Hell on Wheels
Hell on Wheels

Episode Report Card
Tippi Blevins: C+ | 674 USERS: B-
YOU GRADE IT
Gettin' Some

In Doc's train car, the unending dinner of awkwardness is still going on. Henri pours Doc and Lily some bright red wine while Doc moans on about his railroad woes. There's the forty-mile goal yet to be met and the savages and his terrible employees, too. Also, I'd wager that Henri is probably peeing in his coffee every morning. "Must be hard to be you," Lily says with a mock sincerity that Doc doesn't pick up on. He just sees her smiling at him and feels encouraged to go on. He says he asked for more troops but got none. His investors won't give him money for new surveyors. Lily makes an interested sound and walks over to Doc. "They haven't got your guts, Thomas," she says. She even bats her eyelashes at him. At this point, she could probably tell Doc to cluck like a chicken and he would happily oblige. Lily asks, ever so innocently, what the new surveyors would be doing. "I thought the lion's share of Robert's work was finished," she says. "Yes, it was," Doc says, "but he still owed me some surveys. I think he was keeping them from me because of our 'falling out.'" Lily, even more innocently asks, "What kind of surveys?" He shows her a map and points out the Rockies. He thinks Robert knew the way through. Lily's look of secret pride confirms this, but Doc doesn't notice. He brings up the missing maps, then quickly adds that of course he was happy to see her safe and sound. He takes her hand, which she quickly takes back. There's only so far she can stomach going with this game. So Thomas asks Henri for a song and Henri sings "A La Claire Fontaine" in a lovely, clear voice. The episode takes its title from a line in the song, meaning "never shall I forget," which makes more sense than my original interpretation.

Henri sings over a montage: There's Cullen stumbling by the train car in a drunken stupor and seeing Lily sitting with Doc. There's the tattooed lady looking about a million miles away as she's getting plowed by some random, grimy customer. There's Elam, lying in his cot, hands behind his head, looking peaceful. There's Mickey, looking at one of the slides from home, crying his eyes out while brother Sean counts up their meager coins. And then, dear Lord, there is the Swede, buck nekkid on his hands and knees, scrubbing his floor clean by the grim light of a kerosene lamp. For some reason, a woman's voice has overtaken Henri's. Doc, alone later that night, looks at the picture of Lily's inside her dead husband's watch. Lily tosses and turns in bed. The last bit of the montage shows Cullen walking into a young prostitute's room; he stops her when she's about halfway through undoing his pants. He presses his ten-dollar bribe into her hands, kisses her on the forehead, then staggers back out.

Hell on Wheels

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