So of course I was there in front of the tube last night for the new Sci Fi Sunday. Who wouldn't want to face the coming week already pre-depressed and miserable?

C'mon, you knew that The Dresdren Files wasn't gonna be all magical pixies and pretty rainbows and prancing unicorns, right? I'm not saying that I'm not already in love with Harry Dresden, wizard private eye, but I'm in love with him because he's dark and brooding and rumpled and heartbroken, and that's on his good days, it seems. Oh, sure, there was a cute girl in his bed as the episode opened, and he was perfectly happy about that, but almost instantly we jump into the angst-ridden discussion with his ghostly Dr. Watson -- a sort of undead wizard scholar named, of all things, Bob -- about how Harry, apparently, killed his uncle, magicked him to death or something. Talk about giving a neo-noir detective hero cause for angst!

I love the just-this-side-of-reality vibe to The Dresden Files, like there's a whole secret society of magic-makers and evil monsters that exists alongside the mundane world, if only you know where to look for it. Harry advertises his services in the newspaper, it seems -- but maybe you've already got to have a bit of magic in you to see that ad? Otherwise he'd be inundated by Muggles wanting love potions and stuff, wouldn't he?

Oh yeah, Harry Dresden feels a lot like Harry Potter all grown up and gone just a bit to seed -- it's impossible to imagine that author Jim Butcher, who wrote the series of novels upon which the show is based, wasn't riffing on Rowling when he created Dresden. It's easy to see how Dresden could be Potter as an adult, actually. Both guys suffer from that horrible affliction: wanting to save the world, and having the ability to maybe do it, if only one person at a time. Guilt, anxiety, stress, and people being skinned alive all around him. What's not to love?

And then came BSG ....

Am I the only one just a tad confused by Sunday night's Battlestar Galactica? Did pretty much nothing happen except for Apollo's wife getting the chance to smack Starbuck, and Helo shooting not-Sharon, and Xena getting shoved into deep freeze? Okay, I guess that's a lot, but I was really expecting, what with all the teasing about the temple pointing the way to Earth and all, that we were actually gonna see the discovery of a big map with a you-are-here arrow and a pointer to Earth. Instead, the sun goes nova and fries everything to a crisp? I mean, sure, cute Ceylon baby and all, but enough with the chitchat about Eyes of Jupiter and such. Hot Apollo-on-Starbuck action is cool -- now I want some hot Earth-finding action. I'm dying to find out what's gonna happen when the fleet finds Earth. Are they gonna meet us here today? Will they arrive thousands of years ago in our past and become our ancestors? Will they arrive in our future? What the hell? I can't stand the suspense.

I come to BSG for the political agita, the moral conundrums, the sociophilosophic handwringing. But I stay because they keep dangling Earth in front of us. Damn them, anyway.

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