Heather I love the way you made that column about Tim Gunn work.

You've hit it squarely on the head. This is a great, very odd show, but once you've watched a few consecutive episodes it takes on an otherwordly life of its own and by then you're hooked. Great rundown of a truly great, wonderfully strange, strangely believeable show.

Just thank you, that's all. Hope words gets around.

Face it, the Western is dead. There's been various attempts to pump adrenalin into the body, like Clint Eastwood's sado-masochistic exercises (his "Man With No Name" sagas, Pale Rider and Unforgiven, and TV shows like Kung Fu and Lonesome Dove. But the basic form was run to death in the 1960's by Bonanza.

There were 14 seasons of that show, which ran through every possible plot permutation and incident you could possibly put in the West. After that, there was nothing further to say about frontier life. When you get down to gay cowboys and cursing antihero bankers, you're down to scraping the last of the beans out of the pot. (The Love Boat ran through every romance-on-vacation plot, three of them per episode, and that genre is dead as well...but won't be mourned as much as the Western.)

On that basis, you'd think the cop drama was dead as well, with all the imitations of Joseph Wambaugh's "Blue Bludgeon" stories from the 1980's. But unlike the Western, that genre has been refreshed through many fallow periods. Its last real boom period ended with NYPD Blue, and there's only been dribbles like The Shield, only seen on Fox's red-haired-stepchild network FX.

So let Mr. Milch work his magic on another genre. That's how creators stay creative, taking on new challenges. Who knows? Maybe he might something worthwile for a change, without the need for cussing or nudity. And yes, I challenged myself by not complaining about the Cappucino Queen's writing this week. I succeeded.

I liked your columns in the past, but this one was on fire.

"Face it, the Western is dead."

Sure. All of those people who went to see '3:10 to Yuma' this week-end meant to see Rush Hour 3 instead.

Thanks for the Burn Notice love, Heather!

The Tim Gunn piece is fantastic. Many thanks for the insight, and the good laugh.

Heather Havrilesky, can you and I be friends? I never miss your column and I live in Russia! I've never even heard of any of these shows. Heather Forever!

I don't believe I've ever come across any witty smartass by the name of Heather before this moment, but I must say it's good to know there is at least one.....

It would be great if Deadwood came back, but I disagree that it was left without an ending. Watching that guy who used to be Major Dad get stabbed by a whore was all the ending I personally needed. Others, of course are free to disagree.

Just a warning. Don't start watching those made for basic cable shows. Inevitably you'll find yourself saying, at 3:05 PM some weekday afternoon, "Oh! Yess!! This i the one where Sam Waterston both explains the evils of the diamond trade to a jury AND shills for a budget stock trading company in those fine, much louder interludes in between!"

You can have yours - I want Apple Robinson's mommy.....

I can't help thinking that the death of Deadwood and JFC is intertwined with saving The Wire. Maybe they feel that one insanely good show that most people just don't get is all their schedule can hold. Or maybe they think they need a replacement for The Wire, which is going to be starting it's last season soon. The fact that the police procedural is in fact dead (there is just nowhere to go but down after Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue) and has been replaced by the anti-police procedural (The Shield, The Wire) has escaped them. Maybe it's just me, but I would be fine with 24 hours of quality original programming a week if it was up to the standards of Deadwood, The Sopranos, and The Wire, in place of 11 bad movies shown over and over. And over. We are witnessing the fall of an empire. HBO has gone from being my go to channel to just another mote of dust in the vast wasteland we call cable TV. Lets hope they turn this around soon.

It's obvious that the Neilsen system is broken. How many smart, entertaining shows have we seen cancelled in the last few years because "nobody is watching"? If this were really the case we would all have to wear galoshes whenever we left the house because of all the drool flooding our streets. I just can't believe that America is as stupid as network executives seem to think it is.

Thank God for Burn Notice. Hopefully this is a sign that USA has figured things out. While TNT is making shows the networks never would by strategically inserting the words asshole and shit into various places in the dialog, USA has made a show that is just too much damn fun for the networks. Donovan really is fantastic (just like they say in the promos). Bruce Campbell gets to be Bruce Campbell, which is never a bad thing. The premise and the dialog are entertaining and engaging. The problems he solves are a little contrived but they would be huge to the people involved, but now they have the power of people who topple governments and wage 100 year wars against superpowers on their side working for them and it turns out that all you need is a soldering iron, a cell phone, and a few things from Walgreens to make everything OK again. Kind of like if you had Emeril come over to take care of that big dinner you have to cook for your boss.

Haven't watched Tim Gunn, not going to, but I'm glad he's there for you :)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is the funniest fucking show on television.

Also, Mac is white-hot. Smoking. But that's got no bearing on my appreciation for the show. None at all.