AMC's Hell on Wheels

[terry78]

So ends an era.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Great finale. Especially loved the callbacks to the first episode (Cullen in the church, Durant giving his monologue). Wish we would have gotten to see Cullen and Mei's reunion, but they went the Good Will Hunting route with the ending, and that's okay.

This was such a great show. I'm truly going to miss it.

 

[James]

I really like that Cullen took the majority of the railroad to get back there. The final scene was pretty much what I expected, which was nice. It always sucks when a good show fumbles the very last moment or two (I'm looking at you, SOA!). Eva's finale scene was also exactly what I expected since the moment she laid eyes on that horse a few episodes back.

Mickey's still a jerk, but I did really enjoy the brawl in the opening scene. I think he love Eva a lot, but she was right -they'd have killed each other sooner or later.

Durant's flash-forward scene a couple of episodes ago still stands out as being weird.

Mostly I'm just glad Cullen got a happy ending.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Yeah, I'm glad the show didn't end with Cullen dying or throwing Mei's message in the water and going back to work on the railroad and be miserable for the rest of his life. He's earned a rest and some happiness.

That barroom brawl was hilarious. I loved everyone's reaction when Campbell walked in and asked them what they were all fighting for.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Wow, just read that a possible ending they'd considered was the Swede killing Cullen and then taking his place on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Glad they didn't end it like that. That would have been awful.

 

[James]

Geez, yeah. Anything but The Swede being killed off completely would have been disappointing.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Yeah. The one weak spot (IMO) in these final episodes was how they drew out the Swede's death. Cullen should have just drowned him in that creek and been done with it. Having him spare his life just so he could take him to hang felt like nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to draw out the Cullen/Swede conflict even longer. It would have been one thing if he had gotten away and the majority of the episode was devoted to Cullen hunting him down. But having the two of them travel to that stockade because "Cullen is a changed man now" just made Cullen look like an idiot. Thank God they at least ended the episode with his death. I was worried they were going to have him get away AGAIN.

 

[James]

I agree. Cullen should have just bashed The Swede's brains in when he had the chance. After everything they'd been through, and knowing how insanely dangerous The Swede was, it was totally silly for Cullen to drag his ass all that way.

I'll probably rewatch the series again in a few years, from the beginning. My only real complaint, now that everything's done, remains the "Bear Killer" episode. While Elam's madness and subsequent death was tragic, dedicating that entire episode to watching him go bananas only to have him die in the following episode was such a waste. On top of that, the Bear Killer episode was also really dull.

But, all that being said, one crummy episode out of five seasons is pretty darn good. It was a great show overall and has some of the best shootouts on the small screen to date. Cullen Bohanon is one of the coolest and most interesting TV characters around, and it was really just a delight to have a Western show that managed to gain the popularity it did.

 

[Rowsdower!]

I agree. Cullen should have just bashed The Swede's brains in when he had the chance. After everything they'd been through, and knowing how insanely dangerous The Swede was, it was totally silly for Cullen to drag his ass all that way.

I'll probably rewatch the series again in a few years, from the beginning. My only real complaint, now that everything's done, remains the "Bear Killer" episode. While Elam's madness and subsequent death was tragic, dedicating that entire episode to watching him go bananas only to have him die in the following episode was such a waste. On top of that, the Bear Killer episode was also really dull.

But, all that being said, one crummy episode out of five seasons is pretty darn good. It was a great show overall and has some of the best shootouts on the small screen to date. Cullen Bohanon is one of the coolest and most interesting TV characters around, and it was really just a delight to have a Western show that managed to gain the popularity it did.

Yeah, agreed, they could have handled that better. The episode where he comes back to town and Cullen is forced to kill him was great though. That scene where Cullen breaks down crying pretty much ripped my f***ing heart out.

My other complaints about the show were how they just kind of wrote Joseph Black-Moon out for no reason (I guess they just felt like they didn't know what to do with him?) and how they never really clarified what the hell happened with Mickey and Sean before they got to Hell on Wheels. They almost made it look like Mickey was some sort of serial killer or something and then they just kind of dropped it and kept him as a (somewhat) likable character.

Still, overall, it was a great show and definitely not one you could predict. I loved how the show kept changing; each season felt different from the previous one, yet the shifts were never so drastic that it felt like a different show. And it touched on so many different factions of people that made up the country at the time: Native Americans, the Irish, the Chinese, the Mormons, African Americans, Union and Confederate soldiers, etc. This is definitely one of my favorite shows of all time.

 

[Hunter Rider]

I thought the final 6 eps delivered a satisfying conclusion to a great series, Cullen Bohannon is one of the best characters I've seen in any medium, Anson Mount deserves more recognition.

I think tying up certain aspects early on made sense so they could focus on the final stretch of building the railroad. Ending the Cullen/Swede rivalry right off the bat made sense and I thought it was pretty well done and grizzly. Although Cullen just killing him himself would have been my preference, I think it spoke to his stubbornness in wanting to be a different man that he dragged him all the way back while inured just to say he delivered justice instead of vengeance.

The shootout viewed from Mei's POV was amazingly well shot as most have mentioned, and probably my second favorite action sequence in the shows run.

The final ep was the perfect conclusion for the main characters, from Cullen's confession callback to him refusing to testify against Durant, to Durant's speech and Eva riding off into the wild, to the final shot of Cullen sailing off to find Mei. I didn't think it would happen but I'm glad Cullen got a cathartic ending.

 

[Rowsdower!]

Yeah, it really was a perfect ending. My only complaint was that we didn't really get much of a conclusion for Psalms or Louise, but they were more or less bit players in the story.

 

[James]

I think Psalms and Louise just kept on doing what they were doing. There probably wasn't a conclusion to be had, Pslams took his men and went to work on something else, Louise kept being a newspaper lady.

I forgot about Durant's speech, it was a good one. I really liked his petty 'win' in the second to last episode too. Durant telling Bohanon that he beat him, and Bohanon just walking by him because (I think) not even Durant believed what he was saying.

 

[Marvolo]

Durant's speech was a nice call back to his speech at the end of the pilot episode.