Hoopleheads! Cocksuckers!

Could the second season of Deadwood get any better? Any richer? Could it be written any better?

Also, could it be any more confusing?

**spoilers inevitably follow**

Season Two takes a few unlikely turns right off the bat: Swearengen is struck with a debilitating illness, meaning that his brilliant oratory is subtracted from the show for a few episodes; the sniveling, scheming, flat-voiced E.B. Farnham takes an almost central role for a couple of shows, and the character takes a new depth without lessening his overall repulsiveness; strangest of all, the actor who played Jack McCall (Wild Bill Hickok's assassin) returns in the role of Francis Wolcott, an eloquent psychopath who works for the Hearst organization. Why the same actor? I can't imagine that HBO was just too cheap; Garrett Dillahunt, the actor, is fantastic as Wolcott - every line that comes out of his mouth is delivered with a singular mixture of repression, cruelty, and sorrow.

I won't even get into where the show's famous coarseness takes you in the second season; there are some awful things depicted, as always. Season One seemed to be focused on taking some awful characters and building audience sympathy with them; Season Two sets out destroying that sympathy right away. The removal of Swearengen ratchets down the humor quotient for a couple of episodes; Jane, who is hilariously drunk during Season One, is just depressing for the first half of Season Two. It's like the writers wanted to take the most entertaining parts of the first season and make them go sour in your mouth...pretty bold, overall, and I think in a lot of ways it pays off.

Overall, I'm just amazed at the depth of vision David Milch and the rest of the creative team puts into Deadwood. The overall message of the show - that the birth pangs of a society come with violence, an overall lack of moral clarity, and lots of cussin' - is remarkably consistent, and it's one of the few times that TV shows have really bothered to ask what's essentially human (or humane, if you will) and what traits belong to the thin veneer of civilization.

I'm Alive, I Swear

It's been forevah and a day, eh?

I was up in NH this weekend for various family activities, and talk turned to Presidential politics - the unhealthy obsession of Granite Staters everywhere. What nearly everybody suggested was that the Democrats HAVE to pick a candidate who possesses the all-important trait of not being Hillary Clinton. Right now, 8-10 names are being bandied about: you can see most of them in this straw poll conducted by the DailyKos folks a few days ago.

The idea of "picking a candidate" before the voting actually happens kind of grosses me out, frankly. Let's face it, though - unless Russ Feingold really, really catches fire (which seems unlikely), there isn't a single Democratic candidate being talked about that is going to be immediately galvanizing for the grassroots "gimme something to believe in" folks. What the Democrats don't seem to understand is that in addition to losing to a "maverick" like McCain or a moderate like Giuliani, Hillary would stand a chance of losing to a totally crazy guy like Sam Brownback. You think things are bad now? It can get worse. Seriously, check out the link to Brownback's PAC.

So SOMEONE has to be the "not-Hillary" candidate...I would say that in order to qualify, you'd have to be a center-left candidate, but not a Lieberman "moderate" (ciao, Evan Bayh), you have to have some kind of charisma (sorry, Tom Vilsack), function well on the campaign trail (cheers, General Clark), not be someone likely to make Howard-Dean-level screwups (bye, Biden) and not be John Kerry (sayonara, John Kerry). Let's also leave out folks who we'd like to see run, but aren't going to (Gore and Obama) as well as folks who are unlikely to run and wouldn't be that good anyway (Harold Ford, Tom Daschle, Christopher Dodd). So, this leaves: John Edwards, Mark Warner, Bill Richardson. An inspiring bunch, to be sure.

All three have their downfalls. Honestly, Richardson's a little weird-looking; he may have some skeletons in his closet, as well. Mark Warner is an unknown, and is perhaps vulnerable to the "slick, soulless, Southern governor" thing. As is Edwards. Big time. Frankly, I'm always looking for new folks in this type of thing; I think we saw too little of Edwards in 2004, and that might indicate what sort of fire is in his belly.

Here's my move. I think Richardson's the guy for now; for some reason, I'm seeing him as being a little bit more inspiring to independents than most of the other candidates. I like Edwards' rhetoric a lot, but I still think he's not the right messenger. Warner's a little closer in some ways; his business success is a plus for moderates, and all of his materials are pretty savvy. Somehow I don't look at him and think "I really want him to be president." This is obviously subject to change in the event of a Gore or Obama candidacy, or a Feingold conversion. But I'll be following Richardson's grassroots efforts for now...