Television Tuesday :: the much-needed miracle of Deadwood

Y’all know how deeply attached I am to Deadwood. Like, I can safely say that it is bar none my favorite television program and I will not hesitate to sing its praises (with a few “it’s a period drama, relevant warnings apply”-type caveats, but still, I think it’s actually way better about a lot of these things than… well, a lot of things /throws shade) to anyone who will listen. After my parents turned me onto the show, I/we proceeded to turn at least seven of my friends (my wife included, although technically before we were dating because this was one of her ploys for impressing me, I’m not even kidding) onto it, and I feel comfortable saying that one of my missions is to continue to do this for the rest of my life.

Needless to say, I was pretty damn ecstatic when we got word that the movie (wrapping the series up, since although the technical series finale is a decent conclusion there were stories to finish properly and everyone knew it) was finally happening. They even started filming on my birthday, and at the time I thought “happy birthday to me!” while not fully realizing how much I was really going to need it by the time it finally rolled around.

(Yes. I’m specifically referring to the gaping wound left in my and also fandom’s psyche by Game of Thrones. I’m also referring to a dozen other media and world missteps, though I feel most comfortable saying Game of Thrones specifically given the HBO connection.)

So okay, I didn’t really go in with very high expectations. My checklist was basically

• has Alma (Molly Parker) stayed sober (yes) and gotten some (I dunno, probably at some point in the last ten years, it wasn’t really addressed)?
• are Joanie (Kim Dickens) and Jane (Robin Weigert) alive (yes) and very gay (yes)?
• is Sofia (now at the age of 19-20 played by Lily Keene) happy (seemed so, yes!)?
• is Trixie (Paula Malcomson) okay (emotionally turned about, but yes)?

The rest of it I was willing to negotiate, especially as we drew nearer and nearer to the premiere and I started to worry. Would this, this thing I love most, turn its back on me in the eleventh hour (like other pieces of media, and specifically HBO properties, have in the past)? We waited to watch it until my mom could vet it for us, because I couldn’t bear the thought of having the show’s goodness tainted for me.

I don’t know why I was worried, though. I should have known that Deadwood would never let me down like that.

My mom suggested that it was “underwhelming,” but I respectfully disagree with this. I’m not sure what would have been considered properly whelming, except for maybe the entire town getting together to collaboratively murder Hearst (Gerald McRaney) which had no chance of happening because of, y’know, his being a historical figure who unfortunately did not die of murder. (Other characters do, in fact, die of murder. Several of them. And those that deserve it are given proper farewells, the sort that had me clutching at my heart and making overwrought faces of emotion.) I think it’s in many ways exactly what you could have wanted from a movie-length, set-ten-years-later finish to a sprawling but also very intimate television show. Not everyone got enough screen time (more on this in a moment, too) but generally, I was left feeling satisfied.

And also crying my eyes out for at least ten minutes. It’s times like these (satisfied crying, not fists-pounding-into-pillows aggravated crying) that I’m glad I can cry at media now.

It’s still a recent enough release that I won’t get into every single detail. (Do people care about Deadwood spoilers, here or anywhere else? I have no idea what the actual relevance of this show in my media-watching demographic is, because I don’t hear people talk about it very often but about a fourth of the time when I bring it up someone else goes “oh yeah, that’s good!” and the other people I do hear talk about it are people that I specifically am responsible for having shown it to. I’m going to be polite anyway.) Like those deaths. They happen, and all I will say is all that I needed vetted: no lesbians (/queer women of whatever variety) were harmed in the making of this production.

As for said lesbians(/etc. – I amend because technically neither Joanie nor Jane assigns themselves a specific sexuality, probably because it’s the 1800s) let me just say: things start a bit rocky, but that’s quickly taken care of, and they are just as gay and in love and happy as I could have possibly dreamed. Jane starts the whole movie with a monologue that’s just so completely her, and she makes her queer intentions known early on. (I assume they hadn’t stayed happy and queer together for ten years without reprieve because of Jane Cannary’s also being a real person with a recorded history that would have to be worked around and also because then it gave good excuses to have them explicitly talk about their feelings, something they hadn’t totally done in the show.) Joanie, meanwhile, is first seen the new proprietor of the Bella Union, which could be a good thing (and which I assume was necessitated by the death of Powers Boothe – Cy, incidentally, is mentioned all of twice in the entire film, and that’s good because Cy is a sack of shit) but really isn’t, and her earlier scenes in particular do have that familiar tinge of Joanie angst. (I’ve never been suicidal as Joanie has, but I do appreciate her explicit depression being addressed both through the show and the movie. The word isn’t used, but she’s unambiguously that, and it’s not just a Very Special Episode. As someone with that same chemical imbalance, that’s refreshing.) But soon enough, they’re coming back together, and together they stay, and they dance together so damn much.

Alma and Sofia, who’ve not lived here awhile, return to camp for the celebration of South Dakota’s new statehood. Alma is a successful enterpreneur (still owner of the bank, though at a distance now) and Sofia is an accomplished and very sweet young lady. No, Alma doesn’t end up with Seth (Timothy Olyphant). As much as I loved them together, I didn’t actually want this to happen. Seth has Martha (Anna Gunn) and more than that, I’m not sure they were meant to be in this life. Maybe in another time or place, but in this one I like seeing them being able to be civil and vaguely longing but also comfortable in their separate lives. Everyone still treats Sofia like their collective daughter, which is desperately adorable (I “awwwed” about half of the time she was in the action, honestly; Sofia feels like my daughter at this point), but now that she’s older, she’s very aware of her mother’s feelings and able to be there to support her in a conscious, mature way. This is A+ fictional adoption.

Seth and Martha have three whole kids now, all obviously under ten and more set dressing than distinguishable characters but charming set dressing nonetheless. They all favor their mother, which is sweet. Seth spends a good bit of the movie silently feeling things about Alma again after all these years, during which Martha is mostly relegated to sideways suspicious glances, but they’re very expressive sideways suspicious glances, at least, and the ultimate resolve of this is very sweet.

Seth spends the rest of the film tangling with Hearst and the other main players in the camp, among them Al (Ian McShane) and Sol (John Hawkes) and Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) and many more men… and also Alma and Jane and Trixie. There’s not much can be said about this part of the story without spoiling, but it’s got enough twists and turns to be, at least in my opinion, satisfying, and as it concludes there’s a real sense of (slow but important) progress being made.

Trixie and Sol, meanwhile, open the story expecting a child, and that child is soon brought into the world. Then a whole hell of a lot of spoilers happen. Trixie also spends a fair bit of time with Al, who’s infirm with liver damage and age and all that go with them, and there are so many dimensions to their relationship that are just heartbreaking. They also both have scenes of varying length with Caroline (Jade Pettyjohn), the new saloon girl on the block, and she’s an interesting mirror and foil to both of them.

Basically, I want to go back to the progress thing. Game of Thrones, for example, was a fantasy world where literally anything could/should have been possible, and yet it ended aggressively upholding the status quo that it should have been challenging. Deadwood, as a show and specifically in this movie, was a period piece based loosely on historical events and figures, and it represents a period that wasn’t exactly awesome for most people that weren’t white, cishet Christian men of at least the middle class. So how did Deadwood end up being the one to uphold things like women’s agency (owning businesses and land, standing up for themselves, being pivotal and important and respected both in the story and by the story) and racial tolerance (unfortunately not everyone is racially tolerant, in somewhat brutal ways, but the ones that aren’t are explicitly painted the villains and the heroes uphold tolerance beautifully) and gay rights (specifically gay women’s rights)? I’m not sure how, but it did, and it gave me back a bit of the faith that other media has tried to steal. Thank you, Deadwood. I needed you way back when, and I needed you now, and I’ll probably need you forever.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Superlative Sunday :: another Comic Con, day 2 AND my thoughts on the 2013 Emmy awards

Another panel was attended, this one with Jewel Staite AND Christopher Judge AND Alexis Cruz.  It was fun and amusing.  Also we wandered around buying things and generally just partaking of the ambiance.  And making up stories about our costumes.

See, we had British Ladies Day again.  Mostly.  My everything friend was Luna again, albeit a bit more traditional this time (borrowing my Dany wig and doing a more straightforwardly Hogwartsy look).

I was Nora again, although circa a different canonpoint, which is to say last time I was… circa whenever, and this time I was very specifically circa 5.07 “In the Beginning” and the start of 5.08 “Somebody That I Used to Know,” when all the chancellors took hits of Lilith’s blood, then went out and festively massacred Mardi Gras goers, then came back to the Authority headquarters all dripping with blood and crazy and exchanging Mardi Gras beads in a jolly manner.  Hence the blood smeared on my mouth (more on this on Tuesday too) and the beads, as well as the part-leather vaguely tuxedo-looking jacket.

I didn’t have anyone come up and recognize me today (not surprising — I’m the only True Blood cosplayer I’ve ever seen, not counting a couple of people in Merlotte’s shirts, which probably wasn’t even intended as such) but I did have one guy gesture to his mouth and mention that I in fact had something on there.  “As I should,” I replied, smiling beatifically, because occasionally crazy is fun.

My other friend was HG from Warehouse 13 (that’s meant to be her grappler, though it’s just a gun I’d painted to look steampunk — these were very quickly thrown together costumes overall).  We’d established in March why Luna and Nora knew each other, and we also established why HG and Nora would know each other, and then subsequently we established how Luna and HG would interact with each other.

And then my other friend was… Kaylee.  Again, it’s all stuff we already had, and she didn’t want to do a British accent.  Not that we were all doing them consistently, but we all dabbled and slid in and out of it amongst ourselves.  But it works out, because she’s an adorable Kaylee.  (She declared that of course Kaylee would have stolen Jayne’s hat on multiple occasions.)  We also managed to come up with a highly cracked-out explanation as to why Kaylee would know HG, who then would… introduce her to Nora and Luna, I suppose.

This is a picture of HG explaining her tech (it’s a communicator called a Farnsworth, but I don’t know much more about it than that — it’s quite pretty and steampunk, though) to Kaylee, who is intrigued.  Because mechanical things.

And this is a picture of Nora drinking from HG.  For this to make sense, I ask you to disregard the earlier canonpoint, as this is a completely consensual and not-deadly drinking-from.  It’s the other kind.

And here we are with the Angel puppet again.

Here is our Kaylee with another Kaylee as well as an Inara.

And here is a Sailor Jupiter, because I will stop everything to photograph Sailor Senshi.

AND the Emmys.

Otherwise known as, good on you Bobby Cannavale for Boardwalk Empire, good on you Anna Gunn for Breaking Bad because even if I don’t watch it I like you, I did not care about anything else at all and some of it was sincerely perplexing.

Also, I love that both of the tiny clips in the Supporting Actress in a Drama montage for Christina Hendricks were from the one episode this season where she actually got to do anything.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 6 of the times that family ain’t always blood

As I mentioned last week and as I mention always and forever, I absolutely just love created families.  These can take a whole variety of forms.  They’re based in organizations, in necessity, in friendship, in trust, in, uhm, vampirism, in care for others, in whatever.  And they are beautiful.  I heard in work orientation that the “my friends are my family” thing is sort of unique to the younger generations, and I suppose I understand how that’s true (it’s certainly true in my case, but I think that comes as much from generational differences as from my latching onto a few people with everything I have) but it has fascinated and will always fascinate me.

Honorable mentions to the Angel Investigations crew, who I’ll discuss a teensy bit more in a minute, and the cast of Community, neither of whom I’m discussing in detail because I’m still working through those two particular shows, but augh I love them already.  I’m just waiting till I’m done to discuss.  Another honorable mention, actually, to Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragons and her khalasar, which is a kind of family in its way (and, y’know, “blood of my blood” and stuff) but since it’s more conceptual/re: dragons than re: specific characters (I mean Jorah [Iain Glen], yeah, and her maids, though that’s a whole other meta, but) I’m not going into it much.

6. Sofia has four or five mommies and a daddy or two (Deadwood)
This one is complicated because strictly speaking, Alma (Molly Parker) basically adopts Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall), and Alma and Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) do get married.  But it’s my favorite adoptive mommy&daddy situation ever, basically; it’s different than if Alma was actively seeking a child to adopt, which is cool too, but this is more a case of stumbling into it and deciding that yes, she liked the little impromptu family.  And Ellsworth was a great fake dad.  I also bring this up because this is a relatively literal “it takes a village to raise a child” situation – I guess it’s more “Sofia has a mommy and three or four aunt figures” than the above, I just like how the above sounds.  Considering that Sofia is influenced by Trixie (Paula Malcomson) and Jane (Robin Weigert), to a lesser extent Martha (Anna Gunn) and occasionally even Joanie (Kim Dickens), as well as sometimes having Sol (John Hawkes) and Seth (Timothy Olyphant) in her life (and even Bill [Keith Carradine] a teensy bit back in the day), well.  Everyone is contributing to the life of this one adorable little girl, and I think it’s really sweet.

5. The Sons of Anarchy (Sons of Anarchy)
Wow, I don’t have nearly as much meta about these guys as I do about, y’know, everyone else, but they’re worth mentioning.  They’re totally a family, and for a long time Clay (Ron Perlman) and Gemma (Katey Sagal) were the daddy and mommy, easy; they’re married, yes, and Jax (Charlie Hunnam) is their RL kid, and the whole mess with Maureen (Paula Malcomson) and Trinny (Zoe Boyle) and Abel and Tara (Maggie Siff) and my point is there are a lot of blood relations, yes, but the whole extended club is family in their way.  Sometimes a family that doesn’t get on that well, but family nonetheless.

4. I heard it called “the family Godric” somewhere online and I don’t remember where, but I’m going with it (True Blood)
(Well, technically vampire families are by blood, just not in “we share blood because I literally contributed to the creation of your DNA” way.  But they count, because it’s a family that’s chosen and created.)  The family Godric is all of the vampires who are descended from the bloodline created by now-deceased Godric (Allan Hyde), with his children Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and Nora (Lucy Griffiths), Eric’s child Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten), and Pam’s child Tara (Rutina Wesley).  And now I’m all curious about whether Nora’s ever been a maker.  But I’m shutting up about it now.  Because even vampire families aren’t always by blood, I also sort of count Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) in the family Godric – well, Bill (Stephen Moyer) was her maker, but Eric and Pam did foster her when she was a newborn, and she totally does act like Pam’s bratty little sister sometimes.  (Bill can maybe be the uncle in the family, the one that nobody really likes that much but they’ve all had to deal with him.)  And now that the family Godric is a proper thing, ridiculous family times with the whole crowd now that they all know each other is one of three things I want from season six.  I basically just want them acting like they’re all in high school: Pam and Tara, the snarky ones who make out with each other and then threaten you with physical violence just ‘cause and insult everyone, Nora the socially maladjusted genius child (since going from the Authority to not just that is probably sort of like going from private school to public school or something) just being dry and British all over, Eric the golden boy, the noble bad boy type, and for good measure Jessica naïve and also not naïve “good girl” who isn’t really that “good,” just chipper.  This is their family dynamic, and yep, it works for me and I like it.

3. The Whirlwind (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel)
(Also technically a bloodline, but.)  Darla (Julie Benz), who sired Angelus (David Boreanaz), who sired Drusilla (Juliet Landau), who sired Spike (James Marsters).  In the above vampire family,  the lines between parent and child are a little blurry, but in the Whirlwind, even taking the romantic relationships out of the equation, it’s very clear who’s what: Darla and Angel are the parents, period, and Dru and Spike are the kids, period.  Or at least it’s very clearly big sister and brother/little sister and brother.  There is no room for flexibility with these guys, and who’s in charge is clear, period.  Age isn’t relative, it’s very necessary.  But despite the fact that these guys are evil and crazy, their interactions are intriguing.  A lot of bad goes down, yes, but… well, this.

2. The Scoobies (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
(Okay, at this point I’ve seen enough of Angel to have seen a lot of the Whirlwind flashbacks, which I’d read about anyway, but I’m still in season two, so I don’t know enough about the whole Angel Investigations group to really discuss their forever dynamic.  Since people add in on the fairly regular.  I love them as far as I know them, though.  I love them a lot.  I just don’t have intelligent thoughts in excess yet.)  This is a whole lot of characters: Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Willow (Alyson Hannigan), Xander (Nicholas Brendon), Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Angel (David Boreanaz), Oz (Seth Green), Anya (Emma Caulfield), Riley (Marc Blucas), Tara (Amber Benson), Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), Spike (James Marsters), even sort of Andrew (Tom Lenk) and Faith (Eliza Dushku), not to mention I guess technically the Potentials sort of count, and eh, I’m probably forgetting to throw others in there because there are so many Scoobies.  What I love about the Scooby Gang is that yes, they’re a family, they’re a family easily, but they’re variable.  The lineup changes all the time.  Several of the Scoobies are reformed baddies to one extent or another.  The group is comprised of Slayers, of witches, of vampires, of ex-demons, of ex-energy blobs, of (ex-)soldiers, of (ex-)Watchers, of werewolves, of just regular people hanging out fighting the good fight.  Provided they want to fight the good fight and aren’t assholes, any variety of person can wind up a Scooby, and everyone gives something unique and necessary to the group.  Giles is the dad, of course; Buffy and Dawn play big/little sister pretty obviously, Xander’s the big brother, Willow’s sort of the middle sister who’s trying to prove herself, Cordy and Anya are the sometimes-abrasive cousins, Tara’s the big sister who ends up playing mom, Oz is the middle brother who’s shrugging and going along with it, Angel’s sort of the older cousin type who never knows what to do with himself at these family things, Andrew’s the twerpy little brother, Spike and Faith are the rebellious middle children who also want to prove themselves, it’s just this big mess of how people work together.

1. The crew of Serenity (Firefly)
The best best ain’t always blood family that ever has been and ever will be.  Literally they are the reason I started saying “family ain’t always blood,” which should be abso-bloody-lutely obvious, really.  Mal (Nathan Fillion), Zoe (Gina Torres), Wash (Alan Tudyk), Kaylee (Jewel Staite), Jayne (Adam Baldwin), Inara (Morena Baccarin), Simon (Sean Maher), River (Summer Glau), Book (Ron Glass), and it doesn’t matter that Zoe and Wash are married or that Simon and River are siblings for true, it is perfect.  Mal’s the protective big brother and occasionally the daddy, Book’s sort of the grandpa or the kindly uncle (sorry, Book, it’s true), Zoe and Inara are big sisters forever, Jayne’s the douche big brother, Wash and Kaylee are the middle siblings (Kaylee tending to be little sister a lot of the time, but not always), Simon’s the mannersly big brother, River’s the littlest sister forever.  But the magical thing about these guys is that even in all of the gēgē/dìdì/jiějie/mèimei stuff, it’s not like the roles are static.  Big sisters/brothers look after little sisters/brothers or after each other, but little sisters, for example, look after big brothers (and everyone else).  Captain Daddy doesn’t treat l’il albatross like a child exactly (sometimes treats her like a liability, but that’s when it’s reasonable, not knowing everything, to feel that way) and when Zoe comic-canonically births her child, that child is going to have a whole passel of aunts and uncles.  L’il Kaylee is clearly everyone’s little sister (the baby before River shows up) but nobody ever underestimates her on account of it.  Everyone looks out for each other.  They made this family that counts for so much, that often counts for more than the families they were born to anymore, that matters so much they’ll all die for it if need be and a couple of them do.  It’s a family made by circumstance, by proximity, by camaraderie, by belief, but by love most of all, absolute and pure and real familial love that is so so good.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 Deadwood romances of varying statuses

This could also be titled “1 marriage of convenience that is love but perhaps not of that kind, 1 marriage that began as a marriage of convenience but seemed to maybe be more than that by the end, 1 instance of unresolved sexual tension that was resolved sexily but then ended, 1 surprisingly sweet not-quite-defined instance of ladylove or something like it, and 1 romance that should not have been as absolutely as cute as it was, but was.”

5. Alma Garret and Whitney Ellsworth (Molly Parker and Jim Beaver)
1 marriage of convenience that is love but perhaps not of that kind.  Recently rewatching with a friend, she expressed a distaste for the Alma/Ellsworth union immediately after the proposal.  Yes, it is the most awkward.  Yes, Alma loves or at least loved Seth, so it was a bad idea in that regard.  But… ugh, Ellsworth is just such a champion of a human.  Even knowing that he’s signing up to play the second fiddle, he thinks he’s doing the right thing.  And were the show set nowadays, it would likely be a different case, but in the 1800s, it was, if nothing else, a nice thought?  Alma and Ellsworth were never going to have a great, sexual, tumultuous love, but they cared for each other in their way; as Margaret Fuller said in her essay, “The Great Lawsuit,” “It was only friendship, whose basis was esteem; probably neither party knew love, except by name.”  They respect each other, and Ellsworth puts Alma’s happiness over everything until the end.

4. Martha and Seth Bullock (Anna Gunn and Timothy Olyphant)
1 marriage that began as a marriage of convenience but seemed to maybe be more than that by the end.  As I’ve said before and recently rediscovered, it is very, very easy to just shrug Martha off at first.  It’s easy to get caught up in the Alma/Seth and want Martha/Seth to fail so he can go back to the sexy loves.  And in a way, that would be great.  But Seth is a responsible man and knows that cannot be.  Again, would it be different in a different setting?  Maybe.  But by the end, I’m all for Martha/Seth.  They grow into an also-awkward amiability.

3. Alma Garret and Seth Bullock
1 instance of unresolved sexual tension that was resolved sexily but then ended.  Alma and Seth make eyes for a while, but the majority of their relationship takes place in a time gap between season one and season two, so we don’t really see any of it except for the lead-up, one steamy makeout session, one postcoital discussion, and the yucky aftermath.  She says she loves or loved him; he seems to love or have loved her.  But they cannot be, because of reasons.  Mostly Martha reasons, which is why it’s easy to want to hate/root against Martha.  But it’s not her fault, it’s the fault of the situation she embodies unknowingly.  So yes, Alma and Seth were yummy, but they were hardly endgame.

2. Joanie Stubbs and Jane Cannary (Kim Dickens and Robin Weigert)
1 surprisingly sweet not-quite-defined instance of ladylove or something like it.  And now we’re getting into the Deadwood romances that I actually consider on my fangirl “ship” list.  I was thinking about just doing a list of couples on non-Whedon television shows that I really, truly consider to be on the ship list, but I realized that there were alarmingly few.  I love a lot of shows and a lot of their characters, but I don’t necessarily have warm fuzzies about their romances.  This one and the next on this list, though, I have the feelings about.  Joanie and Jane never really officialized what they had.  Joanie and Jane were friends who cuddled and talked and didn’t talk and kissed and there was something there, they both knew it, they didn’t deny it, but they never said “oh, we’re a thing.”  Largely because of both of their personalities, I think; their relationship grew slowly, but it was endearing as all get-out.  Even just in the friend stage.

1. Trixie and Sol Star (Paula Malcomson and John Hawkes)
1 romance that should not have been as absolutely as cute as it was, but was.  It wasn’t until this last go-round of Deadwood started that I realized how hard I shipped Trixie and Sol.  I mean, I’ve always found their relationship nice.  Sometimes Sol is accidentally not good at the romance because of the standards of his time and his awkwardness about the situation and other such things, sometimes Trixie is accidentally not good at the romance because of the life she’s lived making her standards strange and her sometimes-abrasive personality.  But they are just so cute with each other from the get-go, and they have a way with each other that is precious, and no romance can be perfect, but they are still darling and lovely and seriously, surprisingly cute.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 Deadwood moments that would make me cry if I did that

Entertainment Weekly recently had a Top 5 Saddest Television Moments.  Something like that (I can’t find a copy online, as it was just a page of blurbs).  It got me thinking about how absolutely wrong the list was.  I’ll admit I hadn’t seen most of the television shows listed (Lost, Little House on the Prairie, etcetera) but I showed the list around a bit and nope.  The consensus was: it was not the Top 5 Saddest anything.  Maybe 5 sad moments.  (I have learned to make a conscious effort to only say Top when it is a matter of my personal opinion, specifically.  Things that I think are sad.  People that I am attracted to.  Etcetera.  Not just These Are Ultimately The Best Things Of All Time No Matter What.)  But not the saddest.

We then sat there thinking about sad television moments we’d list.  And almost everything we came up with straight off was Whedonverse (which… I’m still planning on analyzing the hell out of someday) or Deadwood.  So, here I present 5 sad Deadwood moments.  Maybe not the Saddest Of All Time.  But things that make me pretty bummed.  Unsurprisingly, four of the five involve death.  (I believe that one of the items on Entertainment Weekly‘s list did.  And all of their shows were network; which, nothing against, but it’s not encompassing the widest possible range of sad.)

5. Jewel (Geri Jewell) and Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif) dance and it’s sweet (1×12, “Sold Under Sin”)
This is the one that doesn’t involve death.  It’s just so endearing that if I cried happy tears, I would at this time.  Jewel is the Gem Saloon’s cleaning lady, cook, and general ladyhelp; she’s also disabled and walks with a limp.  She and the doctor contrive to build her a boot that will help her walk better (there are diagrams in books of his, it seems viable).  And then once it’s done, and they’re testing it, they dance.  And it’s just… it’s wonderful.

4. Joanie (Kim Dickens) is sad when her whores are murdered (ongoing throughout season 2)
This isn’t a moment so much as a mood.  But as seen in last week’s ode to platonic friendships, my Joanie (Joanies always end up being mine) goes through a rough time.  She’s brought some girls to the camp to start her very own whorehouse, but then, as I’ve before discussed, Francis Wolcott (Garret Dillahunt) murders some of them, including her partner-in-madaming, Maddie (Alice Krige).  Poor Joanie is haunted by a lot of things from her past, but this sends her spiraling into an even worse guilt and depression, and she’s seen contemplating suicide, discussing it, until she finds a new purpose in her life with turning her place into a schoolroom.  And it’s just devastating whenever she’s so sad because of the murders and all that followed and preceded.

3. Al (Ian McShane) mercy-kills the illness-ridden Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon) (also 1×12, “Sold Under Sin.”  This is a brutal episode.)
Though the reverend is seen more than once helping in the plague tent in camp, his eventual demise is brought about by what seems to be a brain tumor.  He is being kept at the Gem, in the whore quarters; Al, troubled by his condition, takes it upon himself to end the other man’s suffering.  Reverend Smith is suffering, suffering a lot: hallucinations, fits, the whole lot of it.  And it’s hard just to watch.  But Al has that strange moral code of his, and in his way, he doesn’t want to see the reverend subjected to such pain any longer.  So, he smothers him.  “You can go now, brother.”  Augh.

2.William Bullock (Josh Eriksson) is trampled and killed by a horse (this happens in 2×09, “Amalgamation and Capital,” but the aftereffects are throughout the season’s end)
This is one of those times where it’s not sad because of who died, but because of everyone’s reactions.  I mean, it’s sad that Bullock’s stepson (his brother’s widow who is now his wife’s son) gets killed by a horse.  It’s brutal, and it’s definitely not a quick death.  But we don’t get to really know William that well.  What’s more upsetting is watching the entire camp hold their breath and then mourn.  Watching Seth (Timothy Olyphant) feel guilty and watching Martha (Anna Gunn) feel awful for even coming to Deadwood in the first place and watching everyone else around grieve for an innocent child.  There are shooting deaths regularly in camp.  But this is an accident that nobody could have foreseen.  It’s something tragic and terrible.

1. Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) is shot because Hearst (Gerald McRaney) is an asshat (3×11, “The Catbird Seat,” but it’s dealt with through that one and the next-and-last)
Ellsworth marries Alma (Molly Parker) in order to cover up her pregnancy, which then ends (it’s HBO) and leads her back to her drug addiction.  This then causes Ellsworth to separate from her, but he still cares for her deeply and tends to her first late husband’s gold claim.  That asshat Hearst wants said gold claim, so after trying to scare Alma by having her shot at, he actually has Ellsworth shot in order to get her to sell.  And this is… just not all right.  Ellsworth is a truly decent man.  He looks after the people he cares about, he doesn’t make many enemies, he does what he needs to, he’s just loyal and good.  (And his daddyrole with Sofia [Bree Seanna Wall] is just the cutest.)  It seems like everyone who finds out he’s been killed can’t breathe when they hear, and nobody can quite believe it.  Trixie (Paula Malcomson) goes so far as to go and shoot at Hearst in an attempted revenge.  It’s the reactions and the loss of such a genuinely good fellow.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 understatedly awesome television women

5. Zoe Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres, Firefly)
Okay, so it’s a cast with four women, plus sometimes I count Christina Hendricks anyway, but Zoe is almost criminally underrepresented sometimes in the pantheon of love, I feel like.  I know I’m very possibly guilty of contributing to this, between the completely absurd love I have for Summer Glau and everyone she plays, the amount of “oh dear God Kaylee you are the cutest person ever/I relate so hard to you sometimes” I partake in, and the ridiculous ladycrush I have on Morena-especially-as-Inara.  But.  Zoe is brilliant.  She’s a badass, she’s a warrior goddess, she’s beautiful, she’s strong, she’s amazing.  She’s just not the kind of person who likes to be fawned over, so I respect that.

4. Martha Bullock (Anna Gunn, Deadwood)
It’s easy to try and write Martha off at first, especially after the Alma/Seth sexytimes.  He doesn’t love her, it was a marriage of convenience.  But in his way, I think he does love her, and he’s right to: she’s a strong, intelligent woman, and worthy of anyone’s love.  She can take the bad things on top of bad things that life hands her and not let it get her down.  She is a downright role model, but since she’s not doing it in a flashy way, sometimes people don’t notice.

3. Ivy (Liza Lapira, Dollhouse)
Can you really say you’re surprised?  I just love Ivy the more I think about her, and I’m sure that if the world didn’t end, she’d go on to do brilliant things and have a super-fulfilling life.  She’s deserving of it.  She too is brilliant, but she’s not the best at showing off yet.  She’s a snappy dresser, interesting but not in the painful trying-too-hard hipster way.  She’s adorable.  She’s loyal.  She’s patient.  She is the best at her job that anyone could be.

2. Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel, Justified)
Rachel Brooks is a badass lady, too.  She’s just fierce as can be.  She is a pro in the field, a pro at the desk, a pro every which way, and whenever a scene allows her to show off how absolutely capable she is, I just grin like an idiot.  “Capable” is one of the best compliments I can give, and she earns it over and over again.

1. Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men)
Peggy’s had her moments, and there are more as time goes on, thankfully.  But hers is a quiet awesome.  An awesome that you don’t necessarily think about, because she’s not in your face about it (none of these women are) but one that steps out.  Through her work, through her sense of humor, through the way she relates to others.  She’s really the only one in that office that tries to treat Don like a friend sometimes, and even with the hell that Joan has given her, she looks out for Joan in her way, too; she cares about everyone there, even the ones that treat her shabbily.  She’s sensitive, but not too sensitive.  She’s smart, really smart, but not a show-off.  She’s cute, but it’s not the main focus of her existence.  (She wears ladysweatervests.)  She’s funny, but not over-the-top funny.  She can snap at the guys when they deserve it and sure, they may not always listen because they’re assholes, but that she tries is pretty rad.  She’s brilliant and lovely and I want more of her always.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: rampant infidelity on television is rampant.

10. Rose and Agent Nelson Van Alden (Enid Graham and Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire)
Van Alden is such a moralizing tool that it’s sort of a given that he’d do something immoral at one point.  He’s in a different city than his wife, and their marriage is so awkward and loveless that it’s no wonder he violates it.  That he cheats is almost better than who he cheats with, Nucky’s former bitch Lucy (Paz de la Huerta).  Their sex scene remains one of the creepiest I’ve ever witnessed.

9. Martha and Seth Bullock (Anna Gunn and Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood)
Seth only sleeps with Alma (Molly Parker) the once, and it’s after resisting much temptation and many come-hither glances.  He married Martha after his brother died in the war, because back in the day, it was considered good form to marry your brother’s widow.  Theirs was not a relationship born of love, but rather it was one of convenience, and as such, the moment of infidelity is somewhat justifiable in his eyes.  Once it’s complete, though, he brings Martha and Martha’s son William to the camp.  He’s had his moment, he’s ready to be Martha’s husband now.  It does mean that when Alma is later pregnant, she has to marry Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) to save face, which means that their relationship is also born of convenience that is in turn born of infidelity, but hey.

8. Carmela and Tony Soprano (Edie Falco and James Gandolfini, The Sopranos)
Tony cheats on Carmela so many times that it’s not even funny, and it doesn’t really ever matter with who.  Sure, it may matter for a couple of episodes apiece, and after a while Carmela tries to end it, but that only lasts a little while, too.  He tries, but he’s not successful.  No matter what he does, he can’t seem to have a faithful relationship, even though he gets angry at Carmela for thinking about being unfaithful.  It makes absolutely no sense, because he’s not a charming man, and it’s not as if he’s King Henry VIII with power and money (well, he’s got power and money, but not every one of his women on the side knows that), but that’s just that.

7. King Henry VIII and everyone (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and, again, everyone: Maria Doyle Kennedy, Natalie Dormer, Annabelle Wallis, Joss Stone, Tamzin Merchant, Joely Richardson, some other ladies on the side of on the side)
But speaking of King Henry VIII, here he is.  Henry is a great, ideal historical cheater d-bag.  He cheats on one wife, marries the mistress and makes her his wife, then cheats on her.  Two of the wives get executed for adultery, which feels hypocritical, but he’s, well, a d-bag.

6. Gemma and John Teller (who grows up to be Katey Sagal and who’s flashbacked as Victor Newmark and Nicholas Guest apparently, Sons of Anarchy)
It’s said in flashback and conversation, hence John not having a solid actor face, but it’s still an important plot point.  Disenchanted with club life, John goes to Ireland and sleeps with, impregnates, and falls in love with Maureen Ashby (who grows up to be Paula Malcomson).  Meanwhile, Gemma is getting closer and closer with Clay (who grows up to be Ron Perlman), and that whole… extravaganza isn’t fully explained yet.  But the point is, it leads to a baby, a lie, a fatal accident, a marriage, a quantity of ground laid for a lifetime of lies.

5. Gemma and Clay Morrow (Katey Sagal and Ron Perlman, Sons of Anarchy)
Lifetime of lies, remember?  Clay is actually fairly faithful, a lot of the time, but his sleeping with Crow Eaters gets Gemma’s insecurities peaked and makes for a lot of drama.  Also it means that Jax (Charlie Hunnam) has a model for dealing with his problems, a model that tells him it’s okay to sleep with random women to cope, but since Jax and Tara (Maggie Siff) aren’t yet married, they’re not on the list yet.  And he’s been pretty faithful since the whole Trinny debacle.

4. Mona and Roger Sterling (Talia Balsam and John Slattery, Mad Men)
Roger sleeps with all the women, and again, it’s one of those slightly confusing things.  He’s a powerful man, and I guess if you’re into silver foxes, he’s good at that?  He’s in the Henry VIII pattern in a way, too; he’s married to Mona, he divorces Mona, he sleeps with Jane (Peyton List), he marries Jane, he cheats on Jane with Joan (Christina Hendricks).  Poor Joan is the person he probably really loves, but she’s not in the marriage cycle.

3. Joan and Greg Harris (Christina Hendricks and Sam Page, Mad Men)
She’s just in the “trying to do what seems societally right” cycle.  Joan only sleeps with Roger the once after she’s married, but it gets her pregnant.  She says she aborts the baby, but she doesn’t.  And who knows what will happen in season five.

2. Trudy and Pete Campbell (Alison Brie and Vincent Kartheiser, Mad Men)
Pete cheats on poor Trudy a few times: first with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) the night before the wedding, again with Peggy one early morning at work, once with forcing himself on a nanny from down the hall when Trudy’s away.  He seems to cheat, like so many of them do, out of boredom: he’s happy with Trudy, or he should be, but occasionally he feels compelled to do something bad just to do something.  He eventually apologizes for his ways, somewhat, but he seems like he could do it again, under the right wrong circumstances.

1. Betty and Don Draper (January Jones and Jon Hamm, Mad Men)
Don cheats with all the women, too: the client, the schoolteacher, the bimbo, the model, the secretary.  Betty doesn’t cheat with Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), exactly, but she kisses him and she marries him right quick once she’s divorced.  Don actually waits a season before getting engaged again, and not to anyone he’d been with in the cheating, but I’d worry about him with Megan (Jessica Paré) too.  She can’t keep him happy forever.  He’s restless and has issues with love.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 10 television children I want to see grown up.

10. Isabelle Hodes (Allie Grant, Weeds)
Isabelle got more of a plot than a lot of the kids on this list have, with her whole child modeling career, but the last we see of her is her helping her mother Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) run the taken-over drug business.  I understand that the show was focusing more on Nancy (Mary Louise Parker) and family’s new lives, but I want to know what happened with Isabelle.  I always adored her, and you know she was totally the brains of her mom’s attempts at the drug operation.  Did that drug operation last?  Did Isabelle keep modeling?  Did she get a totally awesome lesbian girlfriend once she got into high school?  I vote all of the above.

9, 8. Every single child on Sons of Anarchy (Kenny [John Abendorth/Mason Charles] and Ellie [Lela Cortines/Kerris Dorsey] Winston, Abel and Thomas Teller [both babies or toddlers and anyway I’m not 100% caught up so I’m not Googling it lest I hit a spoiler], Lyla’s kid who I can’t find on the Sons wiki or anywhere else)
C’mon, I wanna see if they stay in the life or they rebel some wacky way or what.  And they get two numbers because there’s so many of them.  Ellie especially.  Will she marry a biker guy?  Will she run away and go live in England with an investment banker?  Will she become a pornstar like stepmommy Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli)?  (I hope not that.)  Any of these choices are possible.  Kenny, I couldn’t say.  I also vote that Thomas becomes a doctor like his mommy Tara (Maggie Siff), but in medical school, he decides he’s more interested in psychology than surgery, and Abel is going to be the Teller man who actually publishes a book (it won’t have anything to do with MC life, though; it’ll be something wild and crazy, like Harry Potter but not).  And I don’t even know for Lyla’s kid.

7. Aylesh Rohan (Emma Kenney, Boardwalk Empire)
Okay.  So Aylesh just appeared.  I don’t know if she’ll recur or what, but I love her already.  She’s Margaret’s (Kelly Macdonald) youngest sister, come from Ireland, but she’s the most American of them by far.  She’s a little bookworm, and she’s intuitive as all get-out: looking at Margaret’s hat, she spun a story about Margaret’s beau that was 100% accurate, just playing, but still.  She’s just super-cute, and I want her to finish school, get a college scholarship to some lady’s college, and become a novelist.  I want her to write stories about psychic equestrian girls or something.  And I want to see it all happen.

6. Teddy and Emily Schroeder and Tommy Darmody (Rory and Declan McTigue, Lucy and Josie Gallina, and Brady and Connor Noon, Boardwalk Empire)
Teddy should be a professor of economics.  Tommy should run away to Europe and marry a French woman and bake.  Emily should become a gutsy lady attorney and be able to work for the underground, like Robin Weigert does on Sons.  These are all things I’d like to see happen.

5. Cassandra “Wheels” Kowalski (a baby, United States of Tara)
You know that baby is going to grow up to be awesome.  If she’s only answering to Wheels and Chinese swear words as an infant?  Just imagine what an epic little geek girl she’s going to be.  I refuse to imagine her being anything but.  I just have this feeling she’ll grow up and be some cross between a scenester, a Mod kid, an anime character, and a cosplayer, and she’ll be adorable and nerdy and all the likeminded boys will fall all over her.  And Charmaine (Rosemarie Dewitt) will just be saying to Neil (Patton Oswalt), “This is all your fault, and I don’t mind.”  Because quirky though she’ll be, she won’t be a screwup.

4. T Tsetsang (Brandon Dieter, Dollhouse)
Now that the world’s not in hell, T can grow up with both of his parents in a stable fashion and help rebuild the entire world!  The children are the future, and since he’s one of the only ones, well.  Be the future, T.  There’ve got to be other thoughtpocalypse babies scattered around the world, and they’re all going to converge on LA, because LA is the center of everything, and together they’ll… I don’t know.  Something important.

3. unnamed baby Washburne (is not born yet, the Firefly postseries timeline)
Even if “Float Out” hadn’t confirmed it for us, I’d have chosen to believe that Zoe (Gina Torres) was pregnant at the end of Serenity.  (The line in “Heart of Gold” is as good as proof alone: “You and I would make one beautiful baby.  And I want to meet that child one day.”  I don’t know if that was at all planned, though I suspect it was, but it’s perfect.  It’s like, there will be a baby but you will not be around to meet said baby yourself.  Stab stab stab heart, literally.)  But the confirmation just sent me absolutely around the bend with wanting this to happen.  I don’t care if technically this is comic canon, it’s an extension of the show but in print.  Baby Washburne is a girl, Zoe said, and until I’m told otherwise, I’m christening her “Hannah,” because that’s alliterative with Wash’s given name, Hoban, but not derivative of its ridiculous, and also it means “favor” or “grace,” which… well, clearly Zoe was in someone’s favor and grace to be luckily pregnant, and I like names that mean something without being absurd or obvious, and also I’ve always liked that name.  And I want to know all about Hannah’s (and any fantastical Kaylee/Simon or Mal/Inara or River/some person we haven’t met yet but not Jayne/anyone babies that would occur) adventures in space.

2. Sofia Metz (Bree Seanna Wall, Deadwood)
I think little Sofia grows up a proper lady under Alma’s (Molly Parker) care and then decides that she’s going to be a teacher, because Martha Bullock (Anna Gunn) was a powerful figure in her life, and she wants to give back to the world and teach other immigrant children how to speak English and belong in America.   She’ll have suitors, but she’ll marry in her late twenties, late for those days, and when she has children, she’ll give the girls the names of her sisters as middle names, but her son will be named for Ellsworth (Jim Beaver).  I don’t know why it was so easy to invent her future, but it was.  It’s like a Dear America epilogue.

1. Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men)
I want this so much.  Sally can turn out one of two ways: highly successful and awesome and badass, or just rebelling to rebel and sleeping with all the wrong guys and trying to “find” herself in ridiculous ways.  I hope the former.  I want her to be class valedictorian and do something really, really intellectual as a profession just to stick it to Betty’s (January Jones) notions of femininity.  I want Sally to be a freaking neuroscientist or something, and I want her to have tumultuous but safe love affairs, and I want her to go to wacky New York parties and write books, and I want her to be awesome. And she’ll somehow become friends with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Pete’s (Vincent Kartheiser) baby, but she won’t know that, but we would, and it would be beautiful.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: a surprising HBO combo breaker

If you are, like me, slightly OCD, prone to watching too many HBO programs, and a little morbid, you may have noticed this pattern: it is very rare for a pregnancy on HBO to be carried to term without complication.  I’m not sure what this says about HBO.  Maybe it’s just a weird coincidence I spotted.  But it’s happened enough now that I’ve actually assured people while watching other shows (like when we were re-marathoning Sons of Anarchy season 3 and Tara was pregnant): “It’s not HBO, the baby’s okay.”

By “happened enough now,” I mean it’s happened three times.  But that’s still enough to note.  Alma (Molly Parker) in Deadwood, Eirene (Chiara Mastalli) in Rome, Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) in Boardwalk Empire.  I was absolutely shocked when Lucy (Paz de la Huerta) on Boardwalk gave birth this week: I thought for sure that baby was doomed.  It still may be, who knows.  Van Alden (Michael Shannon) may feel guilty enough to end baby’s life or even mommy’s, and I thought she’d end her own or baby’s or both at least twice, when she was at the top of the stairs and after she’d given birth and it was quiet.  I thought for sure he’d walk in on corpses and not a jolly mother/daughter pair.  (Go ahead, say I’m sick in the head.)  But this makes Lucy the combo breaker: and I’m shocked.  I would not have thought the woman I’ve called “Nucky’s bitch” would be the one to end the pattern.

It’s also worth noting the last big pregnancy on HBO, that of Arlene (Carrie Preston) on True Blood.  This pregnancy also had a scare, in 3×11, “Fresh Blood,” wherein Arlene had Holly (Lauren Bowles) try to help her miscarry with magicks to rid her of what she assumed was a demon baby.  But the Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a medium plot point was more important than Arlene’s baby being somehow ill-fated before birth, and anyhow the birth of the baby happened in the time gap between season three and season four.  (Does HBO just not like putting pregnancy bellies on women?)  I don’t count this as combo breaking for that reason.

But anyhow.  Alma in Deadwood.  She’s had sex with Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) at the end of season 1, and it’s a shame it only happened once for the viewers because of the naughty thoughts that unclothed Timothy Olyphant induces, but that’s neither here nor there.  She cannot be with Bullock, though, given his wife Martha (Anna Gunn) showing up in camp, so Trixie (Paula Malcomson) persuades friendly gold miner Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) to marry her instead so it’s not awkward when she’s pregnant.  This all happens, and it goes swimmingly.  She’s already got one sort-of daughter, Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall), and they seem like a happy family.  Then complications in the pregnancy.  She not only loses the baby, but her sobriety and thus her new husband, and by series’ end she’s sort of accepting this, maybe, but… whoops, then he gets killed.  Stinks for her.  And for Ellsworth, as he’s dead.  And for Sofia.

Eirene in Rome.  She’s captured from conquered lands.  She’s taken into the house of Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd).  She’s the object of Titus Pullo’s (Ray Stevenson) attractions, as result of which he murders her lover; there is then forgiveness and they marry.  Soon, she too is pregnant.  But Pullo’s seduced by another slave girl, Gaia (Zuleikha Robinson), and Gaia is a jealous bitch.  She actually induces Eirene’s miscarriage with sneaky herbs, which is just a low blow, and it’s worse still because Eirene dies in the process, too.  (According to Wikipedia, Eirene is pregnant starting in 42 B.C. by the show’s events and doesn’t miscarry and die until 39 or 38 B.C., but this is all because of HBO’s cancelling Rome and scripts having to be rewritten and fussed with.  They couldn’t have just let her have a baby before the series ended, nope.  Someone so good and sweet as Eirene couldn’t have been the combo breaker, and anyway, the combo hadn’t yet been established.  They had a precedent to set.)

Margaret in Boardwalk.  She’s actually the quickest to miscarry, and the reason I really noticed the combo: she miscarries in the first episode, for crying out loud.  As awful as it is to be beaten into miscarriage by a crappy husband, though, her baby loss actually paves the way for her eventual social success as Nucky’s (Steve Buscemi) mistress, because he starts to care for her before the miscarriage, even just upon meeting her, and after he’s taken care of her asshole of a husband, well, there’s no going back now.

It’s interesting that all of the miscarriages are, at least, different: complications, herbs, a beating.  And if Lucy had ended her pregnancy via staircase, that would have been different as well.  I really want HBO to allow someone actually likable to carry a baby to term on camera, just because, but that’s neither here nor there.  I trust the writers to write things that are good. I just also trust myself to notice a weird pattern.  C’est la vie.

VERY BELATEDLY ETA: Technically, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) of Game of Thrones also has a miscarriage.  I think I just forgot about it because while she loses the son she’s carrying, she does acquire baby dragons somehow, which kind of makes up for it and is awesome enough to make me forget other details.

–your fangirl heroine.