"I don't swim in that shit."

That my friends is the key line in the key scene in the season finale of the first season of "Deadwood."

At risk of being a spoiler, that is what ex-Wyoming Marshall Seth Bullock says to Deadwood camp's boss' #1 assistant, after explaining a little situation that would likely cause both said boss and assistant lots of grief down the road -- Pinkertons, who back in them days got away with murder in more civilized parts than the camp known as Deadwood, then in the no man's land of not-even US territorial Dakota land, Black Hills.

Seth Bullock is a complicated man/character. He knows right from wrong. Prefers right to wrong, and has and, as the series develops, will again serve the forces of right against wrong.

But he is no angel. He will kick the shit out of them that deserve it.

Oh, and the line that Dan the #1 man says to Bullock as Bullock is squeezing the sheriff's badge most recently possed by the incompotent fool Bulllock had just liberated it from?


"Why don't you put that on, you are hypocrite enough to wear it."


Ya, sometimes it takes an imperfect man to do right, in a world filled with lesser abled and more degenerate characters.

And that is what makes the civilized folk of the world more civilized; the fact that there are more degenerate bastards than them running around.

"I don't swim in that shit."

Indeed!