Mid-Season Doldrums? | Deadwood S1E6 | Dudes Daily
Deadwood started the trend, which I've seen on at least one other show, of seeming to stumble a bit here at the midpoint of the season. The A-plot of this episode dealing with the smallpox outbreak was good, but there was a lot of weirdness on the periphery.
I don't really know what to make of Bullock's fight with the Sioux man, or his insistence on honoring some concept of the man's religious practices. Feels very loaded and also very thin in a show that hasn't been much bothered to actually depict Native folks so far.
The Bella Union crew is also starting to feel pretty incoherent to me - they're all sniping at each other constantly, but very little work has been done to demonstrate their individual characters or dynamics, compared to the rest of the cast drawn very clearly. I wonder if that's more on this particular episode's script or a continuing issue, as I didn't really notice it until now.