Over a Candle

* The eighth season of Scrubs is rocking.

* People who don’t know me who feel the need to slam my profession suck.

* I wonder what my cat is really thinking when we play fetch.

* If it takes me longer than a minute to start typing, is it really a “random” thought?

* I like winter, but even I wouldn’t mind getting about zero every now and then.

* A random thought list shouldn’t take over 24 hours to compose.

* The second half of the third season of Heroes is also off to a great start.

* Meetings that go past 9:00 pm have gone on way too long.

* I sometimes wish I could stay home and play fetch with my cat all day.

* I’m not sure how to justify buying a new laptop, but I still want one.

* Every time I watch News Radio, I’m saddened a little that Phil Hartman is dead.

* Why do my cats wait until I go to bed to start fighting?

* A random thought list of 38 items is beyond my capabilities at this point.

* Silence may be golden, but it’s also very loud.

* Being tired is actually not conducive to having random thoughts.

I like NBC’s Heroes.  This season already is off to a great start.  I think, given how slowly they like to move the plots forward (and that they don’t try to have self-contained stories in a single episode), it really helped that last week’s premier was essentially two episodes.  It got things moving.

The show is often disturbing and always engaging.  Sylar, for instance, may be the best television villain ever.  He’s twisted, scary, relentless, and powerful.  Part of me just wants him killed so he doesn’t torment anyone else.  But it’s good comic-book fare to keep the really bad villain going.

Still, there are a couple of things I’m struggling with this season, and last night it really started bothering me.  This show is rife with adoption stuff.  

The big “reveal” so far this season has been that Sylar was given up for adoption by Angela Petrelli.  We don’t have confirmation on that yet.  She may just be manipulating him with that story.  Either way, it’s a bit disturbing to see adoption used that way.

More upsetting, though, is Claire’s on-going drama.  Her father brought in her biological mother to “protect” Claire while he’s out hunting the bad guys.  So far, so good.  But last night, we saw a lot of animosity between Claire’s two mothers.  This may be realistic, I suppose.  But it strikes me as bad form for parents to put their children in the middle of their own insecurities.  It feels as though Claire’s adoptive mother, especially, was trying to force Claire to choose between her and her biological mother.  There was a lot sniping and petty bickering, I thought.  It seemed rather crass.  

Again, I don’t deny a certain amount of realism in all of this.  I know some parents can be like this.  But I guess I like my comic book television shows with a tad less soap-opera style drama.  

Maybe I’m hoping for too much.  At the very least, I don’t like seeing Claire put through that sort of turmoil by the people are that supposed to be the adults in the relationship.

So most of the really good television shows are off the air. TNT’s The Closer and USA’s The 4400 are on their nine month hiatus until next summer. (At least, I hope they’re both coming back.) USA’s Psych is off until January. And we’re still at least two months away until Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Galactica gives us even a glimmer of a taste of the last season. (They are putting out a brief mini-series of sorts set mostly between seasons two and three, apparently.)

I guess there’s nothing to do except to see what schlock the networks have decided to fling at us this fall.

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