A lot of us Deadwood fans — ...

Question: A lot of us Deadwood fans — make that all of them — were shocked to read that HBO had released the actors, portending doom for the show after just three seasons. What is going on? A few months ago, the talk was that they were ready to greenlight a fourth season before the third even aired, and just a couple of weeks ago David Milch was at MIT discussing how he planned a four-season arc for the show and how the third season's plot developments were taking longer than expected. Losing The Sopranos next spring is hard enough. Losing Deadwood so abruptly after this summer will hurt much worse.
Answer: In a busy week full of season/series finales and upfront presentations, the last thing any of us needed was this unhappy distraction. I'm so irked that we can't just enjoy the third season of Deadwood when it premieres June 11 without fretting that there almost certainly won't be more of the story to follow. I got lots of angry mail on this (with most of the Swearengen-style profanity bleeped, thankfully), which made me wish I could stay ignorant about this. While there are lots of conflicting theories and opinions about what's up here, the bottom line appears to be that with David Milch developing several new projects for HBO, the network (weighing the allotment of its budgetary resources, or some such) gave Milch the option of going forward with his new business while doing a shortened six-episode fourth season of Deadwood, which Milch appears to have declined to do. (The real issue is why HBO wouldn't commit full resources to a full fourth season of Deadwood while going forward with new seasons of more uneven shows like Big Love and Rome, the latter a personal fave of mine.) I am also mystified about why all of this had to happen before the fourth (and presumably final) season of Deadwood was put into play, but I suppose that's the way it is. I've been told that there may well be a "punctuation mark" at the end of this upcoming season, so we won't be left hanging as in a regular series. But I won't truly believe that there won't be any more Deadwood until I hear they've torn down the remarkable sets (which I visited last summer). Realistically, though, my advice is to enjoy these next 12 hours and just be glad we got this many. (I just got the first five hours of the new season for review, and I can't wait for the network season to end so I have time to watch.)