Heather,

It sounds like you're totally swamped. And that's sad. Everyone needs time to breathe, enjoy life, maybe step outdoors and watch little kids splash around in fountains, even time to ponder the big mysteries of life, mysteries like why anyone would go to a Tibetan restaurant expecting spicy food, or why anyone on YouTube would watch a Brookers video twice. Even TV critics need breaks like this. Especially TV critics.

So if you need someone to shoulder part of your load, like, oh, that Wire Season 4 collection, I want you to know I'm here for you.

And I'm prepared to beg.

Like a dog.

I thought HBO had purchased two 4 hour movies (or is it two two hour). To be shown some time in the future. Do you know something I don't?

She needs a TIVO that takes the word "fuck" out of "Deadwood." The show would then only be four and a half minutes long per episode and she could spend the time gained windsurfing or writing haikus.

My grandpappy was an ol' cowpoke and would have been embarrassed to use that word and its many derivatives even if he was off by himself where no one could hear him.

Deadwood is a total crock.

I can have absolutely no interest in the shows Heather reviews but love reading what she wrote anyways.

"Sleeper Cell" on Showtime was a great show with a really good first season and story arc. The main character is a FBI agent who has infiltrated a US terror cell. It's a clever premise and the writers really followed through.

Yeah, Deadwood uses a lot of fucking profanity. It's artistic license. The producers acknowledge that it's not realistic speech for the era, but the appropriate colloquialisms from the 19th century would make most characters sound like Yosemite Sam.

Not cool.

As for BSG, the middle shows drag. Skip through 'em and watch the engaging parts and pay attention to the late season episodes. I bought the whole thing from Mini-Series to the end of season two and burned way too many consecutive hours watching the program. It gets terribly repetitive, which is a shame because it's quite good otherwise.

Those cocksuckers get us all interested in a show and like then they cancel it. First they axed "Dead Like ME" and now they've cancelled "Huff". How could they do that. Russell just had a hooker OD on him! How can they just leave it all hanging. "Weeds" is probably next on the block. Stupid assholes.

I'm all for artistic license, but license to what? Be a broken fucking record? It really isn't the profanity that fucking bothers me. It's the fucking repetition. If they were fucking saying "persimmon tree" or "Q-tip" as often as they fucking use the "f" word, it would be every fucking bit as tedious.

And where do you draw the line on the artistic license? Christmas Fucking Carol? King Fucking Arthur? The Passion of Jesus H. Fucking Christ?

Fuzz, I'm not taking you to task, you weren't particularly defending anyone (except your slam on Yosemite Sam did kinda fucking bother me). But ever since the Sopranos...I don't know, it's just another nail in the coffin of literature, of people taking the time and making the effort to create forceful dialogue without all the obvious shortcuts.

Sigh...

I'm sure you think it's cute to whine about how hard your job is. Well, I can assure you, you'll find less angst as a Wal-Mart stocker. None of that agonized thought, the use of mental processes that seems to trouble you so much. Your schedule and work is set by your bosses (there'll be a lot of it). You can daydream about the luxurious life of sipping double latte's in open-air cafe's as you heft another load of deep fryers to the upper shelf. And you can mutter invectives (under your breath, for political correctness's sake) about the welfare recipients who come into the store twice a month to blow their government checks and do their Christmas lifting early. That should satisfy your inner Mel Gibson.

But let me compliment you. Yes, you did something right. After your supposedly pithy introduction, you actually settled down and did your job - talking about these television shows and showing that you actually watched them and thought about how the shows were progressing. And without interjecting yourself and your very hefty personal needs into the discussion of the shows, a flaw from which you have slowly weaned yourself.

God help me, you even noted that people would rather watch the shows on DVD than on broadcast or cable. Which could have led to questioning why this was, why people are skipping the process of watching a drama evolve and just skipping to the end to find who lives and who dies. Could people be sick of the soap opera manipulation and the predictable crises of these series? Do people snap up DVD collections of old TV shows, not out of nostalgia or recapturing of their lost youth, but because shows were better written, performed and made back then? You didn't go that far, but you took the first step, actually noticing the phenomena, and that's marvelous.

Still, I sense that your heart isn't in this business, that you would rather hang with the famous and find the perfect bon mots with which to diss them. I think you want to become the female Tom Wolfe (although that is kind of redundant). Nothing's stopping you from getting out those resumes and sample articles to other venues. Go for it, girl. Someone else will be glad to work at Salon.