TV Westerns

I watched the premiere of HBO’s new series Deadwood in a post-SXSW delirium Sunday night, so I figured I needed to give it another shot on one of its replays, which I did last night. So far most of the attention the show has gotten has focused on its salty language, and indeed words like “cocksucker” do sort of jump out at you in the Old West context. I have no reason to believe this isn’t historically accurate, and there’s something enjoyably Mamet-y about the way writer David Milch weaves the profanity into the characters’ antiquated speech patterns. Other than that, I still haven’t formed much of an impression, even after two viewings. I’m giving it at least a couple more episodes, though; I like the setting, at least, and what are the odds another TV western is gonna come along anytime soon?



Well, there was Firefly, a quasi-Western sci-fi show from Joss Whedon that aired briefly last season on Fox. I didn’t catch it at the time; I’m not a Whedon worshipper and in fact had managed to avoid Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the entirety of its run. But just as that show reached its finale, the bird I fancied urged me to borrow her third season DVDs, so I decided to give it a shot. (Hey, under the circumstances I would have even given Touched by an Angel a fair shake.) Much to my shock and horror, I got sucked into it pretty quickly, and by the end of last summer I had seen pretty much every damn Buffy episode.

I’m not saying it was all brilliant. Whedon’s trademark dialogue grates as often as it delights, and there’s an awful lot of tedious crap to slog through (the abysmal final season is pretty much nothing but tedious crap), but at its best, it’s a witty, surprising and even moving take on the horror genre. Then there’s the spinoff Angel, of which I’ve only seen the current season. As such, there’s a lot of backstory I don’t quite grasp, and the thing disappears from the schedule for weeks at a time, making the already disjointed arc even harder to follow. That said, I have enjoyed a number of the individual episodes, so I’ll probably stick with it to the end (easy for me to say, since it’s been cancelled and only a few episodes remain).

So that brings us to Firefly, now on DVD in its entirety. I borrowed the set and have seen the first three episodes so far. I’m willing to stick with it, but I’m not quite convinced it’s the startlingly original creation its makers seem to believe it to be. I mean, I’m sure they don’t really believe they came up with the Western-in-space shtick, it’s just that they’ve made it more overt than it has been previously. (Except for that one Star Trek with Kirk and Spock at the OK Corral, but the less said about that the better.) I guess I’m just waiting to see if the Western stuff develops into more than just window dressing. There’s been a few clever visuals – a guy getting thrown through a holographic window during a bar brawl, for instance – but horses and sixguns alone do not a Western make. I’m willing to bet it gets better, since the first couple episodes were hampered by network interference – Fox didn’t want to air the pilot, so Whedon and his co-creator had to hammer out an episode in one weekend and load it up with awkward exposition. Which I guess also explains why the lead character, Captain Mal Reynolds, suddenly transforms from humorless hardass to fun-loving jokester.

I’m sorry, am I still writing? Nodded off for a second there.