... Interesting and eerie.

I find it slightly odd that, not only were Simon Oakland and William Talman born the same year (1915), they died around the exact same time (just fifteen years apart). Simon died on August 29th, 1983. William died on August 30th, 1968. They also both died of cancer, although I don't know if it was same kind for both.

(On a side note, I find it awesome that William Talman was the first celebrity to speak out against smoking. When he knew he was dying of lung cancer, he made a public service announcement against it. A lot of celebrities of the day didn't want to do that sort of thing because they didn't want to lose the money they'd make on cigarette ads. William Talman was disgusted by that.)

And I find it rather silly that in the morning, before it was light, I sat in my darkened room and cried for two people we lost far too soon. I only find it silly since it happened so long ago (43 years and 28 years). After all that time, I'm sure they're happy where they are. Yet I am still mourning our losses.

My emotions are slightly off-balance right now anyway. And last night I was upset because the local PBS station is going to show some of the episodes from the time that William Talman was temporarily fired. I thought they were skipping over those on this rotation. I was surprised by the first of those popping up when I hadn't expected it at all, and it was not a happy surprise. Luckily, it doesn't look like they'll air too many of those. Mostly they'll air the leftover episodes he was in that were filmed before he was fired (I assume) and some from when he started being allowed to make occasional appearances again. Then, at the beginning of September, we switch to season 5, where things were back to normal at last and he regained his status as a regular.

I watched two season 2 episodes this morning courtesy of Bing Videos. I prefer watching them on Bing to CBS or IMDB; they have three screen size options and they seem to play more smoothly. But I am getting so sick of seeing that stupid Swiffer ad with Dirt and Mud personified. I hate how Dirt just up and leaves Mud as soon as she sees Swiffer and is attracted to it.

I love season 2. Season 1 seemed to more closely follow the books; Perry did borderline illegal things sometimes and Burger was more cold and antagonistic (though, really, I couldn't blame him for being upset about some things). Season 2 is, I think, where the fascinating scenes I love began to appear. Perry also toned down his eyebrow-raising antics and Burger softened. That isn't to say they weren't still professional rivals or that Burger didn't still get mad; both are true. But they also started displaying this other element. You could tell they were on friendlier terms by then. It's just so obvious when you compare scenes in, say, The Runaway Corpse with scenes in The Fraudulent Foto [sic]. I don't think the people in the Yahoo Group quite understood what I was saying when I asked about season 1's differences, so that gives me more motivation to write an essay thing on Mr. Burger and his interaction with Perry. But seriously, it's because the friendlier elements were added while Burger still had moments of frustration that fascinated me to begin with. I kind of think the Yahoo Group people thought I thought that Burger getting mad disappeared later. But it didn't and I'm very aware of it.