"He wants me to tell him something pretty"

SPOILERS ON DEADWOOD, SEASON 3, IF YOU DON'T WANT THE ENDING.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

The season ends.

Hearst wins. He owns everything, He escapes punishment for his crimes, he controls elections, and he will soon be disseminating his own news. America is run by the tycoons.

Bullock loses. The last moment, as Hearst looks arrogantly, contemptuously down at Bullock before saying "Drive on" is going to continue to sting.

And the series is canceled; we'll have no further closure.

"He wants me to tell him something pretty," Al says, as he cleans the blood of the innocent woman he killed off the floor.

Indeed: wouldn't we all like to be told something pretty.

But we can't be. At the end all is lost. All the arrogant villains win. Anybody with honor loses. We're left with sickness. Not a lack of closure--no, there's closure. But the closure is not any closure we want. It's not even the closure of a hero dying nobly; it's the closure of the villain winning, and knowing it, and everybody else left standing knowing it.