Knocked it out of the park.
Revelations was the best episode of Hell on Wheels so far. They surprised me, they deepened the characters, they shifted things around, and the pacing remains solid (I have a bee in my bonnet about pacing).
There’s a level at which you watch a show like this knowing the opening credits. By which I mean, the audience has to be aware that Elam Ferguson is a lead character and is not going to die. Similarly, Durant is unlikely to spend the rest of the series in jail, what with Colm Meany’s name in the opening credits. TV is of necessity more predictable than the movies (although the Gods know that the movies rarely take advantage of that!).
So, yes, Lily decided to go back to Hell on Wheels, and Durant evaded jail, and Cullen rescued Elam (a move so obvious that the above picture was the “sneak preview” featured on AMC’s website, they knew we knew). Yet, I would never have predicted that the rescue necessitated their escape, or the gun battle that followed. Reader, they are off the farm, out of Hell on Wheels, away from trains and jobs. And while I know they will be back, I nonetheless admire the show for walking away from its predictable setting.
Perhaps also I am simply ignorant of what a lynch mob really is. It’s one thing to be angry, in your self-righteous racism, that a black man is with a white woman, and to “let off steam” with violence and murder. It’s quite another to treat stopping the lynching as a crime, and to send out an armed search party. I had no idea.
The highlight of this episode, though, was the character development, on a show that has been criticized for having too little of that. Note again the absence of the Mcginnes brothers. Either a Very Special Brothers episode is scheduled, or someone has figured out they’re not that interesting. (I’m guessing, since this is all somewhat fact-based, that a lot of the trajectory has already been carefully planned.)
With character development, some of it is what, and some of it is how. For Elam, “what” was important: To learn of a life spent being educated but hiding the depth of his education, of being treated like a pet by the white man he knew to be his biological father, gets at the heart of an anger that is not just a generic “freed slave” anger, but specific and personal to his character. For Cullen, on the other hand, it was the “how.” We already knew he was tortured by the memory of what happened to his wife, of finding her hanged. He fleshes out some details in telling his story, but it really is more the way he tells it, he is both lost and awakened, and strangely accepting.
Cullen really considered ignoring the lynching–he’s probably seen more than one. But his decision moves the Elam-Cullen arc along, and everything from the conversation by the fire to the shooting lesson to its aftermath really worked for me.
Meanwhile, Lily is back to being the fiercest woman in Fiercetown. I don’t have a lot to say about her this episode except that I really loved her. She’s watchable and tough, and like Cullen, surprisingly vulnerable just when you think you’ve pegged her the other way.
I assume Lily will somehow have a hand in bringing Cullen and Elam back alive. Here being a foreigner is an advantage; they didn’t have slaves to lynch in England and didn’t much understand what was going on in the U.S. at the time.
What about you? Did you love Lily this episode, or did you feel the “meet the family” scene was lacking? What about Cullen killing Toole?
I was annoyed by Durant’s telling of his back story, unless it’s revealed he was lying later the showrunners have obviously decided to blatantly ignore actual history with him. He was born and raised in the Berkshires and his family was hardly poor. In fact, they were quite well off. Poor boys from Hell’s Kitchen don’t get to go to medical school in the 19th century. Rich boys from Lee, MA? Yes.
I loved Lily in this episode, almost applauded when she slapped that horrible woman. I was sure the relatives would bitch about the dress.
Cullen’s monologue was awesome, the way he didn’t go all soppy and yet the pain was tangible.
First things first: Hats off and over hearts for the departed butt monkeys Bolan and Toole. It’s the custom to give a good character well played a great death scene, and that was two in a row. Reminded me of the great gunfight from “Bad Company”.
The complexity of the frontier encounter between Cheyenne and Yankee has already been portrayed. Now the even deeper relationship between Southerners across the racial line appears. Bohannon’s story sounded like something from Faulkner. Ferguson’s story, in retrospect, made me wonder if his proud owner was not also his father. Does Ferguson think it, or know it? One of the lesser known facets of the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings is the almost certain likelihood that she had the same father as Martha Jefferson; she was his sister-in-law as well as his slave.
Steve, agreed; it is remarkable that the racial tension between post-war whites and newly-freed slaves has not been much explored in Westerns. This is new territory.
They’re pretty explicit that Elam knows his owner was his father; the whole “what if” scenario he gives by the fire says so.
“They’re pretty explicit that Elam knows his owner was his father; the whole “what if” scenario he gives by the fire says so.”
Yes; On Demand proves it–sorta, since we keep finding out things about people that they didn’t know themselves, which actors love, which keeps me watching.
I also picked up on the fact that it’s gone until 1/1. Damn.
Seen this?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/HellOnWheels