Hell on Wheels:
As much as I enjoy a good western (products of the latest 40s to 70s western
craze), I cannot see in what direction AMC’s Hell on Wheels is headed. I mean,
what was the point of Bohannon robbing all of those trains for its payroll;
only to be caught and pardoned for his crimes and so that he can work for
Durant again, which virtually has more in common with enslavement.
Bohannon is more of a lost
soul than any of the other characters on the series. Elam Ferguson in he
twisted way is more focus on his direction than Bohannon in his. Will Bohannon
ever move past the death of his wife and son? Will he finally find justice from
killing the last man involved in their death? Or, will he feel more remorse and
absolutely no satisfaction as the many came before him after seeking revenge
often do?
Hell on Wheels’
storyline seems to be floundering much like HBOs’ Deadwood often did, which
includes the fatten pigs.
In the episode
‘Slaughterhouse’ The Swede and Reverend Cole (the psychotics duo) have
constructed a co-dependent madness, which blind each man to the true nature of
his weakness and leads them both to shift the blame and to fulfill their
murderous ambitions on the McGinnes’ brother Sean and Mickey for no other
reason than the of Irish immigrants. They are two men innocently accused of
murdering a whore by The Swede, the reverend and the butcher.
Ferguson is no
different when it comes to dealing with his weakness and racial identity. He
views being asked to help Bohannon as a shift in his place of power as a free
slave. To prove that he is just as much a man as Bohannon, he rushes to enter
the front door of slaughterhouse before Bohannon just because he sees going
through the backdoor as negating him back to his former state as a slave, which
is a major affront to him.
Furthermore, there maybe
real danger ahead for Joseph Black Moon and Ferguson as both are involved with ‘forbidden
fruit’. When the discovery is widely known, it will not matter to the lynch mob
that throws the ropes over the branch, that one woman was a reverend daughter
and the other a common whore, or that the men they are about the hang are
trying to be good men in a white world. Both women are white.
Memorable quote:
Bohannon: “. . . proved you’re a man. Get your ass on
out of here before I show them otherwise”.
This theme of racial unrest
continues into the next episode, "Scabs", which burst along all racial lines.
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