"Charles Dickens meets GoodFellas."

You hit the nail on the head. I for one often have to listen to entire paragraphs to pull out whatever the hell it is the characters just said.

But it's oh-so rewarding.

That, and Mister Wu rocks.

Cheers,
Dave at Cocksucker Ridge

Yeah, there are times I cannot follow what the hell is being said and I have to rewind two or three times, and I STILL don't get it.

Combine that with characters' often hard-to-fathom motivations and agendas, and the occasional non-sequitor which means absolutely nothing (but which is deceptively numinous), and you basically have a show where you're just waiting for someone to punch or shoot someone else, not necessarily because you want the violence, but because then at least you sort of understand what the fuck these cocksuckers are up to.

I love the dialogue on Deadwood. It's colorful, well crafted--some of the best writing on the idiot box, IMHO--and it's historically accurate. Here's a little quote I stumbled across in my day job, a traveler out West in the 1870s describing his wagon driver:

"His swearing was something stupendous, perfectly exhaustive of Heaven, Earth, Hell, and all of their inhabitants. No words could do it justice."

Sounds like those literary fellers over at HBO nailed those profane cocksuckers right between the fuckin' eyes.

Isn't this just a tad, uh obscure? I hesitate to say it, but does anyone besides Joe Pesci care whether there are more fucks in story six than there are in story three?

Go fuck yourself you cocksucking faggotty motherfucking hump of ass lickin' piece 'o shit.

Now that's a retort!

You forgot to call him a c**t.

"The Ace," above, is not me.

I wouldn't have made the mistakes he did... that's not "period obsenity" he's using. "Mothefucking," for one, did not enter the vernacular I believe until WWII and thereafter.

I could be wrong about that... I know in the Outlaw Josey Wales, they say "Mother-loving" and such, and maybe there's evidence for an earlier entrance of "motherfucking." But Deadwood never uses that word.

Deadwood is very careful to keep it's cussing, like the dress and attitudes - conforming to the times. It was also time when ethnic slurs were more freely made...

To me, one of the all-time great, funny moments on Season 1 was the Swearengen-Mr. Wu discussion on how to deal with the men that robbed and killed Wu's opium smuggler. Wu, royally pissed - wanting the culprits for pigfood. Swearengen, rational - wanting to weigh all the angles and politics. But both could not communicate initially beyond the word "cocksucker" - which they both agreed on meant cocksucker, which then formed the basis, along with hand signals, for a complex and constructive solution to the problem of the two cocksuckers...

Another great X-rated comedic dialog was Al Swearengens seeking out Jewel for advice on whether or not cunt-squeezing his uppidty whore was going over the line. Jewel responded on how making sore pussies was dumb, bad business. Al, educated, telling himself and Jewel that as a newly enlightened whoremaster, he would be more civilized and just beat or even kill them, but no more snatch-grabbing for him!

Ace - I think Swearingen "motherfucked" the bagman from Yankton in season one. I recall the bagman being quite upset about it. Perhaps it was considered "bad language" among the foul-mouthed folk of the time.

I can't thank you enough for recommending this show.

"The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you’ve got more punishment in store. Stand there like a man and give some back. "

-Al Swearingen

My husband has been complaining that I'm cursing too much latley. Finally he told me that I sound like Al on Deadwood. I was shocked into going back to gosh and darn.

The three best shows on TV, in no particular order: Deadwood, The Shield, 24.

You kids with the Deadwood. Gave it bout 8 episodes hoping it'd do something, start up with something, go somewhere. Let it drop and haven't missed it.

Deadwood rules! I could be wrong, but it feels like the most authentic western drama series ever made. Not only the language, but the attention to detail, including the politics of the time, are dead on correct.

RT,

I guess I sit corrected on "motherf*ck."

I guess I'm just saying it's a new curseword based on Slaughterhouse Five's claim that it is.

The only westerns I liked were the drifter westerns (i.e., Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name Trilogy and the various variations on that he did). Any western set in a town was immediately dorky, because you'd have a "Miss Kitty" and the handsome cowboys would bow and tip their hats and that sort of thing.

Deadwood is a town-based western, but with a twist; essentially it's 1920's Chicago, with warring crime-bosses and ethnic strife, except it's in the old west. Superficially it's a Western, but it's really more of a gangster epic, which is what makes it unique.