Adios, Deadwood (Sort Of): So Deadwood finally ends its run as a television series. If you haven't been following, creator David Milch had planned on a fourth season to complete the story of the town of Deadwood, moving from barbarism to civilization, and HBO smacked him down. The compromise was that Milch would be allowed two two-hour movies to finish up rather than an entire fourth season which would have amounted to between 10-11 hours.

That is a shame, but perhaps not the biggest shame possible. For the movies to work, Milch will obviously have to cut every last second of fat from the planned fourth season plot. We can only hope he doesn't have to cut anything absolutely critical. Maybe he can convince HBO to extend the movies to two-and-a-half hours thus giving himself almost half the time he was planning on. Maybe I'll just record both movies and watch them an hour at a time, for old time's sake.

Deadwood obviously didn't get the ratings it needed. That's to be expected. Do you really think people will flock to a TV show in which the characters do not speak in a constant stream of ironic snarkiness, instead speaking in complete and well formed sentences -- even poetic soliloquies? Not gonna happen. But as sad as it is that Milch couldn't finish his story on his own terms, you would have to have no sense of perspective not to appreciate that Deadwood was made at all. Never would have happened in the three network, pre-VCR world of my childhood.

The series (pseudo) finale was a triumph as excepted. In the end, George Hearst never got his comeuppance. The camp had pulled together and was close to reaching solid moral ground, even to the point of guilting Hearst about his murderous ways. Yet, to avoid probable destruction, they ended up coercing the widow of one of Hearst's victims into a compromise with Hearst himself and worse, even the law-upholding residents of the camp had to tacitly condone the murder of an innocent. Hearst left smiling at the impotence of the camp authorities and gleefully headed off to his next conquest. The camp had to settle for a simple survival as a salve for their blackened consciences.

The bad guy won. Not just a pyrrhic victory. He won and will suffer no ill consequences. As beautifully done as it was, how are you going to sell that to the general viewing audience?

An Emmy should have gone to Gerald McRaney for his portrayal of Hearst. It's a long way from Major Dad.