Worst Series Ever Made on HBO. How did you numb the pain after watching

This is directly quoted from David Milch himself regarding this show.


"Baboons cannot organize in groups larger than forty-four, because they have to see their leader. If they can't see their leader, it's like someone yanked the plug out of the socket, they just stop functioning, they don't know what to do. That means that...they can't move around so much. They are limited by the physical mobility of their leader.
Humans are like that, to some extent...But what happens in human society is the spirit of the Alpha Male can be symbolized. Let's say, the crown of the king. Let's say, the cross, the symbol of Christ...Humans find that they can organize themselves around the symbol."



(When he was told by the new executives at HBO that there was no more for Deadwood, and in the same breath asked to do a new show about surfing)

"Listen, I love that surfing idea...I just want to fool with it a little bit...What if this was about, in the aftermath of 9/11...whatever God is, becomes aware that we have become so infantilized--we have become such children-- by our addiction to media, which doesn't sink its roots deep, that we have become capable of a genocide."

Now they sleep through this 5hit any way, the bosses. They say, "That's great! That's great! (then they turn to each other and say) What the F did he just say???"

And they say, "But you'll have the surfing, right?"

"Oh, the surfing is of the essence!"(, he assures them.)



And then he goes on to explain the show further:



'9/11 was terrible, we can all agree...I'm watching the planes go into the building over, and over, and over, and over, and over again...and I'm thinking, "It's enough! It's enough with the planes going into the building. I want my old programs back!"

So my President is talking to his programmers, and what the President says is, "Let's give 'em a 12-episode miniseries. We'll come up with the villains. We're gonna go in; at the end, we'll pull down the statue! We'll give 'em a whole different program, and it'll be fine. And they're so sick of that entertainment, where the planes go into the buildings, that they'll love it!"

So we staged the invasion of Iraq, really as a change in programming for an audience so narcotized by their addiction to television, that all of their frustrated patriotism is, "You know, that's right! That is right!"

Now, 3100 people, it's a terrible, terrible thing. But let's say that 20 million Tutsi and Hutu have murdered each other...since 9/11. "Well none of that was on my television! (shrugs) God bless 'em. They're black people, any way. They're savages. Whatever happened, happened, it's not my problem."

(That's) the way the programmers want us to think. But the planes going into the buildings, that *beep* up our TV schedule! So here we go, we go into Iraq. We stage our 12 day miniseries. We pull down the thing...

Now people start to get sick (of that). "Now what are you telling me? People are still over there getting killed? I'm done with that! I'm sick of THAT show!"

Now the problem becomes, since the message has been given to us, "We can solve your problems with better programs," What's gonna happen the next time--and there's gonna be a next time--that there's a terrorist attack?

And the next time, what's gonna happen is, there will be a charlatan, who will make this clown (George W Bush) look like Mother Theresa, who's gonna say, "Do we want to kill every Muslim in the world? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But by the same token, they are *beep* up our programming! And if what is required is some innocents die, so that we can get American Idol back on the air...with the best will in the world, and with enormous regret, let's find the people who bombed the civilians in Nagasaki, and let's get busy!"

So let's go back now to the idea that whatever The Spirit of The Universe is, feels that this civilization is tending toward a genocide. And dispatches its representative to try to change the American psyche. And the only way The Spirit of the Universe feels the American psyche can be changed is if the Spirit manifests itself as a child with enormous powers.

And if this Spirit begins by addressing the absolutely *beep* stupidest people in America, which are the surfers!

And that was John from Cincinnati.

And again, what I was trying to get the show shaped up to do was...he, he, so he gets these surf...now, how are you gonna get--

And you can imagine with what *wild* enthusiasm the network responded as they began to see the show go like this (uses his hand to demonstrated something veering WAY off track). "We love you, Dave, but we don't understand what the hell is going on."

So this is an elaborate preparation for, uh, this idiot--John--who is perceived as one of the stupid surfers, by the other surfers. And who has mysteriously appeared. Renders them unconscious for the first time, and begins to deliver subliminally a sermon to them on how the capacity to symbolize, to agree upon the meaning of certain symbols, has allowed us to organize in groups larger than forty-four.'