TV Retrospective: "Hell on Wheels"

Scene from Hell on Wheels

This past Saturday, AMC lost the last of its premiere programming with Hell on Wheels. With critics guessing that it was their response to Deadwood, the show rode off into the sunset with very little fanfare. Not even the customary few day marathon of every episode met the show's end as it had with Mad Men or Breaking Bad. It never received an extended episode cut in its final season, either. For a show that felt suited to AMC's previous reputation of playing westerns, the show ended with a whimper that felt reflective of the show's impact. For a channel known for its prestige dramas, Hell on Wheels was the rough and tumble second tier that nobody paid attention to. Could it be that the death knell of a Saturday time slot killed the show, leaving only its cult following? Maybe, but it could also just be that the show dwindled into an underwhelming exercise of western tropes by way of conventions and lackluster story telling. Hell on Wheels wasn't a terrible show. It was just too underwhelming to be as great as AMC's moniker suggested.

The plot was simple. Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) was a criminal who decides to work for the transcontinental railroad, connecting the east coast to the west. With a colorful cast of characters in post-Civil War America, the story was set with a promising look into the minute details of building railroads and living life in homemade buildings. The title Hell on Wheels comes from the workers who lived alongside the tracks, mingling with each other in their downtime. There's the greedy businessman Thomas Durant (Colm Meaney) who funds it all and provides our entry into east coast politics. The show eventually develops a sense for the west coast's input by showing the Asian workers who dynamited through mountains to make it all possible. 

Unlike Deadwood, the show wasn't about fancy language. In fact, the show felt like it lived on the id of history, vaguely using its figures to tell a story that featured a certain hostility. There were conflicts with Indians and black line drivers revolting. There was even a conniving villain called The Swede (Christopher Heyderdahl) who was at times comic book-level menacing. Still, the show loved its share of violence and improper manners, choosing to embrace a more Sam Peckinpah side to the western, allowing men to be grotesque and violent in place of story. There would be plenty of sexual moments as well, but the show seemed to glorify the moments that required death and tension. Some were poetic. Most simply came up short in that department. 

Despite having its fair share of content about railroad building, the show eventually would devolve into a drama between its central cast. It wasn't just about the trades that made it possible. It was soon about relationships and the rise of religion, mostly involving The Swede. As much as it helps to build a concrete picture of what America was like in those regions at that time, it was largely a conflict of interest, literally. Whole episodes would break from the railroad in favor of side adventures that ranged from interesting to trivial. Characters such as the reliable and charismatic Elam (Common) had whole episodes dedicated to them being captured and brainwashed. As interesting as it was, the drama reduced the moment to Bohannon shooting his best friend like a dog; failing to capture any deeper reading. 

The show continued to use death as a plot device for most of its run. In the final season specifically, it dedicated several episodes to key players being murdered or dying irrelevant. In fact, the final stretch had very little railroad building at all, instead choosing to focus on Bohannon's relationship with an Asian worker disguised as a man (Angela Zhou). Almost every episode featured some erotic exchange, only really getting back to the work in the final two episodes. While it helped to explore the character in further detail, it did little to add a satisfying farewell to a show that was supposed to be about transcontinental railroad building. In fact, the final image features Bohannon heading to Asia to find his loved one, who disappeared to avoid conflict. Not necessarily a terrible way to write him off given his situation, but it still feels tacked on in ways that emphasize the show's underwhelming quality.

It is likely that Hell on Wheels will have its detractors. In fact, it has enough good that it's worth watching a few episodes. However, the show as a whole was so scatterbrained that it would be hard to call it great. While it was at times ambitious, it settled for formula and familiarity on an average basis, producing work that sometimes strayed too far from the story. It did its best to make railroad building interesting, but by the end it didn't do enough. Sure, it had plenty of memorable characters, but it's hard to really pin down too many memorable moments. If nothing else, the finale is a tad underwhelming and reflects what the show did on average. It existed to fill in a hole left in Sunday night programming. One can only hope that AMC's next dive into westerns will be treated with a little more reverence and relevance than this show did to either its audience or source material.

OVERALL RATING: 3 out of 5