The Televangelist: ‘Hell On Wheels,’ Pilot

“Blood will be spilled, lives will be lost, men will be ruined” ... sounds like just the party I’m looking for!

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  • AMC
  • GOD BLESS AMERICA: And by God I mean my gun



“Hell On Wheels” had me at hello, and by hello I mean the whole Post-War-Confederate-Vigilante-Wild-West business. The tagline “blood will be spilled, lives will be lost, men will be ruined” was all a bonus, and the cherry on top whilst actually viewing: that our main man, Cullen Bohannon (you can’t even say that name without slipping into a Southern accent), played by the stern and grizzled Anson Mount (which could have served well as his character name, frankly) is from Meridian, Mississippi, my Dad’s hometown and current locale of most of the Keene clan. It’s the little touches, you see.

Just as there is an overabundance of television focusing on cops, lawyers and hospital staff, so too is there a corresponding dearth of material taking place in the Wild West. I used to claim that the most underrepresented time period in modern history was the Edwardian era leading up to and beyond World War I into the roaring ’20s and Prohibition ’30s. Luckily “Downton Abbey” and “Boardwalk Empire” have provided a great amount of historical satisfaction on that front, so now that we’ve got that covered, why not backtrack slightly a bit to Reconstruction, the rise of the railroad, and a fresh round of Manifest Destiny? It’s a time period well trod in films, but far less so on TV in the last few decades. “Deadwood,” rest its blessed soul, has been our best and most recent ticket to this tumultuous time frame, and it’s through the lens of a “Deadwood” fan that I inspect “Hell on Wheels,” which looks so far to be of a much wider scope and of deeper racial considerations.

Let’s back up for just a moment and set the scene, as the show so helpful does to orient us among our major narratives. The literal Hell on Wheels is the name of the (sin-filled - Whores! Liquor! Murder!) camp that travels along with the construction of the transcontinental railroad. It’s has become a Mecca for wayward sorts looking to make some money (like the enterprising Irish McGinnes brothers Cullen meets on the train) and for former slaves looking to find and establish a new life. And of course then there’s Cullen, who we learn pretty early on is avenging the brutal death of his wife at the hands of Union Soldiers during Sherman’s March to the Sea. So far he’s done a swell job, even masquerading as a priest in Washington, D.C. in order to slay one of the perpetrators. He arrives at the Hell on Wheels encampment for a little work and a little murder - he successfully slays his utterly evil boss by proxy (the actually throat-slitting comes courtesy of Elam, played by the rapper Common), but with the quick and early death of this foe comes an unfortunate twist - Cullen is unable to get from him the name of the sergeant, who is with the Hell on Wheels gang, who actually strangled his wife. As such, it looks like Cullen will be sticking around for longer than he planned. And so we begin!