I couldn't agree more. The Swede could easily have been just another over-the-top character, but there's a sincerity to Christopher Heyerdahl's performances that manage to make him deliberate and anti-social without being a parody. Despite his "evil" actions he's really a tragic character, and one of the most interesting ever created for television.
You have to remember part of The Swede's backstory is that he was imprisoned in Andersonville during the war, which was one of the most horrific prisoner-of-war camps to ever exist. Nearly 13,000 men died there, mostly from scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery; not exactly the garden spot of Georgia in 1864-65. If I remember correctly, in an earlier episode it was implied that his experiences there changed him, and clearly not for the better.
And that's what makes him so interesting. It would have been easy for the writers to have created a character that was just evil, but every once in a while The Swede reveals (albeit briefly) a little of the humanity that still exists within him. He's clearly self-serving, but he believes whatever he's doing is the right thing to do under the circumstances to gain a better position in life for himself, regardless of how obviously wrong it is to everyone else.
I can't disagree, but I think we're coming to the same conclusion from different angles. With regards to the Swede, in my opinion the writers and/or producers haven't adequately shown how damaged he truly is, both physically and psychologically. For example, AMC's website states, "After barely surviving a fall from a bridge and being nursed back to health by a family of Mormons...", but there wasn't much more than a hint of that from watching the episodes; the Swede was simply traveling with them telling tall tales of the family he lost. And taking his current position as Bishop Dutson at the Mormon fort into consideration and the way he refers to Thor Gundersen in the third person, I think they were attempting to imply he was suffering from some form of multiple personality disorder (to a degree) and that at times he actually believed he was Bishop Dutson--perhaps as a way of protecting himself mentally and psychologically from the horrors Thor Gundersen had experienced in his life--but, again, they didn't quite manage to do so convincingly. Then again, Hell on Wheels isn't the "Cullen Bohannon and The Swede" show, and they have a lot of characters and story lines to deal with in a short amount of time, so realistically they can only do so much.
I concur. I've seen this happen too many times, and all I can think is, "If it was that important it should have been in the movie/episode." And, as far as I'm concerned, if it wasn't in the movie/episode, it didn't happen. In the case of AMC's statement regarding the Swede that we discussed above, I have to wonder if the producers mistakenly think it was apparent in those episodes.
Yeah I have the same problem with Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch. Both shows are essentially the same thing episode after episode. "I'm driving onto the frozen lake now, I hope I don't fall through." "I sure hope we catch enough crab to meet our quota on this trip." But I still watch them. [huh]
