The Wire, too. But maybe that's cause I'm a fiend. Maybe that won't help if "you're so green you ain't even brown." But some things it helps to watch as parts of a whole...I enjoyed FF much more in bigger doses, too.

I've never tried to watch The Wire or Deadwood in real time; we cancelled HBO right when Deadwood was starting, and I didn't discover The Wire until the first season DVDs came out.

A lot of westerns are almost allegories.

I might just agree with you there. (Note the first line. Also, I may have pointed this out before, but the scene in The Wire where Bunk and Omar sit on a bench and talk is almost definitely an homage to the scene in Junior Bonner where Junior and his dad finally tell each other a few unpleasant truths.)

I have no dog in the hunt where the accuracy of Deadwood's language is concerned because I agree that the poetry is more important than the accuracy. My boss, who was born and raised in Deadwood, SD, can't hear the poetry for the profanity, either, though, and just rolls her eyes when I say that it's one of the two best shows on tv. She's nuts for The Sopranos, though, so what are you gonna do?

I've seen blooper reels for Warner Brothers movies from the 30s and 40s. People didn't say "Fuck."

When Bing Crosby would screw up a take while recording a song, he would habitually use blue language, including "fuck," not just in reaction to the mess-up but also by continuing singing with the words laced into the lyrics, so that the recording guys would destroy that take instead of keeping it and making bootleg copies of the botched version.

I have no dog in the hunt where the accuracy of Deadwood's language is concerned because I agree that the poetry is more important than the accuracy.

It took me an episode or two to adjust -- during the first episode, I just sat and blinked (and I swear like a longshoreman when the kids aren't around). Now, it's such a part of the show's lexicon, I can't imagine the dialogue without it. No idea what the accuracy is, but also don't really care.

When Bing Crosby would screw up a take while recording a song, he would habitually use blue language, including "fuck," not just in reaction to the mess-up but also by continuing singing with the words laced into the lyrics, so that the recording guys would destroy that take instead of keeping it and making bootleg copies of the botched version.

Oh man, somebody should have bootlegged them anyway. That would be hysterical to hear now.

Well, I'm sure, whether they said "cocksucker" or not in mining camps, it still wouldn't sound like "Deadwood" "Puerile" and 'cocksucker" together is something a writer would think up. In a good way.

All this "cocksucker" talk brings to mind another great use of the word in a movie: "Crash must have called him a cocksucker."

(waits for Bull Durham quotefest.) That should *so* be on the list with...cilantro and forks, and the other shit we always talk about. Not that I'm sorry...I love that movie. IJS.

Women, they do get wooly.

Don't make me get nostalgic for Bull Durham! Respect for Kevin Costner belongs to another period in my psychological development, like the belief that pulling the covers up past my eyes would keep me safe from monsters under the bed.