From the outset, “Deadwood” fans have always been the most inventive in their arguments as to why the show should be renewed. Hardly the most successful, obviously, but clever nonetheless.

We’ve been discussing fan attempts to resurrect cancelled shows of late, and for every failure – “Gilmore Girls” (the stars couldn’t be bothered to take The CW’s money no matter how much their fans were addicted to the show), “Everwood” (sure, some fans rented an amusement-park ride to parade before executives’ offices, but then they forgot to show up themselves) and “Veronica Mars” (no matter how rabid your fans may be, if there are less than two million of them, you don’t belong on broadcast-network TV) – there’s the shockingly surprising success of a “Jericho,” which a lot of people (myself included) wrote off when it returned from its midseason hiatus to a sizable drop in viewership.

Nonetheless, thanks to a quirky style of postal terrorism (40,000 pounds of peanuts poured into the CBS offices) and – perhaps even more importantly – Nina Tassler’s discovery of obsessive fan message boards revealing a depth of dedication to the show that she, frankly, didn’t envision (and probably unnerved her just a little), “Jericho” emerged from the ashes of TV’s landscape of nuked shows.

So, back to “Deadwood.” Since the series was on HBO, fans could play a card never before laid on the table: Bring back this show or I’ll cancel my HBO subscription. Didn’t work so well at the time, because, after all, they still had the “Sopranos” finale, and then David Milch’s new show, “John From Cincinnati,” which was desultorily cancelled after but 10 episodes. So this might actually work now, but wait! – “Flight of the Conchords” is so friggin’ brilliant. Damn you, HBO, for reducing the quality gusher to a trickle, albeit a trickle we can’t quit!

The second tactic: After HBO executive Chris Albrecht got into that nastiness in Vegas and re-entered rehab, I got a few Emails from fans vociferously arguing that Albrecht’s alcohol issues proved that he was guilty of some sort of TV-executive malpractice, that his thinking was too fuzzy and blitzed to make sound programming decisions; hence, his decision to cancel “Deadwood.” Again: Not remotely successful, not remotely actionable and probably a little dubious logically (Albrecht certainly managed to keep HBO financially profitable even given his problems), but, yes, brilliantly imaginative.

Fans emerged from the Deadwoodpile to urge critics to press the new HBO executives during TV Press Tour to commit to those two “Deadwood” movies we were promised when Albrecht cancelled the show. We tried, but they proved resistant, not to mention a little obfuscating – they had to have known they would be canceling “John From Cincinnati” in but a few short weeks but couldn’t say so, because they didn’t want to hack off Milch, because he wouldn’t give them those “Deadwood” movies, which they didn’t seem too keen on in the first place, since they kept saying the cast had all moved on.

And now, a “Deadwood” fan sent me a letter she had sent David Milch, which read in part (she granted me permission to reprint it here):

“In your most recent efforts – Deadwood and John from Cincinnati – you channeled an overriding vision of the collective in which each character came to act and sometimes even understand their part in a larger organism. It was a holistic view of the world that enthralled and touched me beyond measure and one that I [foolishly] began to think of as your own perception of it. Imagine my disappointment to find out otherwise…! In reality, sir, you seem to adopt an approach that is far from the Kumbaya vision of ‘we are one’ that you parlay so effectively on television.

“Contrary to what you may believe, Deadwood is not yours to do what you want with. When you put it into the world in 2004, it assumed a life of its own and touched millions of people in myriad ways that you [and no one else] can begin to fathom. While you may not consider yourself under obligation to these nameless and faceless people, your pseudo-philosophy on life would dictate otherwise (...)

“You have waxed lyrical on many an occasion of your interpretation of the artist as an emissary of god; if that is the case, sir, let me ask you think what happens when god's messenger decides to shut up? You seem to have been so blindsided by your ego that you – to use your own lingo –have lost sight of god, and by extension, his people.”

From there, of course, this fan confronted Milch with a put-up-or-shut-up proposition: If you actually buy these mystical horseapples you’re serving up in your series, then you ipso facto owe fans those movies; if not, you’re just another hypocritical hack to which none of your fans own any future allegiance. Brilliant! Well-played!

But there’s one last step to pressure those “Deadwood” reunion films, and here’s my challenge to a “Deadwood” fanatic: Go to imdb.com’s “Deadwood” entry,” click on each cast member and see just how busy they are. Not now, because there’s no script ready, but in a few months, when there very well could be. Based on some of the stuff these people have done, I’m guessing Timothy Olyphant (currently free, per imdb), Ian McShane (all projects in post-production; hence, currently free), Molly Parker (currently working on CBS’s “Swingtown”), Brad Dourif (hell, yeah, he’s available), Robin Weigert (safe to assume she’s currently busy, given an indie film project and a possible return to “Lost”), John Hawkes (shooting some indie, but then, he’s always shooting some indie – anyway, you get the idea; it wouldn’t be as hard to round them up as HBO suggests.