The face is the biggest shock
after the name—
your name, almost.

The face you knew from childhood,
mischievous, wry, handsome,
now stony as battered granite,
the young features punched up
and pounded like wet clay
then fired hard in a thousand-degree kiln.

The face discovered with "burglary tools,
methamphetamine and more than 100 stolen items
belonging to more than 30 people."

The face leaps out from the article
from fifteen hundred miles away,
like a fugitive in a game of
hide-and-go-seek, flushed out
from the shadows of the chicken coop
when you'd forgotten you were even playing,
racing to make it home free.

What could you have done?
Returned more of his phone calls?
At some point you knew, somewhere
in those twenty years of rob arrest repeat,
you had to keep your distance.
He was your cousin. It wasn't like
he was your brother.

But you weren't there yet
at that first apartment
where you lived on your own,
when you locked your keys inside,
when that confident, capable face
you'd known from infancy said,
"I'll get in." And did.

And you thought that was so cool.

Dear FX Networks:

I've never before been moved to write a television network to express my love for a program that has struggled in its ratings, but that's exactly what I'm doing now. There are few shows I've ever come to love so quickly and fiercely as I love Terriers. I hope you'll renew it and give this compelling, idiosyncratic show a chance to find a wider audience.

You know, of course, that the writing and directing on Terriers is top-notch. The show is brisk and involving, witty and suspenseful. (In what was probably my favorite single episode, "Agua Caliente," the suspense was excruciating.) At the outset of the series, I assumed I was watching nothing more than an unusually good PI drama with snappy dialogue. It wasn't long, though, before I realized how attached I had become to the characters, and what an emotional stake I had in their problems, both personal and professional.

This points out that no matter how good the talent behind the cameras, the show would be nothing without great acting, which is exactly what Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James deliver in every episode. They're tough when they have to be, they desperately try to be as smart as they need to be, but they never fail to exude warmth and charm and vulnerability. Their friendship is one of the most natural-seeming I've seen on television, which only makes the ordeals they endure all the more devastating. Donal Logue, in particular, has never been better.

Maybe the reason I and many other passionate viewers love Hank and Britt so much is because we, like them, are not as smart or tough as we'd like to be, but, like them, we have to muddle through somehow. Whatever the reason, you have a show on your hands that, despite superficial similarities to other drama series, is unlike anything else on television right now.

I'm sad now that I don't have a new episode of Terriers to look forward to next week. If you renew it—and I implore you to—I will keep watching faithfully, and I will keep telling all my friends to watch.

Sincerely,
William Shunn

In fact, it's a great place to start, chock-full of everything that makes Terriers great, and just to get you started, I'm going to embed it for you here:

But don't just take my word for it. Here are a couple of other defenses of Terriers that you should read:

albionidaho reports laptops and other items stolen yesterday from students in one of the Clarion West houses. Not a happy Fourth for them. I can only imagine how that would affect the Clarion experience for the theft victims, especially if there was work-in-progress on the machines. What can you do to help? See her post for more info.

Presented without comment, except to say that it takes a long time to load, here is the New York Times' interactive New York City homicide map, mashed up using Ajax apparently.