Where's the Hell On Wheels Thread? (SPOILER ALERT)

[DaGip]

What? Nobody likes westerns? Hell On Wheels is probably one of the best shows I've seen! And it has one of my most favorite actresses in it. Robin McLeavy!



At least she is still in it. You never know about this show...you'll start to get attached to a character and WHAMMO!...they go crazy, get burned alive, murdered, or hung!

This last season everybody that I knew that watched the show loved Ruth...a little, red headed preacher lady. We all thought Ruth and Bohannon were gonna shack up, but then Colin got kidnapped by a Mormon posse and forced to marry a 17 year old girl he knocked up. Now Colin is back in Cheyenne (left his child bride at the Mormon fort where she'd be happy) trying to deal with Provisional Governor Campbell and his dirty henchmen.

One of the governor's henchmen was a child murdering, loose cannon that he made into a marshal named Sydney Snow. Snow arrested almost all the railroad workers in Cheyenne and had them all put into jail and was sending them all away on a train to go face trials in their respective states. Bohannon stopped the train, freed the men, and killed most of the Governor's henchmen. Snow got away.

Snow then comes back to town to settle business with Bohannon. Bohannon and the Irish Mick arm the men and they take refuge in Ruth's church. Then Snow shows up and throws lanterns through the windows of the church and starts an inferno.

The men escape the church, some are injured; but Ruth can't find her adopted son Ezra. Bohannon finds Ezra's charred corpse beneath the floor boards of his bedroom that he would use as a hiding spot.

Ruth is pissed and wants Bohannon to kill Sydney Snow, but Bohannon isn't as lawless as he used to be...he is the head of the railroad police (the closest thing to a sheriff). Bohannon wants to arrest Sydney for his crimes and bring him to trial (most likely to hang).

Snow brazenly comes back to town to try to have a studdly showdown with Bohannon in the middle of the street with the whole crowd watching. Bohannon said he wasn't gonna do that, but he was going to arrest him. Bohannon started walking towards Snow...you'd think Snow would try to shoot Colin as he is advancing and then Bohannon would just put a bullet in him; but then...BANG! A shot rips through Snow's leg! And then another BANG! Another shot rips through Snow's guts! Who just killed Sydney Snow in the street? It wasn't Bohannon!

Click image to enlarge.

It was Ruth!

One of the best seasons yet! It's not zombies...but it's based on history and historical figures. I first started watching the show because I wanted to find a show for me and my dad to watch together, because my dad likes westerns and he used to be an old railroad worker.

Now the season ended and Ruth got hung for killing Snow in the street, then Bohannon quit the railroad to go look for his Mormon family...now he is working for the Union Pacific as he searches for his wife and baby.

Good stuff.

This thread is a bit late coming, but I just wanted people that are interested in westerns and history to know there is a show out there that they will enjoy!

[denominator]

I have been a big fan of the show since it started.

It's filmed here in Calgary (and surrounding area). Any time you see Bohannon going into one of the bigger cities (like Salt Lake City at the end of Season 4) it's filmed in the building here at Heritage Park with the interpreters as extras. My neighbour was in one of the opening episodes of season 2 or 3 as a geologist that got killed, I know a lot of the extras, and have worked with a number of the First Nations people that show up in the background.

The set of Cheyenne is still standing, but most other "towns" they've built had to be removed. The first season was set on the Tsu'u T'ina Reserve in southwest Calgary, and one of the conditions of using the land was that they removed Hell on Wheels after filming, tracks and all. Since then it has been southeast of the city or further west towards the mountains.

The place that Elam builds his cabin is a very nice spot near where the Highwood River flows into the Bow just east of Calgary. It was a zone of major flooding in 2013 and actually exposed an archaeological site at the cabin. My boss saw the artifacts while watching the show, called the government and got permission to go out there, and recorded the site earlier this summer. It's now been named "The Hell on Wheels Site" and is a very significant site in the area - found just by watching a TV show.

As for the show itself, I feel it lacks long-term direction. It's constantly setting up short-term plots and story-arcs that don't carry very long (like the return of Elam this season) and makes the show feel very disjointed over multiple seasons. I will note that Christopher Heyerdahl is now one of my favourite actors (The Swede) as he is phenomenally creepy and the perfect villain. Great acting. I also like that they're finally going somewhere with the Robin McLeavy storyline beyond the love story and the mother story that never seemed to fit. Also, well done how they've worked in actually history to drive the story forward.

[DaGip]

I have been a big fan of the show since it started.

It's filmed here in Calgary (and surrounding area). Any time you see Bohannon going into one of the bigger cities (like Salt Lake City at the end of Season 4) it's filmed in the building here at Heritage Park with the interpreters as extras. My neighbour was in one of the opening episodes of season 2 or 3 as a geologist that got killed, I know a lot of the extras, and have worked with a number of the First Nations people that show up in the background.

The set of Cheyenne is still standing, but most other "towns" they've built had to be removed. The first season was set on the Tsu'u T'ina Reserve in southwest Calgary, and one of the conditions of using the land was that they removed Hell on Wheels after filming, tracks and all. Since then it has been southeast of the city or further west towards the mountains.

The place that Elam builds his cabin is a very nice spot near where the Highwood River flows into the Bow just east of Calgary. It was a zone of major flooding in 2013 and actually exposed an archaeological site at the cabin. My boss saw the artifacts while watching the show, called the government and got permission to go out there, and recorded the site earlier this summer. It's now been named "The Hell on Wheels Site" and is a very significant site in the area - found just by watching a TV show.

As for the show itself, I feel it lacks long-term direction. It's constantly setting up short-term plots and story-arcs that don't carry very long (like the return of Elam this season) and makes the show feel very disjointed over multiple seasons. I will note that Christopher Heyerdahl is now one of my favourite actors (The Swede) as he is phenomenally creepy and the perfect villain. Great acting. I also like that they're finally going somewhere with the Robin McLeavy storyline beyond the love story and the mother story that never seemed to fit. Also, well done how they've worked in actually history to drive the story forward.

That is an entirely awesome personal story! I find it interesting that the show is about history, and then actual history was found on the TV show!

Yes, the whole Elam deal seemed like the writers needed to just throw something together quick; and yes, Eva is now more interesting...rather than the whore that gets beat, raped, and then acts as a nurse for people. I am wondering if the baby she had (even though it looked white) is actually Elam's? Maybe I'm just grasping at straws there, but babies can look white from a mixed couple.

I am not exactly sure what the whole Ruth flashback scenes were supposed to accomplish. That kid actress wasn't that good. That's why I liked Ezra...he usually just kept his mouth shut.

I am sad that Kasha isn't going to be on the show anymore. I hope her career started to bloom after this. I think she's a good actress, but maybe I am just being fooled by her heavily burdened facial expressions?

Anyway, Hell on Wheels is a much needed break from Zombies and Meth Dealers.

[denominator]

I have been a big fan of the show since it started.

It's filmed here in Calgary (and surrounding area). Any time you see Bohannon going into one of the bigger cities (like Salt Lake City at the end of Season 4) it's filmed in the building here at Heritage Park with the interpreters as extras. My neighbour was in one of the opening episodes of season 2 or 3 as a geologist that got killed, I know a lot of the extras, and have worked with a number of the First Nations people that show up in the background.

The set of Cheyenne is still standing, but most other "towns" they've built had to be removed. The first season was set on the Tsu'u T'ina Reserve in southwest Calgary, and one of the conditions of using the land was that they removed Hell on Wheels after filming, tracks and all. Since then it has been southeast of the city or further west towards the mountains.

The place that Elam builds his cabin is a very nice spot near where the Highwood River flows into the Bow just east of Calgary. It was a zone of major flooding in 2013 and actually exposed an archaeological site at the cabin. My boss saw the artifacts while watching the show, called the government and got permission to go out there, and recorded the site earlier this summer. It's now been named "The Hell on Wheels Site" and is a very significant site in the area - found just by watching a TV show.

As for the show itself, I feel it lacks long-term direction. It's constantly setting up short-term plots and story-arcs that don't carry very long (like the return of Elam this season) and makes the show feel very disjointed over multiple seasons. I will note that Christopher Heyerdahl is now one of my favourite actors (The Swede) as he is phenomenally creepy and the perfect villain. Great acting. I also like that they're finally going somewhere with the Robin McLeavy storyline beyond the love story and the mother story that never seemed to fit. Also, well done how they've worked in actually history to drive the story forward.

That is an entirely awesome personal story! I find it interesting that the show is about history, and then actual history was found on the TV show!

Yes, the whole Elam deal seemed like the writers needed to just throw something together quick; and yes, Eva is now more interesting...rather than the whore that gets beat, raped, and then acts as a nurse for people. I am wondering if the baby she had (even though it looked white) is actually Elam's? Maybe I'm just grasping at straws there, but babies can look white from a mixed couple.

I am not exactly sure what the whole Ruth flashback scenes were supposed to accomplish. That kid actress wasn't that good. That's why I liked Ezra...he usually just kept his mouth shut.

I am sad that Kasha isn't going to be on the show anymore. I hope her career started to bloom after this. I think she's a good actress, but maybe I am just being fooled by her heavily burdened facial expressions?

Anyway, Hell on Wheels is a much needed break from Zombies and Meth Dealers.

Hell on Wheels fits in with Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men in that they feature a lead protagonist that isn't the perfect good guy. All of them set you up to believe the main character (Bohannon, Rick, Walt, and Don) is to prototypical good-guy, but as you learn more and watch more they are a mix of good and bad. I think that's the underlying reason that the AMC shows are so compelling.

I can't remember exactly, but I thought the baby was established to not be Elam's? It was that other guy's who got shot, then married Eva, then started a homestead but she left him? I could be completely wrong on that as the whole baby storyline did not interest me at all.

I also found the flashback scenes very odd. For one, they were very out of context with the rest of the show and I am typically not a fan of flashbacks. I feel that if the writing and acting is good, you can give a character a monologue about the past instead of actually showing it and it's far more powerful (ex - look at what Game of Thrones has done with monologues about the past). I also think Kasha was a solid actress, but the writers didn't really know what to do with her character so the writing struggled. If you look at the characters that they understand (Bohannon, Durant, Elam, Mickey, The Swede), they evolve but stay true to the character and are far more compelling and believable. The characters they struggle with (Ruth, Eva, Mickey's brother, the newspaper lady) tend to wander all over the place with no compelling storyline. The Ruth from season 1 is very different from the Ruth in season 2 is very different from the Ruth in season 3 is very different from the Ruth in season 4. Tough on the actress if her character keeps changing.

[BigBallinStalin]

Yeah, I used to like Hot Wheels a long time ago. Typically, the stories were good v. evil, but there were occasional destruction derbies where morality no longer mattered. At the age of 6, I'd give those stories a 10/10, but in hindsight, the stories could've used more work; they needed more built-up tension, a greater sense of quest, and stronger character development. Today I'd rate them at 2/10, but at least they're still better than shickbricks' stories.

[betiko]

i've never heard of this show.
dagip, if you had to pitch it in a couple of sentences without spoiling how would you describe it (i didn't read your posts as i feel spoiler alerts blinking everywhere)? I have no show to watch these days so I'm up to start a new one.

[denominator]

i've never heard of this show.
denominator, if you had to pitch it in a couple of sentences without spoiling how would you describe it (i didn't read your posts as i feel spoiler alerts blinking everywhere)? I have no show to watch these days so I'm up to start a new one.

It's a period piece focusing on the people involved with the Union Pacific railroad during the race across America between UP and Central Pacific railroads. The story follows the characters more than the actual railroad, covering issues such as racial tension just after the civil war, conflicts with other groups like First Nations people and Mormons, and the concept of the frontier/wild west.

[DaGip]

i've never heard of this show.
denominator, if you had to pitch it in a couple of sentences without spoiling how would you describe it (i didn't read your posts as i feel spoiler alerts blinking everywhere)? I have no show to watch these days so I'm up to start a new one.

It's a period piece focusing on the people involved with the Union Pacific railroad during the race across America between UP and Central Pacific railroads. The story follows the characters more than the actual railroad, covering issues such as racial tension just after the civil war, conflicts with other groups like First Nations people and Mormons, and the concept of the frontier/wild west.

Yep. That is a good summation. However, the show is more about the historical railroad and the historical Hell On Wheels (the railroad worker "town" that followed along the tracks) in the beginning seasons. Lots of focus on racism just after the Civil War. Like I said, if you like Westerns and History, you will like Hell On Wheels.