"He Shot 'Wild Bill' Hickok"
The recent “surprise” death of Logan Roy in Succession and how it was pseudo-telegraphed through the series had me thinking a lot about another TV demise, one from my favorite series of all time: “Wild Bill” Hickok’s assassination in Deadwood.
Roy’s death, while sudden in the microcosm of the episode, seems all but inevitable in the grand scheme of the show. After suffering from a nearly fatal stroke in the first episode, the patriarch of the Roy dynasty was essentially living on borrowed time going forward. That he died just after preparing his next war path and just as the final season of the show was kicking into gear may have seemed like an abrupt ending for a someone so full of vicious vitality, but the whole series so far is about a man keeping a stranglehold on the future his children think that he owes them. Eventually, Roy will have to go. And the Roy kids will have to figure out how to set up their enterprising chessboard all on their own.
Logan’s death occurs less than halfway through his respective episode, while the bullet that takes Hickok waits until the end. In the fourth episode of the first season of Deadwood, “Here Was A Man,” we don’t necessarily know when it’s coming, even if the reality of history beckons this particular plot point forward. But the atmosphere of the show and the construction of the narrative and surrounding dialogue make for a funeral dirge that’s begun before Hickok even takes his last breath. It is sudden only in the very physical sense, only a jolt for whoever has to mop up the blood. For the entire town and Hickok’s own character have aligned in a way that assures his fate long before he slumps to the floor of the Number 10 saloon.
When a character is doomed to meet their end on TV, the scripts will often rally around that character as if to give them a proper send-off. Sometimes it makes for a painfully obvious situation - in an extended ensemble cast, you can tell a character is getting axed when they go from having one line of dialogue per episode to suddenly being full of dramatic, bittersweet speeches. Sometimes the focus on them illuminates their particular struggle in a way that’s firmly necessary. Eugene Pontecorvo spends a few seasons of The Sopranos as a loyal soldier and background mobster before being thrust into the forefront in the episode that will end his life, but this sudden rush is a benefit to his character and the themes of the show. They’re all doomed, and Eugene is no exception. All he can do is squirm in agony as he tries to wriggle free of the apocalypse, a background player realizing that even he is too big to pass through the hole to freedom.
“Here Was A Man” does this as well, with characters outright saying open goodbyes to Hickok. Sure, they don’t know that he’s about to be murdered, but these farewells build up over the course of the hour, chiseling away at whatever paths Hickok could take. He even leaves the one duty he’s been asked to pursue (Doing right by Alma Garret and her new gold claim) in the hands of his new friend Seth Bullock, ridding himself of any future ties to the machinations of the town. Hickok, from the first episode, is a character that seems to come to the Deadwood for the sole purpose of dying, either a slow death through drink and gambling, or the quick death of a gun. Hickok knows it on multiple levels, and is reminded of it as well. In a previous episode, a drunken passerby chastises him and outright wishes for his death, sending Hickok to trudge away to a nearby saloon under the begrudging weight of his own mortality. If anything, “Here Was A Man” is less about dying, but more about knowing death itself.
Death surrounds the town. This is the episode in which Andy Cramed arrives with Smallpox, a disease that will tear through Deadwood until a vaccine can arrive. It’s the episode that ends with a man riding into town bearing the severed head of a Native American, one that was asked for back in the pilot episode by pimp/barkeep/soul of the town Al Swearengen. It’s also the episode where Sofia, previously on the verge of death thanks to an attack that would slaughter the rest of her immigrant family, returns to full health. Hickok says goodbye to her, too, almost as if he’s trading himself off for a new generation and the continued existence of the camp. In that way, Hickok, a reminder of the pioneer cowboy mythology that was rampant in the American West before it became settled like the rest of the country, has to go. The future necessitates his passing.
And so Hickok is shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall, a malcontent who seems to only exist for the purpose of this specific killing. McCall is otherwise unremarkable, too vile and ignorant to make much of a living for himself and, in that way, a perfect pair for Hickok, a legend who doesn’t wish to do much more living himself. The title “Here Was A Man” can refer to both of them, too (and even other characters like the recently deceased Brom Garret who was murdered in the previous episode.) On one hand, it sounds grand, a statement about the beauty of someone’s permanence and legacy. On the other, it can sound ridiculously small, the kind of thing you’d likely say when you know that “Wild Bill” Hickok is dead, but you have no idea about the unimportant man who did it. He was just “a man.”
Here he was.
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