Palookaville

"The Contender" got me last night. There's just something so wholesome and rivetting and definitive in boxing without Don King.

The show is just as corny and over-produced as any Mark Burnett endeavor, but why not? It's a friggin' show about a sporting event which in real life is corny and over-produced and, on top of that, fixed like a castrated doberman. Here you get to know the fighters, and if last night's brilliantly fought five-rounder proves a harbinger, you might not even need a rooting interest between two decent and inspiring adversaries.

But fuck all that. This show got me the moment the camera flashed to the audience of the big fight. Jimmy Caan? Melanie Griffith? Chuck Norris? Chuck? Norris? Oh, Mark Burnett, you do know how to make me crack up.

And yet, there is nothing better on TV these days than HBO's "Deadwood." Just like "The Contender" is a boxing show for people who don't necessarily like boxing, "Deadwood" is a western for people who don't necessarily like westerns. "Deadwood" is like the anti-western. In this town, the whores are scabby, dirt is worn like a badge and badges are hardly worn. Cold stares can be even dirtier. The foul language flows like some frontier beat poetry. Menace growls and farts in the gut of each scene. And its funny as all hell.

Ian McShane plays the town's reigning bad influence with explitive-laden, whiskey-snorting, skull-bashing glory. With a heart of equal parts coal and mush and a mind for unexpected wit, he might be the most entertaining flesh-and-blood (exempting Homer) television character of all-time.