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Bummer

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What a depressing ending for Deadwood, not simply in the substance (which, in the last two episodes, was crushing) but also in the sheer incompleteness of the project. Knowing that the program would not be renewed, the producers decided to press on with the original plan even though it would leave numerous plot threads dangling and the absence of a meaningful conclusion. The third season was filled with plot elements that were designed to lead to something in the future (Tolliver’s thread, and virtually the entire Brian Cox storyline) but that served, under the circumstances, to detract from what was our central interest, the conflict with Hearst. Wu’s partisans and Landgrische’s troup may have yielded narrative payoffs, but we’ll never know.

I’m not sure how much the production should be faulted for this decision. In the face of a very similar situation with Angel, Joss Whedon decided to accelerate certain plot developments and craft the rest of the conclusion out of thin air, leaving us with a finale not nearly as sastisfactory as it should have been. I would think that there must be a happy medium between these two extremes. It could be fairly argued that a show like Deadwood should never result in some sort of happy equilibrium, in which we are more or less satisfied that the narratives of importance to us have come to a close. True enough, but that still misses the target a bit; I feel no greater sense of closure having seen the last episode of the season than I did seeing the sixth, and would have preferred if at least some gesture towards finality had been offered.

Then again, we are apparently supposed to get a couple feature length episodes to finish off the tale. There’s no timeline, and I’m skeptical that they’ll ever see the light of day, given the difficulty associated with reuniting the cast in a couple or three yeears.

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