralyze them. Doc is a good example of someone who's stuck, not taking even taking part in the meeting, unable to do anything...until Al wakes him up.
The bizarre title of the episode comes from Jewel's idea to offer cinnamon with Al's usual canned peaches and Dan's reaction to it:
"Jewel: I put out cinnamon.
Dan: Where?
Jewel: The meeting table.
Dan: On whose instruction?
Jewel: Cinnamon’s good with peaches.
Dan:Do not put unauthorized cinnamon on the Goddamn meetin’ table. That’s all the fuck we need.
Jewel: It’s available as a choice.
Dan: Which is not your province to offer, Jewel.
Jewel: Well, if food’s not my province, then you can make your own fucking breakfast."
Of course it's a metaphor, and also a way to serve a gag about allergies, as Harry Manning who ate the cinnamon, is showed collapsing and choking afterwards, which provides a mirror to Cochrane's own lungs issues. Looks like Doc's illness isn't contagious so it's probably asthma coughing. Doc leaves his house to treat Harry. Again with the "helping the other is helping oneself" theme. Al castigates him afterwards.
Methinks that Doc's sudden illness is a symbol of the whole camp's reacting to Hearst's presence.
But let's go back to the unauthorized cinnamon. Jewel changed things, improvised with the cinnamon, and it's excatly what the meeting goers choose to do eventually. They could have picked the old ways (Wild Bill's ways), following Charlie's advice and Al's instincts, or try something else. Available as a choice. The whores noticed that Mrs Ellsworth, however being the bank owner, had not been summoned to the meeting, and came to the conclusion that having a pussy rules anyone out, and yes the whole thing seems very sexist, but we know that Alma probably ruled herself out because of being on the dope and it's Jewel the Gimp who came up with the cinnamon thing!
Publishing the letter Bullock wrote, as a way to witness the sort of people they are, as a community, is an unexpected way to answer the threat that Hearst poses, but it's a very symbolical one and a turning point for the camp. They chose humanism and decency over the old violent ways; they chose optimism over the dread; they chose to move forward, not to go back to "all of this".
The scene between Al and Jack sums it up:
"Al: Fuckin’ Hearst---that took an axe to my left middle digit, sends for 25 more thugsto take the tool to the whole fucking camp. Why am I fucking optimistic?
Jack: Did your meeting find a strategy in counterpoise?
Al: We heard the fucking reading of a letter.
Jack: Ahh.
Al: Writ by Bullock, to a miner’s family after Hearst had had him murdered.
Jack: Exhorting they charge Hearst with the crime?
Al: Never once mentioning Hearst. Expressing sympathy to the family, respect for the way the man lived. We decided Merrick would publish in the paper.
Jack: Strategy some may call ingenuous, others merely off the point.
Al: I sit mystified I was moved to endorse it.
Jack: Mystified, Al, at proclaiming a law beyond law to a man who’s beyond law himself? It’s publication invoking a decency whose scrutiny applies to him as to all his fellows. I call that strategy cunningly sophisticated, befitting and becoming the man who sits before me."
Proclaming a law beyond law to a man who's beyond law himself. And it's a law man who wrote the letter! Ah the irony!
There are also three sweet/bittersweet scenes in the episode. The Trixie/Sol one, the Jane/Joanie one and the Alma/Ellsworth one.
The first one happens just after Trixie and Sol argued -- like old married about her smoking inside and his snoring and farting when asleep!-- but is the sweetest, as Sol suggested that the Bullocks could take Sophia if Alma is unable to or, that Trixie and he could care for the child. It's a big move towards becoming a "true couple", a pairing of partners instead of fucking buddies(but they are already much more than that despite everything that Trixie says in order to maintain the illusion it's just a fucking deal between them), especially since Sol put them on the same level as the Bullcoks who are a legally married couple. The scene ends with their joined hands with intertwined fingers. It couldn't be more romantic!
BTW there's another hand touching scene in the episode, besides the Ellsworth/Alma scene, when Blazanov grabs Merrick's hand before going to upstairs to see Al and crossing the line in terms of confidentiality of communications for the sake of the community, choosing ethics over rules and regulations (a law beyond the law in other terms!). He chose to metaphorically eat the unauthorized cinnamon too!
The Jane and Joanie scene is something that they seem to have been heading to for ages. We knew since season 1 that Joanie was attracted to women, so it was just a matter of time before the Jane/Joanie relationship turned into someting less platonic. And Jane is no fool, despite all the liquor she drinks, so when Joanie starts cleaning her up she brings the topic on and undresses:
"Jane: Now go ahead and sponge my fucking tits and get it over with if that’s what you fucking do.
Joanie: It’s nothing like that, Jane.
Jane: Well, what’s it like then. I never had a sister.
Joanie: I had two. And I slept with both of ‘em. I don’t know why God let me or…if he forgives me when I pray, but—but I’d never hurt you, Jane, or touch you if you didn’t want.
Jane : I believe that. But I don’t want to open my eyes. But you can go ahead and kiss me if that’s what you fucking do."
Here I wonder if the sister thing -- Jane saying that she never had a sister and Joanie's mentioning her two sisters with whom she slept -- is to be taken in a metaphorical way. Sapphic love could be seen as a sisterly kind of love. Personally I've always imagined it that way.
Or was the incest Joanie committed with her sisters the source of her depression? Perhaps, as she sounds like the guilt has been eating her away. If so, her turning the sisterhood she kinda had with Jane into something romantic, is bittersweet because it's actually going "back to all of this", repeating a pattern...
As for Ellsworth and Alma. Oh..Could Ellsworth stop breaking my heart?
"Ellsworth: For being gone, I—I notice I’m frequently back.
(Alma smiles)I come to kiss her good night
Alma:I tried to persuade her you’d done so last night.
Ellsworth:My beard always wakes her.
Alma:She said so, refuting me. The thing I did that made you leave last night, the thing I was coming home to do again…I pray now to forego forever.
Ellsworth:Not having me in this house is gonna improve your odds.
Alma:I started using spirits at 17, Ellsworth, with no premonition we’d marry.
Ellsworth:Well, my feeling’s that being vessel of purposes not your own, your eye was out for relief. But glimpsing since how being your own vessel is preferable,let the pressure come off and you’re liable to do all right.
Alma:You are no pressure.
Ellsworth: My…friendly hands’ll always be out to both of you.
(He puts his hand out to her and she grabs it in both of hers.)
May I interrupt her sleep with this beard?
Alma: She’d be so glad if you did.
(She gasps as Ellsworth releases her hand and walks upstairs."
So there's hope for Alma as she can still count on Ellsworth's helping hands. She is not as alone as she feared.
Yet there's Steve Fields on the verge of offering a job to Nigger General Fields (another play on reflection!) but finally backpedalling, and voicing new racist insults, going "back to all of this". Hopeless Steve, still stuck by fear.