HELL ON WHEELS - A LOVE/HATE TRIBUTE REVIEW TO THE TELEVISION SERIES

"But all the while I was alone. The past was close behind." Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue

The words written here are the opinions of the writer of this post. It's long, but it needed to be long. 

HELL ON WHEELS SHOULD HAVE BEEN AND COULD HAVE BEEN AN EPIC. A LEGENDARY WESTERN. THEN WE GOT SOILED BY SEASON FIVE. 

The American West from a historical perspective was short-lived. A thirty year period (give or take a year or two) is what it ultimately encompassed. The men and women of the old west still hold a deep tug for many Americans and non-Americans alike.    

There are many great westerns, including a host of classic films directed by the brilliant (an overused word, but appropriate here) John Ford. Stagecoach and The Searchers are two of his finest cinematic achievements. Other memorable and worthwhile western films include, The Magnificent Seven (the original), Red River, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Wild Bunch. Television mined the western early on during the 1950's and 1960's.  Huge stars were born out of these westerns, including Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and James Garner.

My great appreciation for the Old West runs deep and long, so I had originally approached writing this post about Hell On Wheels with great trepidation. Hell On Wheels (Seasons 1-4) proved to be mostly compelling. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. By the time Hell on Wheels arrived on the scene in late 2011 the television industry had already been nibbled to death during the 1990's. In 2002 there were less than 200 series on television and by 2021 there were close to 600 series being produced. No one other than the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God Almighty could know all of these series. Great programming in this environment often gets lost in the proverbial shuffle. Hell on Wheels did relatively well for its time. It rode five seasons out (unfortunately, it rode five seasons out) and men, particularly older men did return to the series with the passing years. 

"Rolling into Kansas too. Rolling into Denver. Doing all she'll do. And she hangs a big left in Salt Lake City. Southwest to the Nevada line. Rolling into California right on time. Rolling on down the line." Bob Seger - Long Twin Silver Line   

The first two seasons fulfilled expectations and you looked forward to watching the next episode. Seasons one and two were paced in order to build tension and momentum; and sometimes in unsettling ways. Seasons three and four were relatively entertaining. The series continued to carry us on a splendid journey into another time. You even let the many examples of historical inaccuracies fly by and there were a few whoppers. By season five, the series had fallen down a trap of boredom, foolishness and desperation. Through much of the series, Cullen Bohannon, a former confederate soldier was a man struggling with his past. He loses pretty much everything and near the end of the series he states, "I lost everybody I ever had. All I got left is scars." This overly ambitious man in many ways defines America. Bohannon spent most of the first four seasons exemplifying the very concept of American exceptionalism; and then somehow we got season five. Anything and everything that was exceptional about Bohannon dies in season five. He becomes dull and weak. The self-loathing man becomes insecure and rudderless. The end game made Cullen a dismal dullard with little to none of his integrity, honor and valor left. Weakness is not an asset in the secular world.     

I took a spin into confusion when the series killed off Lily Bell (Dominique McElligott, who could pass for Jessica Lange's daughter) after the second season. The relationship between Lily and Cullen Bohannon is one of the most engaging relationships in the series. Bohannon's pick-up attempt in the bar late in season two was one of the few times Bohannon was having fun in the series. The two have a strong interplay. They are adults. We perceive them as quite different from one another, but they aren't all that different and they both know it. Lily Bell has even more chutzpah than Cullen Bohannon, but she appears delicate so her propulsive, uncompromising and feral traits don't rub quite like Bohannon's.  

Unfortunately, for fans of the show Lily Bell doesn't last long. The single biggest oh no moment in the entire series is her unnecessary death at the end of season two. There was absolutely no reason to do this and certainly not to do it so early on. Underneath it all, she too was quite ambitious. One would have to be to bed Thomas Durant. When Lily tells Bohannon she waited for him at the dance, Bohannon delivers one of the best end game lines ever. After telling him off and walking away, he looks up in the air and says "damn it." This damn it is spot-on. Everyone has been in that moment. Romance, and then they kill it. If you have never seen this series, just watch through season two. An entertaining 20 episode mix. These two adults challenge one another.  Lily's departure is one of the great errors in television's recent history. 

The series takes place during the Reconstruction period and that era was built by soldiers, immigrants, one-time inmates and former slaves. On the surface, the series is riddled with moments of revenge, but the series isn't about revenge. It is about the concept of judgement viewed through the lens of the seeking of moral clarity. Hell on Wheels defines what America was up through the 20th century. By the year 2000, we saw that this is what happens after 200 plus years of fearless progress, hard fought history, and unrivaled leadership in the world. The United States, even with all of her flaws became the single greatest global power in the history of world. Keep in mind, the Roman Empire was a mighty empire for centuries, but they ended up dying on a dime. Today, the U.S. appears not to be dying on a dime, but dying with only a handful of dimes left in her back pocket. Hell on Wheels encapsulates an era when people worked. We have become lazy, sloppy and ignorant. No one knows how to do anything today. The people of prior generations could do pretty much anything, including get milk out of a deer for a human baby. We are wearing slippers and pajamas to diners. 

The characters in Hell on Wheels are an ambitious bunch. The major cause of ambition may appear to be the completion of the trans-continental railway system, but the real cause of this objective is the building of the country. Thomas Jefferson's dream fulfilled.  

Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) is the protagonist of the series; and in one way or another everything revolves around his presence. He's a rugged, manly, masculine man and we don't see much of that in contemporary filmed entertainment. Early on, Bohannon frequently reflects on faith and forgiveness. The series has people with faith, people without it and people looking for it. The second best relationship Bohannon has in the entire series is with Ruth Cole (Kasha Kropinski), the town's Christian leader or church lady. Cullen and Ruth have one of the most open, honest and transparent relationships you could possibly expect in a series. There is no romance here. Just mutual respect and a large dash of admiration. Bohannon early on states that he isn't worthy of forgiveness, but Ruth assures him more than once that he is redeemable. Ruth's belief is biblical. Repent of your sins and admit you are a sinner saved by the grace of God. By the end of the fourth season, they do indeed tell each other they love one another, but he is not "in love" with her. Ruth is the most beautifully sincere person in the the entire drama (she starts out as self-righteous and ends her life as a righteous woman). Her death by the noose is tragic, but she chose her death. Bohannon could have prevented this. He tried to prevent her from not going through with it, but he held power in his hands to prevent the hanging.     

Common portrays Elam Ferguson; and Common is quite good in this role. He is a friend to Bohannon and a strong counterpart to the madness, sadness, pain and the subtle but rare joys you find on the road west. At the end of season three, Elam is attacked by a bear and his brain has been damaged. His horrific change will bring him to the end of his earthly life. His presence was missed at the end of this series. Elam should have been around to the bitter end and the end is bitter.  

Colm Meaney portrays the ruthless and corrupt Thomas Durant who is the official head of the Union Pacific Railroad. Meaney is a terrific actor and his zesty performance overcomes some of the stereotypical aspects of the writing of the character. His most meaningful relationship in the series is the one he shares with Eva. Eva starts the series as one of the town's prostitutes and goes through a series of life altering dances as the series progresses on. Robin McLeavy is quite good in this pivotal role.     

The single most riveting person in the cast is Thor Gunderson. His nickname is "The Swede" even though he happens to be of Norwegian descent. The Swede is played in a striking and distinctive way  by Christopher Heyerdahl. This is one of the best performances ever filmed for television. There is no exaggeration here. Take Christoph Waltz's epic acting in the opening sequence of Inglorious Basterds and then think of this. Heyerdahl does this over five seasons. 

The series should have ended after the fourth season (maybe even after the third season). The tagline for season five was "All Roads Lead to Hell." Bad omen. Up until this point, you were enjoying the scenery of a good series, but by season five it went off the rails. It was monotonous and redundant. At times, Bohannon now has become an avalanche of misogynistic ugliness and harshness. This is often a problem with long-form television. Having worked at ABC during the Lost debut we saw a powerhouse series disintegrate quickly. Quite honestly, in hindsight Lost should have gone for one season. It had an epic one season in it and then the show went full throttle into the what, where, why and when of questions; and few of them were good questions and the answers were dead on arrival.   

The elements of faith keep returning time and time again. At the time, the nation was a Christian nation, albeit culturally Christian, not necessarily Biblically Christian. At one point, Bohannon enters a church and looks right at the Cross of Christ to say he is sorry for the things he has done and for the things left undone. Bohannon has killed multiple numbers of people, including four of the five men responsible for killing his first wife and young son. In season three he near rapes a young teen girl. You didn't see that coming for his character.  Louise (Jennifer Ferrin), the newspaperwoman thinks Bohannon is a man of honor and integrity. Oddly, most of the time he actually is. As Bohannon says "what would God think of a man like me?" Cullen suffers from a stain of self hatred. He is unpredictable, yet predictable. Ironically, the two men he should have killed, he didn't. The Swede and Snow should have been taken down. Old west justice. Of course, then the series would not have gone on as long. Wait, it did go on too long. At least one year too long!    

"God has the great capacity to take our sins and all you have to do is let him." Ruth Cole - Hell on Wheels

What started out as the masterpiece of Hell on Wheels is the character of Cullen Bohannon. The masterpiece is eventually robbed of real life and desecrated beyond recognition. By season five it isn't a character arc - it's a completely different character. Life doesn't work that way. As we age, we change, but this morbid downfall goes beyond the notion of change. Seasons one through four Bohannon is a larger than life figure who is believable in every moment of the first four seasons. Who would you want to be in a foxhole with? A man like Cullen Bohannon. Then we got season five.  

Bohannon loses everyone. He loses his wife and son, Lily, Doc, Elam, Ezra, Ruth and his second wife and son. The last two he doesn't lose - he abandons them. It is at this crossroads where the course of the character and the series leaves behind any sense of reality. Just when you thought you were witnessing one of the significant characters in all of western themed drama, you get dumped on in this significantly awful final season. There is no way Cullen Bohannon would have left this woman and this little boy. He had character and he knew of duty.    

Bohannon ends the series back in the confessional he started in back in season one. Was he Roman Catholic? Being in a confessional one can assume he was Roman Catholic, even though it would have been difficult finding a Roman Catholic in Meridian, Mississippi in the mid-19th century. Even today, the state of Mississippi is 77% Protestant. Is Bohannon looking for salvation? Clearly, at this point in life he is not. 

By the fifth season, the series is riddled with cliches. One on top of another. The fifth and final season doesn't miss a single second of ridiculousness. Everything but the kitchen sink gets thrown in. Wait, they threw in the kitchen sink. The final season could be right out of an American daytime drama. It is melodramatic to the point of near laughter. What the hell (no pun intended) happened to this series?  The saving grace episode in season five is the eleventh episode. Bohannon isn't in it! It's the only    episode in season five that isn't full of wild goose chase ideas for narrative. At one point we are exposed to an extreme close-up of a ring on Bohannon's wedding ring finger. Long camera hold. A man who totally dismissed faithfulness is suddenly at this worn-out age going to ride out with no convictions left. If you have seen it, you will recall the various shots of the keepsake box as well. Wait, you didn't get it. Show the keepsake box again! As Bruce Springsteen might have yelled out to an audience "is anyone alive out there?' No critical thinking skills. He has become a model gracing the cover of a soft-core "romance" novel.       

The creative team equates sex and plenty of it with love. Outside of the beautifully shot and lovely romantic scene with Lily in the second season and his near rape of a young teen in a barn this end run becomes a romp at the final bell. Mr. Bohannon finds himself embroiled with another young teen who is so petite that when he is holding her head in his hands it's as though you are witnessing a scene from a documentary about sex trafficking. What's the old buzzard doing with the young girl? Oh, then they one-up themselves by making the young girl dress up like a boy, so she can work on the railroad. Someone clearly thought this was clever. The series laid down and died and it took Cullen Bohannon with them. How bored were these people by the time they got to season five? There is no feeling here. The youth of this young woman is uncomfortable to view.         

Bohannon spends so much time chasing around for his latest round of conquering that you wonder when he works. Isn't he running a railroad? Someone should have checked with the historians at Princeton or Baylor. This all comes at the series end after the audience has been told repeatedly how honorable Bohannon is. Bohannon never bothered to look for his second wife and son until he was literally told exactly where they were. Good boy! That wife happens to be the same girl he shagged in the barn right under her daddy's nose. The casting of Naomi (the wife he abandons) changed from season three to season four. The first actor, looked so young it made Bohannon appear to be a pervert. Fortunately, Mackenzie Porter, who is still light years away in age from Bohannon at least looks old enough to potentially be a mate. She's sweet, pretty and smarter than she appears on the surface. We are now to believe he is in love with Mei, the previously mentioned young woman dressed up as a boy.  

"The brave choice is always family." Ruth Cole in Hell on Wheels 

Of course, Bohannon then finds time for one more murder. Chang, the pimp and drug dealer goes down by a single shot to the gut and no one gets arrested for cold-blooded murder (remember Ruth). Again, this is the same "honorable" man who wouldn't kill "The Swede," but took him for a ride, so the U. S. government could hang him. Just keep reminding yourself he abandoned his wife and child. I wonder if Mr. Toole would still find him honorable. 

Brigham Young (Gregg Henry) tells Bohannon that ambition resides in your heart and that's why you chose the railroad over your own family.  

"Gonna take a freight train, down at the station Lord, I don't care where it goes." Toy Caldwell (The Marshall Tucker Band)

Bohannon and Mei (Angela Zhao) have absolutely no chemistry. When you think great onscreen chemistry one may think of William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in Body Heat or Daniel Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe in The Last of the Mohicans, but those are incredibly rare onscreen moments. When I write that they have no chemistry - it is not arguable. Nothing is sexy or romantic in any of these scenes. After the first time out, it becomes gratuitous. I suppose the more they shag the more we will be convinced that this is a love story. There are some women who will buy this lie. You need both actors to have a strong presence to pull this stuff off. To make this type of relationship work, you have to be full of intensity and attitude up the wazoo. You need something that takes your breath away and makes your heart skip that beat. You need the effect of hearing Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin perform a duet on Mozart's Concerto no. 3 in G Major! This "ain't" that. It's cheap melodrama without power or complexity.    

Bohannon bosses Mei around with a dominance that should scare the hell out of her, but she's too silly, immature and superficial to get it. The worst soap opera moment comes when he tells her that he actually didn't love any of the people he once said he loved. He let them go. What a man this is. Mind you, he literally left his second son with no intention of ever seeing him again. Today, we'd call him a loser. Pay up your child support! Fatherhood is great!  I worked on a drama that involved women and children being trafficked, so the last thing you want is this type of material. Casting is essential. If you are going to have a woman pretend to be a man, hire an older actress. One can potentially assume no one involved has a daughter.  By the way, they ripped this one right from The Walt Disney Company. Mulan!   

To go full throttle into what the hell am I watching, Bohannon tells a co-worker, "make friends with the Chinese. It's the only thing you can count on." Keep in mind, this ending was just six years ago. The CCP must have been quite pleased. Imagine saying this utter nonsense after spending more than six years of your life working with former slaves and immigrants who wanted a better life; and they worked their asses off. By the way, weren't some of these people supposed to be his friends? Bohannon doesn't even show up at the completion of the work with the golden spike going in. No one and I mean no one that ever lived on planet earth would have made that decision. He went from being a transparent, honest man to a shallow, non-thinking human.         

There are two sane moments in the season five finale, aptly and thankfully titled "Done." Thomas "Doc" Durant ends with a monologue similar to the one he uses to open season one. The other highlight is Eva's literal ride into the sunset. I love horses, so this ending was a stunning tribute to the ultimate survivor in the series. Eva has been around too many blocks, but her ability to grow and gain wisdom from her path was a moment to pause and freeze. She doesn't go out weak and weepy, she goes out strong not knowing what her future will be. She doesn't need a knight in shining armor, she's got her horse, her wits and more accumulated knowledge than anyone else in the series. Breaking the pale horse was the culmination of a life lived, for better, for worse. 

The series originally premiered to solid numbers. By season three, it was still doing close to three million viewers. AMC ended the series on July 23, 2016. One could not imagine a worse night to end a series (well, July 4th would have been worse). I am going to assume that after the dismal season five the network program planning and scheduling team thought their final awful season should end in the dead of summer.   

Stand-out production values all the way around. Notably, the gifted Production Designer, John Blackie. This series at times looks like a feature film and it is all because of the Production Design, Art Direction, Set Decoration and Cinematography. They did not have a gigantic budget. Somehow they were producing this series for under four million per episode. Impressive to look at.  Hell on Wheels has a superb title theme by Gustavo Santaolalla.  

Most of Hell on Wheels is shot out-of-doors, so clearly these were not easy shoots. The series has a tremendous amount of violence, so this is not material suitable for anyone under the age of 16 or 17 years old. A head gets decapitated and a butcher gets dismembered. Needless to say, the old west was a violent time, although by the standards of the era we live in, maybe not so much more than the average big city in the 21st century.   

What started out as an impressive series turned out to be an intensely unsatisfying and downright miserable final season. They could have at least ended the series after season four, episode 12. When Bohannon tells Durant he's quitting it sort of/kind of worked. Go home. The series had an energetic blast through most of the first four seasons, but season five is full of so many convoluted and wacky happenings that all of this madness leads to a banal and mundane ending. In any good story, the protagonist must be way ahead of the audience. By the beginning of season five, we are way ahead of the lead. He's going down fast and we know it. Bohannon does offer up one of the most humane decisions in season five as he chooses not to kill any more Indians.     

Death, particularly in drama is often poetic. That is not a cynical, pessimistic statement. The single most satisfying ending for Bohannon would have been death at the end of the series. The act of leaving the wife and son is so deplorable you want to rinse yourself of the stain immediately. Cullen Bohannon, the archetype of the mid-19th century male should have passed on into whatever eternal life waited for him. What a waste of a character who literally could have rivaled anything Sergio Leone would have directed. This series could have been the greatest television western ever. It needed to condense the first four seasons and the end of the railroad into one, two or three seasons. It could have been done; and then we would have had an epic. 

Eventually in life, all your stuff catches up to you in one way or another.  

"For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." Psalms 51:3

For a solid and historical read on the history of the transcontinental railroad, please do yourself a favor and read this book by Stephen Ambrose. The book is Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869.  All the vision, creativity, engineering skills and courage are brought to life in this book. If you know little to nothing about the U.S. Civil War take the time to read the mighty three part series on the Civil War by Shelby Foote or the smaller and not as intimidating three part series by Bruce Catton.   

Copyright The Flaming Nose March 2022