“That left-cheek ass-blister’s a percolating son of a bitch,” mutters Calamity Jane, shifting in her saddle as she drunkenly steers her horse toward Deadwood, South Dakota. It’s been a decade since the hard-drinking, hard-punching Jane—played, phenomenally as ever, by Robin Weigert—has stumbled through the frontier town’s muddy, bloody streets and smoky, sweat-soaked saloons. It’s also been about that long since Deadwood viewers were here, and it’s a relief to find the place hasn’t changed much: New-fangled telephone poles now blight the horizon, but Deadwood’s residents remain proud and profane. “Wu, feed that fuck to the pigs,” says Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), his gunpowder still floating in the air; not far away, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) holds court in his Gem Saloon, weaving a monologue through Deadwood’s rich, Shakespearean cadences. Older and not necessarily wiser, Swearengen needs little prompting to ruminate on murder, and loss, and how to best fuck over whomever his enemy is today.
