Arrived in Deadwood. Headin' outta town.

Honestly, I tried. On recommendations of J. and daughter A. and remembering how much brother-in-law R has loved this series, M and I watched the HBO series "Deadwood," the first 4 episodes of Season 1 (from 2004?), and try as I might I could not get into this work. Admittedly, I have never been a huge fan of Westerns, though I've admired some great John Ford movies of course and a few other classics and have been somewhat interested in seeing a "contemporary" Western - which I guess Deadwood is supposed to be: the classic western lawless outpost town but with a lot of more swearing, sex, and drugs (the drinking, gambling, and fighting have always been part of the genre). The series does have the high-quality production values that we've come to expect from HBO, though in this case it's not the bright imagery of, say, Rome, or the gritty realism of the Wire, but visuals of a dark hue: lots of mud and muck and dark interiors of saloons and that look as if they've just been nailed together overnight (much like a movie set, for that matter) - not pretty to watch, but no doubt accurate to the time. The bigger problem for me is the convoluted development of plot, which never took fire for me because I never grew to care about any of the characters: the main character, an ex-sheriff (Bullock - Timothy Olyphant) who's apparently in Deadwood to set up a hardware business, doesn't seem true or particularly deep - I suppose he's not there just to set up a store, he seems to wily and talented for that, but over four episodes his character hasn't opened up at all. The "villain," a bar owner named Al Singeltaire (?), is cartoonish rather than frightening, which is vulgar mouth and his eyes always popping out of his head. We've come to understand from many other great shows that the scariest characters are generally not the loudest of most fierce. Something slowly seems to be developing regarding a dispute over a gold claim, and I was kind of getting interested in one of the few historically accurate characters - Wild Bill Hickock - but unfortunately he was shot in the 4th episode. Maybe the season grows on you, slowly, but too slowly for me. I'm headin' outta town.