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Deadwood - The Complete Third Season


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$59.98
$40.95*
Part No:B000NVI2GU
Manufacturer:

Home Box Office (HBO)

MFG Part:

93217

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4.5 / 5.0
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    (Rolling Stone) "The Best Drama on Television" is back with the third season on DVD! Timed to coincide with Father's Day HBO will release Deadwood: The Complete Third Season DVD on June 12 2007. Watch as the lawless era of Deadwood comes to an end. This DVD is loaded with bonus features including two featurettes audio commentaries and more.Running Time: 720 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 026359321726 Manufacturer No: 93217

    The final complete season of HBO's remarkable Deadwood series is full of surprises and devastating experiences as the nascent, dangerous town prepares to join Dakota territory in 1877. As in the previous two seasons, the question of who will control the town's resources, assets, and people drives much of the drama, affecting all manner of relationships and alliances, often between the most unlikely people. The dominant storyline in Deadwood: The Complete Third Season concerns upcoming elections for mayor and sheriff of the mucky, gold-mining town. The real juice, however, is not so much between the individuals running for office as between two power brokers each trying to steer the results toward their own purposes. Saloon owner and Deadwood's puppetmaster, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane sustaining his brilliant peformance in the previous two seasons), works closely with incumbent lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) on retaining the latter's seat. But Bullock himself has difficulty surrendering his penchant for taking unambiguous action and relying on few words, especially when he has to act like a politician and deal with people such as George Hearst (Gerald McRaney, playing the real-life father of William Randolph Hearst). Swearengen's rival, Hearst--a self-made industrialist who gained his fortune through mining--has every intention of overtaking Deadwood, with his eye particularly on the lucrative mine owned by Bullock's former lover, Alma (Molly Parker). (The violence Hearst employs to get to Alma's claim will stun many Deadwood fans.)

    Meanwhile, Bullock's old friend, Sol Starr (John Hawkes), runs for mayor against the feckless E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson), and tries to navigate through his difficult relationship with Trixie (Paula Malcomson) as she grows enraged by former lover Swearengen's manipulation of her and everyone else. Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) is encouraged to become a public speaker, telling of her misadventures with General George Custer, and she commences a lesbian relationship with Joanie (Kim Dickens), the saloon owner who is becoming increasingly despondent and suicidal. Bullock's relationship with his wife, Martha (Anna Gunn) continues to deepen and become more of an influence on him, Wyatt Earp comes for a visit, and a newcomer to town, Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox), an old friend of Swearengen, attempts to open a theatre. As expected, the season finale concludes with the long-awaited election, but HBO's decision to bring Deadwood to an end required creator David Milch to wrap everything up in a pair of two-hour movies. Still, The Complete Third Season is very satisfying on every level, and will always be, along with the rest of the series, a television landmark. --Tom Keogh


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    I never wanted it to end. . . 2008-09-035 / 5
    I really didn't want to reach the last episode of this, the third season. I didn't get to watch it when it originally aired and was heartbroken to hear of its early demise. I was able to get this season at a great price. I enjoyed the commentary but would have liked a few more extras. I love Deadwood!
    Excellent Service2008-07-305 / 5
    I ordered the Third Season of Deadwood from to be sent to another state. The video was delivered in a few days and in excellent condition and a great price! It is always a pleasure shopping on . I highly recommend them!
    Classic art through a dirty screen2008-07-275 / 5
    This may be the best entertainment value since Lonesome Dove. From casting to script and all parts between it is very well done. Prepare yourself to look past the profanity and enjoy some of the richest dialog to come to TV or movies. The previous two seasons are equally good. The whole story develops very well.
    Deadwood - The Complete Third Season2008-07-245 / 5
    Excellent! It's amazing how real this series is. It pulls you in and you feel you've been transported back in time. You feel like "a fly on the wall" in the lives of these people.
    Of course the show is awesome. I won't write yet another review. Here are some fun facts and comments:2008-07-115 / 5
    Deadwood is one of the best TV shows ever made. If we consider it with films thrown into the mix as well, it would be the best western of all time. Its dramatic impact as well as the depth and complexity of its characters are almost unparalleled. It easily puts other, more popular shows to shame, making The Sopranos, for instance, seem sophomoric and silly in comparison. Obviously the show is awesome, so instead of writing yet another review, I will offer some random comments and fun facts.

    -First, the cast is almost flawless. Almost. What would have been a flawless cast suffers greatly because of one of its leads: Timothy Olyphant. How did he land that role? He can't act and he's goofy looking. Watching him walk around the streets of Deadwood throwing his pseudo-menacing glances around with the acting depth of Steven Seagal is laughable. Even more laughable are his constant attempts to imitate Clint Eastwood. Too bad.

    -Many people objected to the profanity in the show. It is both anachronistic and accurate. How? Well, it's accurate in that people would have been cussing, a lot. They just wouldn't have been using the words that we today like to use. Milch thought it would be too comedic to have a bunch of people running around saying things like "You dern varmint" and sounding like Yosemite Sam, so he opted instead for the anachronistic, modern profanities used instead. This fact is poked fun at in one episode when Farnum makes a comment about an ancient Italian maxim fitting a situation. Wolcott says the gist is "s#!t out of luck," to which Farnum asks, "Did they speak that way then?" (By the way, the guy who plays Wolcott also plays McCall on the show--I don't like it when shows "recycle" actors, but oh well.)

    -Other than the anachronistic swear words, the language used is pretty authentic in my opinion. The language would have been a mixture of rough miner talk and Victorian-era discourse. Educated people were much more eloquent back then than they are today, a fact that is well represented in the complex dialogue exchanges in the show.

    -Deadwood is high on the verisimilitude scale. It feels authentic, but is full of historical inaccuracies. Many of the characters are based on real people, such as Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Calamity Jane, Hickok and Charlie Utter. In real life, however, Bullock was married to his childhood sweetheart, not his sister-in-law. The Bella Union was owned by one Tom Miller. Cy, Joannie and Eddie are fictional characters. So is Alma.

    -The guy going around with the "soap with a prize inside" scam is based on Soapy Smith. He would attract large audiences with this claim. An accomplice in the audience would buy a bar and find that cash was in the wrapper. Audience members saw Smith placing large bills in certain wrappers and then placing those soaps in with the others, but, through sleight of hand, none of these were actually sold to customers. He would sell down the stack of soap, with accomplices "finding" cash in their soap wrappers. He would then announce that the soap with the $100 bill hasn't been purchased yet, and auction off all the rest of the bars at a high price. In reality none of the wrappers had cash in them. In real life Soapy Smith was very successful, running criminal enterprises larger than Swearengen's. I do not think he ever operated in Deadwood. His most famous scam was a "telegraph office" in Alaska where he would charge people to send telegrams. Apparently nobody realized that there were no telegraph lines leading to the town (or the telegraph office for that matter).

    -Some other interesting tidbits on factual characters: In real life Charlie Utter was very dashing and charismatic. He only wore the finest suits, was very particular about his long, blond hair and moustache, and insisted on bathing each and every day--something that was quite unusual then. If accurately portrayed, Utter would have perhaps been the most dashing character on the show. In her autobiography Calamity Jane claims that she is Wild Bill's ex wife. (Why they make her a lesbian in the show I don't know.) Hickok's funeral was a big to do in real life, not a small ceremony. History has it that Hickok always sat with his back to a corner to avoid being attacked from behind, and that on that night in Nuttall's No. 10 saloon there simply wasn't a seat available with its back to a wall. The show, however, suggests that Hickok had a death wish and knew that McCall was going to kill him.

    -Deadwood magazine claims that the real Al Swearengen was much more sinister and brutal than how he is portrayed in the show. He would lure women to Deadwood with false promises and then beat them until they agreed to work as prostitutes. He was married when the show takes place, but his wife left him on the grounds of abuse. He was married two more times. Both wives also left him because of abuse. Swearengen's original saloon featured "prize fights" between miners. The winners never actually received prizes. When he opened The Gem Variety Theater he made as much as $10,000 a night, which would today be equivalent to as much as $180,000 a night! The original Gem burned down in 1879, two years after season three of the show occurs. It was later rebuilt much larger. The real Swearengen was from Iowa, not England, and Wikipedia reports that a recently recovered obituary shows that he was found dead in Denver in 1904 with a massive head wound.

    -If you're like me, and like your whiskey, watching this show will want to make you drink some. I tried to find what whiskey they would be drinking on the show. Another anachronism emerged: Whiskey bottles would not have had printed labels on them back then. There would be some glass, embossed bottles, but the whiskey at The Gem would come in barrels and likely be served in ceramic jugs. Some whiskeys that may have been drunk: They mention Basil Hayden on the show. Beam produces a pricy Basil Hayden whiskey, but know that Basil Hayden's recipe is today sold as Old Grand-Dad (Grand-Dad being Basil Hayden). Old Overholt was the most popular whiskey in Tombstone, and is the best (and cheapest) rye still made today. Rye was probably more common than sour mash, though in one episode Wolcott specifically orders "Kentucky Bourbon." Hickok however, liked rye. Old Overholt was also Abraham Lincoln's favorite drink. Old Crow is another (they all start with "Old"). Old Crow was Ulysses S. Grant's favorite. It is said that someone reported on Grant's drunkenness to Lincoln. Lincoln said, "I wish you knew what kind of whiskey he drank. I'd have a barrel sent to all of my generals." My wife suggested the drinking game of getting one of these whiskey's and drinking whenever they do on the show. Others have commented on the mythic feats of drinking portrayed on Deadwood. Just keep in mind that the whiskey they were drinking would have been very watered down.

    -Fans are rightly pissed at the show's being cancelled. Deadwood was better than The Sopranos and was also better than Six Feet Under, both of which were given six seasons. A year or so ago HBO still said there was about a 50/50 chance on the two, two-hour TV movies it promised to rap up the show's plotlines. In a recent interview, however, Ian McShane (who played Swearengen) said that these TV movies will never be made, as they are tearing down the show's elaborate set already. He said this officially means that "Deadwood is Dead," and added something to the effect that "if this makes you upset, imagine how I feel." I would add, however, that contrary to popular belief, David Milch did NOT abandon Deadwood for John from Cincinnati. JFC was written before Deadwood, and Milch fully intended for Deadwood to continue after JFC started. It was HBO that cancelled Deadwood, as Deadwood cost a lot more than JFC. I've heard that a lot of fans then cancelled HBO. Good for them. Deadwood was about the best damn TV show ever made.

    -In the end, the theater owner Jack saves the day by telling Hearst he has more important things to do than messing around with the likes of Swearengen. Hearst is convinced and leaves camp. Thus Jack saves the town from a struggle and spares viewers from any sort of climax or payoff. As some have commented, the series finale is one of the worst of all time. Sure, they didn't know that it was going to be the series finale. It just so happened that the last episode happened to be one of the worst episodes in the entire show's run. Too bad. In real life what happened next is that Bullock lost the election but refused to give up his star, until he was taken to court.

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