7/13
The Night Shift is taking a break this week, so we've only got three shows to have a look at. However, that frees up some space and time to look more in-depth at Hell on Wheels, following its series finale But we'll start with our ever-present sitcom Deadbeat.
DEADBEAT - 3x07 "Am-Ish"
"Pac gets into Danny Poker's party, but before he can speak with him he has to help out the ghost father of an Amish boy who isn't keen to end his rumspringa."
Playing on a number of Amish stereotypes, and maybe adding an extra one by making nearly all the Amish people's accents German, "Am-Ish" was an about average offering, and we're certainly hitting the stage of deterioration (or yo-yoing is perhaps a better phrase) I expected to happen much earlier on. The laugh-out-loud toilet humour largely vanished, and instead the only real light comic relief came from Clyde, who remained at the party while Pac helped the Amish boy, in his efforts to start the fabled "avalanche" that leads to sex orgies. The best moment by far was Clyde tied up to a bed by just a single drunk girl ... who then vomited on him from her significant alcohol intake and left him there.
VERDICT: Not one of the season's standout episodes, and I do wonder if the Danny Poker arc will detract from the bank of goodwill the first six episodes built up. 6.5/10
HELL ON WHEELS - 5x14 "Done" (series finale)
* "Following the golden spike ceremony, both Durant and Cullen are given summons to appear before Congress in Washington, D.C. Durant has been charged with bribery, fraud and corruption. Cullen asks a Chinese worker to translate Mei's note: it's an address in China. Eva declines Louise's book deal offer, her "survivor story", saying that she is "done whoring". In Washington, President Grant offers Cullen a position as army colonel and undersecretary for the western territories. Cullen states that he is a railroad man, to which Grant counters that he is a soldier "without a war to fight". Dressed in his Union Army uniform before Congressmen, Cullen refuses to implicate Durant, repeating that their railroad could not have been built without Durant. Cullen then goes to the church where he killed a man, and a priest asks if he seeks salvation. Cullen breaks down, thanks him and leaves. Despite Durant's lawyer invoking the Fifth Amendment, his client defiantly describes the future that he has wrought for them. As Durant speaks, Mickey departs for San Francisco, Eva rides her horse into the sunset, and Cullen boards a train, leaving behind his uniform. He disembarks in San Francisco and boards a ship for China."
An appropriate title for a series finale, but also a very good gauge of my feelings as Hell on Wheels comes to an end. That's not to say it wasn't a great show - if it wasn't enjoyable I would have stopped watching long ago, like with Arrow or The Blacklist - but the final season has underwhelmed, and the finale was no different.
The final episode saw the aftermath of the railroad's completion and our characters find fitting endings, but it wasn't beautiful to watch. Cullen (after surviving a seeming heart attack without any help and being just fine) went off to China to find Mei, who I enjoyed as a character before she left, and Durant got his comeuppance for his crimes, but Mickey and Eva didn't really have that kind of poetry. And that's why in a way the finale, which had reached this point of closure for everyone, didn't work. It was no Person of Interest, because this end hadn't been planned years in advance. Eva getting a book deal was a random throw-in for her to decide to leave into the sunset and I'm not sure there was a particularly strong connection between Mickey and SF.
VERDICT: Made dull by disloyalty to our characters and the need to somehow fill 45 minutes, this finale doesn't do Hell on Wheels any favours. I spoke in a previous blog about how shows that get the chance to bring their story full circle need to do it properly, but Hell on Wheels failed even to interest me so much that I wrote all of what you've read about it so far before the episode finished. A generous 4.5/10
HELL ON WHEELS OVERALL
I won't spend too much time on this, but I do want to speak about it because my criticism of season 5 has only been reserved for season 5. And that was because it split off from the previous four seasons when Cullen switched from the Union Pacific to the Central Pacific. It splintered the cast, meaning we had one episode here of the CP-central cast, and one episode there of the UP-central cast, and that was forever stopstarting everyone's storylines.
But Hell on Wheels was at its best in its first few seasons, with its original cast. Rapper Common played freed slave Elam Ferguson, but along the way we lost Elam himself, Toole (an Irish worker), Lily Bell (Durant's financial advisor), Ruth (the preacher), and Sean McGinnes (Mickey's brother and implied serial killer). Elam fought for slave's rights and had a baby with whore Eva before he was mauled by a bear and had to be mercy killed, Mickey and Sean built up their business in the moving city until Sean had to be killed to prevent him murdering Ruth, Ruth involved religion in everything and provided a moral compass before being hanged for murdering a lawman who had burnt a child to death, and Lily was a great adversary to Durant before Gundersen strangled her.
It says a lot that when I first picked up the show, I binged the first 5 episodes instantly. It's rare I do that, so it promised a lot that I was so easily sucked into the world - although I am a sucker for most forms of peering through the looking glass at our world's past.
All of the actors were exceptional, although those performances by Colm Meaney, Christopher Heyerdahl and Common (Durant, Gundersen and Elam respectively) stood out. Special mention, however, to Anson Mount's superb portrayal of Cullen Bohannon over the past five years. What an incredible actor.
Finally, with Durant's speech at the end we get this wonderful quote: "history is written in pencil". And no truer words can have been spoken because, ironically, what that final speech does is muddy any preconceptions we had about the real Thomas Durant's corruption. Maybe he was simply an evil, money-grabbing, heartless bastard - or just maybe that's the way history and Wikipedia remembers him. But as (appropriately) the TV-Durant says "history is written in pencil". It's grey.
Overall, I'm not sure I'd recommend Hell on Wheels. It was a great ride, but I'm not sure I'd want to suggest anyone invest their time in it knowing that the outcome was so unsatisfying. It made its mark on the TV landscape, but the railway is now complete. And never has the phrase "end of the line" been more appropriate.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK - 4x06 "Piece of Shit"
* "During her janitorial stint in maximum security, Nicky encounters Sofia in isolation and later gives her a magazine to read. Later she is asked to clean a cell and finds it is Sofia's which is covered in blood. Luschek feels guilty about his role in landing Nicky in Max, and Judy decides to have her powerful lawyers arrange to have Nicky sent back to Litchfield. However Nicky's anger has caused her to relapse into her heroin addiction. Taystee decides to try and get a picture of Judy to sell to a magazine (using the internet connection in Caputo's office) while Black Cindy and Allison bond over their disdain of Scientology. Poussey and Soso declare their love for each other. Piper plants a set of panties in Maria's bunk and arranges for them to be discovered, which results in Maria getting three to five years added to her sentence."
Much, much better from OITNB: as it reaches mid-season things are finally starting to heat up. As Piper's accidental white power revolt leads to the revelation that someone is making contraband prison panties, Piper makes a decision to frame Maria - and it's excellent. Watching Piper's resolve as a big bad continue to crack as she is forced to make tougher and tougher decisions is riveting, but setting up basically a war between her and the Latinas is going to exacerbate the already bubbling racial hatred throughout the prison. Judy King does something interesting by helping the whiny guard Luschek attempt to make amends for framing Nicky a year ago, and then blackmails him (into sex?) And Brook and Poussey's cute relationship goes one step further - although I know the outcome (bloody online releases mean spoilers after two days), I'm still enjoying this immensely.
With the focus so heavily on Nicky, most central characters in the main prison make only small cameos: Red, Freida, Alex, Blanca and Maritza get about five seconds of screen time. Boring boring Stella reappears for one scene in max with Nicky and is back on drugs, and Daya, who has seen her screen time reduced to practically nothing since her prison baby storyline ended, is too friendly to feature in the panty war and could benefit from Matt McGorry's return as Officer Bennet (doubt that will happen, though).
Standout scene of the episode: Luschek visiting Nicky in max, an intense, emotion-driven scene reminiscent of Pornstache's mother visiting him in prison in season 3.
VERDICT: For a light-hearted hour-long prison drama, today's episode was heavy on everything it needed to be. Things that have moved slowly previously will hurtle forwards from here. 8.5/10
Final thoughts
While Deadbeat slipped, the gas hob trying to boil the waters of OITNB has finally generated some simmering bubbles. We say goodbye to Hell on Wheels after five years on AMC alongside and overshadowed by critically acclaimed The Walking Dead - but can happily expect The Night Shift to return next week. I need my hospital drama fix.
Thanks for reading everyone, see you next time!
Sam
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