Deadwood: The Complete Series - Page 2

The series was canceled AFTER season 3 was finished filming. Roughly 6 months later.

The cancellation of Deadwood is a bit more murky than that. The only real reason that I've heard for their not being a fourth season is that series creator David Milch wanted to move on and produce his new show, John from Cincinnati. It failed miserably and I couldn't be happier about that because I'm a miserable, bitter bastard over the non-ending to the series. Taunting us with those movies after the fact just makes it worse.

O.T.
You are misinformed. Season 3 was in the can when the show was canceled. Filming was completed in January, post production was complete by March. It was originally scheduled to be aired in March, but was delayed till June by HBO. Canceled in May when HBO announced that none of the actor's contracts would be renewed. It has nothing to do with David Milch's plans, JFC was green-lighted after Deadwood was canceled because Milch was under contract to work for HBO for another 2 years. JFC had been pitched to HBO years before. Milch actually spent a month on his own time trying to raise money to film season 4 of Deadwood. His "plan" for Deadwood was to finish season 4 then turn it over to the writing/directing/producer team for seasons 5 and 6.

Despite Milch and his writers anticipating a Season 4 when they completed Season 3, that season's finale, which as it turned out was the series finale, was moving and effective, I thought. In the last scene Al Swearengen is cleaning up the blood of the poor young whore who he had to kill to prevent a war with the evil Hurst. Al has been forced to lie about the girl's death to his young henchman, Johnny Burns, who loved the girl. In the final line of the series, as Al is on his knees scrubbing the girl's blood stains from his office floor, Al says, "Wants me to tell him something pretty." Like so much else in Deadwood, that was a gut shot, to me at least.

The ending for S3 isnt weak. It completes and closes the Hearst plotline.

Folks, we're here to talk about the BDs. Everything else has been discussed many times over in various other forums/threads. No need to do it again in yet another thread. If for some reason you haven't had enough or still "feel the need", please post here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...light=deadwood or some other Deadwood thread in that forum. Thanks.

larry

I scored a less expensive open copy and have been checking this release out today. 1st I'll confirm that the case, artwork and features are all recycled from the DVD releases. Even the menus are very similar.

4 episodes per disc and one extras disc per season. All the DVD releases suffered from some crushed detail in dark scenes. Here they appear to have raised black levels a tad to reduce much of that. This is my unscientific impression after viewing 2 episodes. PQ is very much the same as the HD broadcasts. Bright scenes have plenty of detail, dark scenes less so. Film grain is abundant in many scenes. Audio is pretty much the same as the DVDs, although some improvement in detail and dynamics can be heard in the closing credits music.

Over-all I'd say that this is a moderate improvement over the DVDs, but may not be worth a double-dip unless you're a big fan of the series. The good news is that the case is the same width as the DVD case, and standard BD-case height, so it will replace the DVD box set perfectly on your shelf.

In-depth review is up at highdefdiscnews.

Bought this set just before Xmas. Watched all 3 seasons in about 5 weeks. Amazing stuff, what a series. The BDs look and sound amazing. I'm not sure why I never watched this when it aired, but I'm glad all the glowing reviews of this set pushed me into the blind buy.

Deadwood is my all time favorite TV series. I bought each season's DVDs as they were released and have watched them all many times. Nevertheless, I refuse to spend another $125 to get them on BDs. At that price, my old DVDs will have to do.

To each his own. I was reluctant to spend that kind of money as well, but considering how pristine the audio and video is on this set, I was glad I did spend the money.

Btw, I spent $90, not $125. $30 a season, I can live with for one of my most favorite shows ever.

I just got the DEADWOOD Blu Ray set and it does not play
on my LG 370 V. [ DRIVER = HS 1000 / SW = BD.7.08.016B ]
Using HDMI to LUMAGEN to MOOME CARD on MARQUIS 9500 LC ULTRA


Every single disc in the set opens on what I assume is the same video scene behind the menus
. . . but the menus never appear and all the remote commands are
blocked.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Is this just a firmware issue?

Or is player internal memory issue. I recall I couldn't play the Blu Ray
of THX 1138 and was told the player didn't have enough memory
to display the menus . . .

If it is a memory issue how do I address that? hopefully with something simple like plugging in a $ 20 memory stick.

Thanks in advance . . I love DEADWOOD and am dying to see it in HD.

thanks,

Clearly a player issue. If you have the latest firmware in the player you may be out of options. But do try turning off BD-Live in the player or even disconnect ethernet. Adding the memory stick can't hurt, but you might want to post this issue in the thread dedicated to your player.

I blind bought this from Best Buy last weekend for $64.99. The sale goes on until June 30th, so if anyone wants to still grab it at that price, there's still time.

I know many people will shoot me for saying this, but I, personally, hate the packaging. I know BDs are coated and won't scratch, but I hate it when the bottom of the discs get touched. I'm afraid that some debris could get into the cardboard sleeves and scratch the discs one day. So, I've taken all 13 discs out and put them into slim jewel cases.

But anyways.... I'm about halfway done with the series and so far, I'm pretty happy with the purchase. The only complaint I have is that the show is hard to understand at times. When watching an episode, I find myself only understanding half of what's going on. But I guess that's a good thing since it gives me a reason to watch the series again, thereby giving this set a lot of replay value.

Thanks for the heads up about Best Buy's half-price sale on the Deadwood BDs. I bought the DVDs for each season as they were being released, so the ~$120 retail price of the BDs gave me sticker shock. Deadwood is my all time favorite TV series, though, so when I found out the BDs were available at half-price I jumped all over it..

Although laced with profanity, Milch's language is often poetic. In fact, much of it scans in iambic pentameter. For that reason, I routinely use subtitles when I watch episodes of Deadwood. To me, it's well worth the hassle. Anyway, congratulations on your purchase of this great, great series!

You mean the subtitles words the dialogue differently?

Because the dialog is so "poetic", many people like to use subtitles and find it makes it easier to follow. For 1st time viewers, I recommend watching once, then watch each episode again with subtitles on.

There are also a couple places on the interwebs where you can get transcriptions to print out.

The reason I like to use subtitles when watching Deadwood is that the meaning of Milch's language, like Shakespeare's before him, is sometimes less than apparent the first time through. It's all beautiful but sometimes the beauty comes at the cost of a little clarity. For example, one of the most lovely, and to me moving, lines in the series is repeated underneath a picture of Trixie in the book containing the BDs. When Trixie, who was working as a whore for Al Swearengen was hesitant to quit her "employment" with Al and move in with Sol Star, she explains it to Sol saying,
Deadwood gives us a lot to think about, to say the least.

I'm using the Sony BDP-S360 and this issue occurred twice out of the 20+ times the player has loaded the discs. Whenever this occurs, I simply stop the player and play the disc again and wait for it to load again. The menus appear successfully after it loads again. But in your case, it seems like it's happening EVERY time and your player can't display the menus at all.

Since this did happen on my Sony player twice so far, there's either some glitch in the BD-Java that's on these discs or it could be a player issue. In my case, I have no idea why my player loads the menus successfully 95% of the time, but 5% of the time, it doesn't. Very odd that my situation is inconsistent.

I finished watching my set today and was surprisingly pleased with finale. Even though the episode was meant to be a season finale instead of a series finale, it wasn't bad. I'm surprised at all the negative comments regarding how the show ended. I'd take this finale over The Sopranos' finale any day.

I think people are just upset that Milch had at least 2 more seasons of material and we didn't get to see it.

That was my reaction. I thought the Season 3 finale, Tell Him Something Pretty, was effective and moving, and worked well as a season finale. My disappointment was not with the Tell HIm Something Pretty episode but with HBO's decision to deprive Milch of the ability to tell the rest of his Deadwood story. That bitterly disappointed Milch, watch The Meaning of Endings featurette on the Bonus Disc and you will see what I mean.

Unless I'm misremembering, Milch had only planned one more season. When the show was canceled, he negotiated with HBO to condense that season's storylines into two TV movies instead. Of course, those plans eventually fell through as well.

Josh -- I defer to your recollection. In any event, Milch was sickened by HBO's decision to cancel Deadwood. As a matter of fact, so was I. I remember the TV movie talk but always feared it would prove to be pie in the sky, which, indeed, it did.

Yes, Deadwood was originally conceived as a 4-season series. Or to put in Milch's words: a story told in 4 parts. Season 3 was originally supposed to end with Bullock barricaded in the Sheriff's office, refusing to give it up to Harry Manning. Season 4 was to end with the first great Deadwood fire.

Because it was always envisioned to have four seasons which would provide a complete series, ending with the fire that destroyed Deadwood. One of the best, if not the best, TV series of all time was compromised by not finishing it. Do you enjoy reading a classic and the final 13 chapters are missing? Then, we were promised a couple of 2-hour movies in place of the fourth season to at least provide a series ending, which of course, never came to pass. Am I bitter? A little, in that it's an incomplete masterpiece. And it's never been clear if it was HBO's fault, or Milch's, or maybe both, that they let this happen. Instead of the fourth and final season of Deadwood, we got John from Cincinnati.

By the way, Amazon is currently running a sale on the box set: http://www.amazon.com/Deadwood-The-Complete-Series-Blu-ray/dp/B00129AJFO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339709652&sr=8-1
Edited by scolumbo - 6/14/12 at 3:06pm

That's messed up that Milch couldn't finish the story. I mean, all he needed was 1 more season. Not sure why they couldn't make that happen.