Required viewing: Deadwood's David Milch talks with a "Religion, Media and Hollywood" class at USC.

In teasing the season of Deadwood that never was, David Milch comes out against endings.

For himself he says, "every episode is an ending of sorts" and imports meaning into one of the final murders by Swearengen, in which he cleans up the blood after.

Still, he rails against "the idea of an end of a thing as inscribing the final meaning."

Endings that supposedly "fixes the mark and meaning of any experience is one of the lies agreed upon that we use to organize our lives," he says. A bigger lie, he says, is that "we were entitled to a meaningful and coherent summarizing of something which never concludes."

Milch says he hopes viewers enjoyed the series keeping in mind its meant to "import no truth beyond itself."

Naturally, I almost completely disagree. In literature and in life, lies or not, there are few things more important than endings, precisely because endings are never final.

Bookmark this for later: WGA Theater presents a few hours of Deadwood creator David Milch lecturing on the idea of the writer.

* Advice for academic job talks. Not that there are any jobs out there anyway... Via MeFi.

* At Atheist Media Blog, the scabtastic* Colbert Report mocks Will Smith for joining the Church of Scientology. My vague, never-really-voiced intention not to watch The Daily Show or Colbert in solidarity with the writers' strike never really panned out, by the way—I cracked pretty much on the first day. But I do watch with scorn now. Scorn.

Here's Salon on the state of these now-writerless shows. I agree that the magic is missing somewhat, especially with regard to Stewart, but I'm also amazed by how well they've both been able to fake it thus far.

* My understanding is that Colbert and Stewart came back because Viacom threatened to fire everyone, writers and crew included, if they didn't. I cling to this justification, true or not, for dear life.

* Frank Pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything; it's a little something I call Mr. Fusion. Via MeFi. We're saved!

Fresh from the critical and commercial disaster that was John from Cincinnati, David Milch and HBO are looking to try again with a series set during the 1970s Knapp investigations, which gave rise to the story of Serpico (immortalized by Max Fischer during Rushmore). The article also sadly tosses a little more dirt on Deadwood's grave.

Via AICN, which also links to the promo for the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica. The third season was very much not what I wanted, but I have to stick around to see how it ends.