Hey, Erika, Matt Zoller Seitz linked to your Hill Street Blues article in the High Hat yesterday (scroll to #5).

wow...I knew I had it going on when I wrote that. This is probably the first time ever that I said this straight, but seriously, thanks for sharing. You Austin cocksucker.

Got a question, folks. Can we talk about The Riches in here? I know it's not on Showtime or HBO, but it's the kind of programming that seems to fit with the other shows we *do* talk about in here.

I would do it...it's Hamsterdam. We can do what we want. But the chair didn't recognize my ass so I'll leave it to the fucking majority...you feel me?

Respect.

Thanks, dawg. Yeah, I see why SA would say that "The Riches" feels like an HBO show, what with its morally ambiguous, literal "born-criminal" leads and, I know I say this about shit all the time, but there are echoes of "The Wire's" "I got the gun. You got the briefcase," in their finding that Lawyer and Lawyer's Wife might be the biggest racket of them all. Thoughts?

Honey-nut cheerios: Someday, I *may* get over mixing words like "dawg" with words like "morally ambiguous", but I doubt it. Might always make me giggle. Like the word "intimacy" now does.

Fuckin' keeps me out of both grad school AND Dr. Phil. I'm sure you can imagine how my heart bleeds about that, in both instances.(McNutty eyebrow face)

Well, I'm kind of inclined to bring the whole panoply of FX shows in here, because Nip/Tuck, The Riches, Dirt and Rescue Me are far more similar in tone and subject matter to Rome, Dexter, Entourage, The Tudors, and The Wire than they are anything on network television. I mean, I don't want to make this a general tv thread, because I know as a community we've decided not to do that. But these are shows that are of a particular genre of its own, in a way. The more bad-ass, no-holds-barred, expletive-shouting, explicitly-fucking, pushing-the-envelope kind of programming. In other words, awesome.

I'm good with that as long as it includes The Shield, which I've never watched but been told by multiple people that I would love.

Yes, that too. I never watched it, as it didn't quite seem my taste. but it's another one of those that fits well into the scheme.