Hell on Wheels 1x09 -Timshel_2011

I startled myself when I did a small stock-taking this morning and realized that I had seen (and written about) close to 500 westerns since 2007. The undertaking began as research for a screenplay Im working on, but ended up being what I hope will be my third book. (My second, Chain of Fools: Silent Comedians and Their Legacy from Nickelodeons to Youtube will be out in September 2012). I mention this not to boast, but to declare my bona fides for the review Im about to unleash. The film-watching junket, fact-finding journeys to Wyoming, Colorado and Utah I took with my ex several years ago, and copious historical reading on the period collectively embolden me to assert that Ive come to know a small something about westerns and the historical Elderly West over the past few years. And thats why Im comfortable informing you that, despite all the positive hooplah you may have seen in the press, Hell on Wheels (which premiered on AMC last night) is, to make use of an elderly cowboy word, fakakta.

I could tell that I would feel this way from the commercial campaign. Period pieces often live or die on the strength of their art direction. Theres a couple of ways you can go, the poles of possibility being a) as realistic as feasible, based on available research; or b) stylized, making a dream-like alternate universe out of the designers imagination. Both, to my mind, are valid. In the run-up to last nights premiere over the past week I read several preview/reviews in various papers and online, and frankly all of them (including the NY Posts Linda Staasi, whom I normally have great respect for) appeared to do what shitty reviewers always do  lazily parrot the press releases and the hype. Gritty and authentic were the words that kept popping up. If I appear irrationally savage in this review, its for that reason. The show advertises gritty realism.

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