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A Union soldier with a guilty conscience seeks refuge in a small church, where he confesses his wartime sins to what he thinks is a priest. Instead of absolution, he's giving a bullet in the head. The man posing as a priest is former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon. He's looking for the Union men who were at Meridian, Mississippi, where his wife was killed. His quest takes him to "Hell on Wheels," the grungy tent city that springs up around the building of the transcontinental railroad just after the Civil War. Cullen gets a job as "walking boss," overseeing a crew of former slaves. He has no experience, mind you, but is given the job by the project overseer, Mr. Johnson, after learning that Cullen once owned slaves. Johnson expects Cullen to be as much of a raging racist and asshole as he is, but Cullen was enlightened by his wife. He's a kinder, gentler sort of boss, but this means little to Elam, one of the freedmen who's disillusioned by life since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Meanwhile, there's a survey team ahead of the building site, led by a young man and his wife, Lily. They're attacked by the Cheyenne, with only Lily surviving, thanks to her quick wit and stabbing abilities. Word gets back to Thomas "Doc" Durant, the money-grubbing entrepreneur who's basically greasing the wheels of this railroad undertaking. His concern isn't for the loss of life, but possible loss of the survey team's maps.
When Johnson kills one of Elam's friends for daring to drink water out of turn, Elam plots revenge. Cullen talks him out of it. Partly because he doesn't want Elam to hang, but also because Johnson is one of the Union men who killed Cullen's wife. Cullen wants to savor the sweet, sweet revenge for himself. Turns out Johnson is onto him, and is just about to blast Cullen into the life. But first he reveals that there was another sergeant at Meridian, and he's somewhere at Hell on Wheels. Alas, Elam pops up to save Cullen and kill Johnson right before he can give up the mystery man's name.
The episode ends with Doc making a long, bizarre, meta speech to nobody in particular. It's all about lions and zebras and villains and history and his part in the grand drama he sees unfolding. It caps an otherwise kind of dull story with a big pile of crazy. Stay tuned for the full recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Things start off promisingly enough with a black, smoke-filled screen and twangily ominous music. Some helpful prologue catches us up on what's what in Washington, D.C., 1865. "The war is over, Lincoln is dead. The nation is an open wound." The smoke lifts to reveal tree-lined dirt roads with the Capitol building in the background. A bedraggled Union soldier shuffles towards us, stopping when he hears the somber ringing of bells. He takes off his hat and makes his way into a church. In a confessional, a man says, "Unburden yourself, my son." The soldier, breathing hard and sweating, says that he was with General Sherman on his march South. "What we did... evil, unspeakable things," he says. It was so terrible he can't speak in complete sentences. The bearded man on the other side of the partition offers that he was a soldier following orders. The soldier tearfully explains it was more than that. "We opened a dark door, and the devil stepped in," he says. That's why you're supposed to look through the peephole first.
His audience of one encourages him to confess, but the soldier can't quite bring himself to do it. "Tell me about Meridian," the bearded man says. The soldier looks up, surprised. "How do you know about Meridian?" he asks. The partition slides open. The bearded man raises a revolver and shoots the soldier in the forehead. Blood spatters across the back of the confessional and the soldier slumps onto the church floor. The bearded man kicks open the confessional door with a boot-clad foot. He stands over the dead soldier, gun still in his hand. He takes his time moseying out of the church as a few patrons and a nun scramble to get out of his way. The bearded man pauses for a moment, gives a considering look to a large crucifix above the door. "Hm," he says. He looks like James Brolin and Jonathan Frakes somehow had a baby together. And then didn't teach him any damned conversation skills! How was the fool supposed to tell him about Meridian with a bullet in his head?
The opening credits roll, accompanied by a fast, twangy soundtrack that promises a knee-slapping good time. The promise won't be kept.
We chug along to an investment meeting for the Union Pacific Railroad. Colm Meaney as Thomas "Doc" Durant speaks to an audience of mostly older gentlemen in severe black suits. Doc proposes that it will be the building of a glorious transcontinental railroad that heals the nation. He speaks with the bravado of a carnival barker. "Mark my words, gentlemen, it will be built," he says. "The only question which remains is which one of you will join me in this mad... noble quest?" The gentlemen puff on their cigars and look a bit uncomfortable. "Who among you will have to say in years hence that he stood idly by as this nation became an empire?" Someone gives him a nickel to play the ring toss game. He goes on blustering a bit more until he finally stirs up these men's patriotic emotions. Applause breaks out among the gathering. Doc smiles and rocks back on his heels, puffy with pride. A silver-haired gentleman in the front row seems especially taken with him. "Bravo," he says quietly.
"It's all horse crap," Doc later admits to the silver fellow. "Twaddle and shite, I say!" The other men have of course wandered off by now, allowing the two wheelers and dealers some alone time. Doc lays down a stack of shares in Credit Mobilier. It's his own company and he wants all the construction contracts for the Union Pacific railroad. The other fellow catches on quickly: "So you'll be paying yourself with government subsidies." His part in all this as a senator is to take the shares as a bribe and grease the wheels for Doc's enterprise. He tries to negotiate for a bigger bribe, thinking himself quite smooth, but Doc even more smoothly threatens to reroute the railroad around the Senator's land in Nebraska, thereby rendering it worthless. In the end, the Senator has to take fewer shares than he was initially offered.
A train with three cars heads west over open grassland. In one of the cars, two dozen or so men sit on wooden benches, looking grim as their buttocks slowly callus into rawhide. A young Irishman reads a newspaper aloud with considerable difficulty. It's an article about the church shooting. "He was gunned down... while he... prayed in the con...con..." "Conference," his equally Irish seatmate offers helpfully. "Confessional," corrects the passenger in the seat opposite theirs. It's our bearded gunman. "What is the world comin' to?" wonders the first Irishman. The second one makes a remark about the victim getting to Heaven that much faster for having confessed his sins. The gunman scoffs. The Irishmen scoff at his scoffing, but the gunman says the only "higher power" he believes in is the one he wears on his hip. He pulls back his jacket to show the lads his revolver. These guys are probably in their mid-twenties but they practically squeal with childlike glee. They ask with unconcealed anticipation if their fellow passenger is a gunslinger. Alas, he tells them he's just looking for work on the railroad. The Irishmen, too, are out to seek their fortunes in the West.
They make their introductions. Mickey is one who was struggling to read and Sean is his marginally more educated traveling companion. The gunman is named Cullen Bohannon, which is just sort of terrible. It's like a bunch of people sat around aiming for a name that sounded "Westerny" and overshot. "Mickey has twelve toes," Sean says out of nowhere. "And Sean but eight," Mickey says. "Individually we're freaks," Sean goes on. "But together we're whole," Mickey finishes. Cullen stares at them and becomes the inventor of the "what the fuck?" face.
Some time later, the train pulls into Council Bluffs, Iowa, stopping when it runs out of track. The plains are green, the sky vast and blue. White tents cluster together like a flock of sheep. Men labor to add new lengths of track. "So Far From Your Weapon" by the Dead Weather begins to play. Nothing says "1865" like rock music from 2009. There's an explosion in the distance. Chunks of earth rain down from the sky, but Cullen just stands there unflinchingly because he's supposed to be that badass.
He makes his way to the hiring tent and introduces himself to Daniel Johnson. He's grizzled old man who looks like he hasn't had a friendly encounter with a washcloth in a long, long while. "Railroad experience?" he asks. "None," Cullen admits. He says he's willing to do just about anything, but they already have prostitutes for that. "I ain't got no place else to go, sir," he says. Johnson isn't sympathetic, but asks if he'll work the "cut crew." Cullen agrees without knowing a cut crew from the Cutting Crew. "You're a Johnny Reb, aren't you?" Johnson asks, sipping some whiskey and/or paint thinner. Johnson recognized him by the Griswold revolver he's carrying. Because it's impossible he could have bought it or stole it from someone else. Johnson holds up the stump where his right hand used to be and says, "It was a Griswold like that that took off my hand." Cullen draws his coat over Chekhov's gun. They have a chat using words like "copperhead" and "Greybacks" in an attempt to imbue the scene with an air of authenticity. Johnson doesn't have any hard feelings about Southerners. "It's the darkies I blame," he says. Cullen looks uncomfortable. His discomfort only grows when asked if he owned any slaves. When he says he did, Johnson hires him on the spot.
They head out to the cut crew where a team of men -- mostly black, mostly not very young -- are hacking into the hard, baked earth with pickaxes. "This is Mr. Bohannon, your walking boss," Johnson introduces. "You can address him as Boss or Boss Man or Walking Boss." Then, just to make sure everyone gets off on the right foot, Johnson explains to everyone that Cullen was a "master of slaves." Cullen looks uncomfortable again. "Some things don't never change," one of the crew says under his breath. He's Elam Ferguson, played by Common. Johnson leaves the scene and leaves Cullen to stew in the stink he just laid down.
Now we join a group of missionaries, singing by a nearby ravine. Behind them, the railroad construction goes on, explosions going off to clear expanses of land. The missionaries sing louder. A preacher leads a youngish Native man into the water. "Jesus Christ, accept this humble servant into your heart." He holds the man's nose as he dips him back into the water, baptizing him. While he's under water, he sees a large bird fly across the sky and out of sight. The preacher pulls him back up from the water. "Brother Joseph, your sins are washed away." Joseph looks pretty happy. Let's see how long that lasts.
At the tent city that has sprung up around the railroad construction, someone's put up a makeshift sign: "Hell on Wheels Population: One Less Every Day." Just one less? That sounds optimistic, honestly. The city's inhabitants are dirty, their clothes ragged. Men, women and children stare at their surroundings with dead eyes. This show could save a lot of money by reusing all the zombie extras from The Walking Dead. Joseph and the preacher pull up in a horse-drawn cart. Preacher man says he's going to build a church there. Two ladies saunter up to him, their breasts jiggling over the tops of their grimy corsets. "Better keep an eye on your flock, Reverend. We do our own share of convertin' around here," one of them says. She spits at his feet and gives him a saucy smile. So... they're mathematicians, right?
In his well-appointed train car, Doc Johnson is having a meeting with a couple of bewildered engineers. They've drawn up plans that will get the Union Pacific Railroad built quickly, and in a nearly straight line all the way west, but Doc emphatically rejects their plans. He smashes one guy's head to the table as he explains the finer points of bilking and milking: "In case you hadn't heard, this undertaking is being funded by the enormous teat of the government. This never-ending gushing nipple pays me $16,000 per mile, yet you build my road straight!" Colm Meaney is chewing up the scenery like a wad of tobacky.
From there we journey to the railroad survey team in the Nebraska Territory. It consists of a half-dozen or so grungy men and one perfectly groomed woman with clean, golden hair and eyebrows fresh from the spa. She's probably also Vajazzled under those petticoats of hers. She looks out over the grassy hills. "This land, it's bewitching," she says with a delicate English accent. "It hasn't changed since Lewis and Clark first saw it sixty years ago," says a man sitting near her. She sighs. "Do you ever wonder if our work here will be the ruin of all this?" she asks. "Progress comes with a cost, Lily," he says. She thinks the land is more beautiful without people, but he reminds her that there are plenty of people around. They're entering Cheyenne territory, he says. He also reminds her that they had an agreement that she would head home once they got into "hostile Indian territory." She counters with the other agreement they had, where she had promised to stay by his side as long as he was sick. He coughs weakly and joins her side. They sit together on Exposition Hill, nestled against one another in the shade of Clumsy Foreshadowing Mountain. She tells this man, her husband Robert, that she'll leave if he goes with her. But they've worked too hard for this to leave now, he says. Speaking of hard, she smiles coyly at him: "Robert Bell, are you hiding something in your trousers?" They kiss and snuggle, but Robert begins to cough again before things can get going. Lily looks sad.
Night falls on a bustling Hell on Wheels. Salesmen peddle their wares and prostitutes wiggle their pairs. One of the larger tents serves as a saloon. Here Cullen has a poker game going on with Johnson and two other fellows. One of the unnamed men asks Cullen about his slaves. He owned five on his small tobacco farm, he says. They ask him if he "sampled the goods" from his female slaves (no) and if he was bitter about giving up his slaves (also no). He tells them he freed his slaves a year before the war. Johnson looks at him like he just sprouted a second head. "I married a Northerner," Cullen explains. "She convinced me of the evils of slavery." Everyone drinks and smokes and drinks some more. It's very, very slow and boring and talky. Johnson asks why Cullen would still fight in the war. His answer: "Honor." Johnson asks about Cullen's wife and he drawls out "she's dead" and gives Johnson a steely look. "Did the war take her?" Johnson asks. "Somethin' like that," Cullen answers. With that, the scene is blessedly over.
Nebraska Territory. Lily and Robert are quietly making love in their tent. At least that's what I think they're doing. It's dark and they both look fully clothed. She's lying flat on top of him like she's posing for a planking shot. She moans softly and then it seems to be over. Robert coughs. "I fear this cough will be the death of me," he says. Obviously he hasn't read ahead in the script. Lily doesn't like him talking like that. She starts singing him a wordless little melody.
The morning, a group of Cheyenne warriors advance on the survey team's camp. One of the team goes to take a leak outside his tent when there's a faint whoosh and then a dull thud behind him. A spot of blood appears on the front of the man's shirt. He looks confused as he grabs his belly. An arrow has passed clean through him and stuck in a wooden cart behind him. His wound begins to pour. A second arrow pierces his neck and he falls to the ground. The camp is plunged into battle. Robert, seeing the fighting outside his tent, quickly gathers up the survey maps. He and Lily run into the woods as the rest of the team are shot and scalped. Robert wheezes and struggles to keep up with his wife. A Cheyenne follows them. Robert falls, coughing. Lily tries to quiet him, but it's no use. The Cheyenne finds them and clubs Robert over the head. Lily braces herself against a tree, holding up her hand as the Cheyenne readies his bow. The arrow goes through her palm and shoulder, pinning her to the tree behind her.
Robert jumps up and grabs the Cheyenne from behind. Robert gets him in a headlock. Lily yanks the arrow from the various layers of her own body. The Cheyenne manages to unsheathe a knife and gut Robert like a fish. Lily lets out an animal scream and charges the Cheyenne, knocking him to the ground. And then she stabs him with his own arrow, right in the throat. She's the biggest bad ass on the show so far. Her attacker thus dispatched, she goes to Robert. With the last of his strength, he places her hand on the survey maps, his meaning clear. Lily hears the whooping of approaching Cheyennes. She kisses her dead husband, takes the knife from his gut, takes the maps, and runs.
Hell on Wheels. Day is dawning. Everyone is hungover or dying or both. Johnson starts the day with a swig of whiskey and wakes Cullen, who's passed out in the saloon from the night before. He looks up, bleary eyed and oozing drool down his chin. That's kind of how I felt halfway through watching this episode.
Later, Cullen smokes and walks the cut while his crew toils. "Half hour to lunch," he calls out. Elam glares as he walks by. "Peckerwood," he says under his breath. "He ain't so bad," says his friend Willie beside him. "Shut your dumb black ass up," Elam says. A good relationship with one's coworkers remains as important today as it was back then. To help the time pass, Elam gets the men to join him in a work song:
All them pretty gals will be there,
Shuck that corn before you eat;
They will fix it for us rare,
Shuck that corn before you eat.
I know that supper will be big,
Shuck that corn before you eat;
I think I smell a fine roast pig,
Shuck that corn before you eat.
Cullen jumps down into the cut. Elam stops singing, faces Cullen with a defiant look. Cullen just nods at him to keep going.
Doc's train has stopped somewhere along the track to wire into a telegraph pole. Doc gets a telegram about the attack on the survey team. "Robert Bell is dead," he reads. He sighs heavily and worries about the lost maps. He dictates a telegram to the Union Pacific board of directors to let them know he's headed to Hell on Wheels.
Back at the cut, Willie falters. Elam drags him over to the water cart for a drink, despite his friend's protestations that it's not break time yet. In the distance, Cullen is questioning a worker about going against his orders. Something about where to put the dirt they dug out. Elam pipes up, says he's the one who told the man to do it, to fill up a hole in the field. "Just talk to me before any decisions are made," Cullen says, not upset. "Yes, sir, master," Elam says. Cullen bristles. Before he can get that sorted out, Johnson rides up on his horse and whips Willie. "You drink when I tell you to drink!" An explosion goes off nearby, startling Johnson's horse. It rears up, its front hooves cracking across Willie's jaw. He goes down. Elam falls to the ground beside his friend. "This is what happens when you break my rules," Johnson says to onlookers.
Later that night, Cullen goes to Elam's tent. Willie lies dead on a cot, a white sheet draped over his body. Elam draws a blade back and forth over a whetstone with great care. Cullen sits, searches for something to say. He takes a drink from a bucket (hopefully of water), but puts down the ladle when Elam glares at him. Finally: "Now, what are you planning on doing with that Arkansas toothpick?" Elam continues honing the blade without answering. "Don't do it," Cullen says. "We ain't on no plantation no more, walking boss," Elam says. He spits on the whetstone. Cullen tries to talk Elam out of, says nothing good will come out of it. Elam picks up a newspaper clipping with President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. With sadness, Elam says nothing good came from that, either. "I might as well just wipe my ass with it," he says. He goes back to sharpening his blade. Cullen says Elam will hang if he kills Johnson. "You got to let go of the past," Cullen says. Either he's talking about Willie's death which just happened earlier that day or he's talking about the lifetime of slavery Elam endured. Either way: Shut up, Cullen. "Have you let it go?" Elam asks. Cullen doesn't answer. Elam sharpens his knife some more.
The McGinnes brothers (they of the mismatched toes from earlier) have set up a "magic lantern show" in one of the tents. Cullen stops by, pays a coin for admission and goes inside. The small tent is packed with homesick Irish rail workers. Sean works the projector, putting in slides that show painted scenes from Ireland. Mickey stands up by the screen and begins to sing "A Stór Mo Chroí" in a clear, pretty voice. His audience listens rapturously. "Do you not pine for own homeland, Mr. Bohannon?" Sean whispers. He seems oddly nervous to be asking the question. Cullen says he doesn't; his home is gone. His expression as he watches Mickey says otherwise.
Saloon. Cullen and Johnson are drinking. If some act of violence doesn't take them down, then surely cirrhosis will. Johnson asks if Cullen "saw the elephant," but Cullen doesn't like to talk about his days of battle. Johnson, on the other hand, loved the war and loudly proclaims it to everyone in the tent. "Best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "Most men shrink when they see the elephant up close, but I blossomed." Oh, how I wish they'd had this conversation earlier so "Blossom" could have been Johnson's recap nickname. Cullen plies him with shot after shot of whiskey. Drunker by the minute, Johnson finds himself in a revelatory mood. He admits in hushed tones there were "lines of morality" that he crossed. He looks pensive for a moment, then downs another shot and smiles. "That's what men do in war," he says, by means of excusing himself. "Moral men don't," Cullen says. "So you did nothing you were ashamed of?" Johnson asks. "I did plenty I was ashamed of," Cullen says. "You ever been to Meridian, Mississippi, Mr. Johnson?" Johnson, far wilier and more sober than he seems, knew all along where this conversation was going. He has a Remington revolver under the table, aimed at Cullen, and says so.
He leads Cullen outside at gunpoint and walks him to some secluded murdering spot. He says he knows about the men Cullen killed in Maryland. He read about him killing the soldier with his Griswold. Someone at the scene recognized a Griswold on sight, from a distance, while they were fleeing for their lives? It was probably that nun. Johnson puts the rest of the pieces together for us: "I'll be damned if you didn't show up a few days later with a Griswold strapped to your hip as plain as day. Then you asked me about Meridian? That cinched it." Johnson says he's not proud of what happened to Cullen's wife. Cullen corrects him: "It didn't happen to her -- you did it to her." Johnson admits to his guilt. He seems genuinely pained for what he did. He says she was just in the wrong place. "I want you to know it wasn't my idea to kill her," Johnson says. Cullen frowns and asks, "She hung herself?" Johnson looks started by the stupidity of the question. He explains it was the Sergeant who killed her. This comes as news to Cullen. Johnson says the Sergeant is out here and figured Cullen was saving him for last. Johnson's just about to give up the man's identity, figuring he's about to kill Cullen anyway, but then Elam pops up out of nowhere with that freshly honed knife of his. Cullen cries out, but too late: Elam slits Johnson's throat. Surprisingly, it's blood that pours from the wound and not pure rotgut. "Tell me his name," Cullen begs as Johnson slumps to the ground. But Johnson is too busy dying to do anything but gurgle.
Now we come to the craziest part of the episode. Doc's well-appointed train heads West. He sits in his armchair, sipping liquor from a fine crystal tumbler. "Is it a villain you want?" he asks. There appears to be no one else in the car with him. Occasionally he'll look at a fixed point as if talking to someone, but he could be looking at a mirror for all we know. Or an imaginary friend. He goes on: "I'll play the part. After all, what is a drama without a villain, and what is the building of this grand road if not a drama?" He takes a long breath. "This business is not for the weak of heart." The scene cuts to the recently baptized Joseph arriving on horseback at the site of the survey team's massacre. "It's a thorny, brutal affair," Doc says in voice-over, "that rewards the lion for his ferocity." Joseph picks up an arrow and looks grim. Back on Doc's train and impromptu zoology lesson: "And what of the poor zebra? Well, the zebra's eaten as the zebra should be." Now we see Lily trudging through a field of wildflowers, clutching the precious maps. Doc goes on about spilling blood and making fortunes. "There will be betrayal and scandal!" Thanks for outlining the season for us, Doc Meta. "All of history is driven by the lion," he goes on. "We drag the poor zebra kicking and braying, staining the earth with his cheap blood." As he's waxing batshit insane, the transient town of Hell on Wheels is packing up and moving further west with the progressing rail construction. In the distance, a dog lifts his leg and pees on a patch of ground. He's not as fond of mixed-up monologues as I am. Doc accepts his role in the story: "History won't remember us fondly, but then, history is written by the zebra for the zebra." What's black and white and red all over? History's first draft, with the zebra editor's marks. ("Make the lion drunker! And crazier!") Doc goes on, seeing into the future some 100 years hence: "I will be remembered as a caitiff, a malefactor who only operated out of greed for personal gain." You'll also be remembered for your impressive vocabulary and your weird animal metaphors. He says that without him and others like him, the railroad wouldn't be built.
The last shot is of Cullen supervising the cut crew as two men ride up on horseback. Elam casts a worried look at Cullen, whose hand hovers near his Griswold. Ominous drums play out the scene.
So that's the first episode. Slow, overly talky. It felt like it started at the wrong point in the story, somehow. Stay tuned for the recap to see if the train picks up steam or jumps the tracks entirely.
Tippi Blevins is a recapper who lives just blocks away from the railroad. She'll keep her eyes peeled for lions or other safari animals. Email her at b_tippi@yahoo.com, or find her on Twitter.