Scrubs is on a different network now. Does anyone care? Does it matter at all? I just think it's interesting that the show was dumped and then picked up by an entirely different channel. "We'll take your failing show and make it the hit it deserves to be!" Sounds like a plot line from one of the episodes themselves.

All the power to them, it's a good show. Funny. It won me over last week, once and for all, where previously I was just a passing fan. Anyway, did you catch the one where they fired off the flare gun at the end? This goofball show found itself being funny, sweet, and slightly profound all at once -which is quite an accomplishment. I won't go into it. If you saw it, you know what I'm talking about.

Funny, sweet, and slightly profound -that holy triumvirate that is the inner workings of sentimentality- no content life can do without. In college, sentimentality was always referred to as "sickly", as in, "sickly sentimental". If it lacked "intellect" and didn't wander outside the bounds of "traditional mores", then it was considered undeveloped, unsophisticated, and nearly worthless. But people continue to watch Casablanca and It's A Wonderful Life, and college professors have a whole host of psych analogies to explain this. How about, they're just "funny, sweet, and slightly profound"? Like life on a good day?

Happened in my house last night. Seriously exhausted from work, it was all I had to get those damn dirty ape dishes clean after dinner. Mrs. Ditchman was upstairs bathing Little Ditchman, briskly managing the task with the two-month-old Little Digger in her arms. I had things on my mind: clean up the kitchen, take out the trash, set the coffee maker... dumb tasks. And then there was yelling from upstairs. "Hey! Come here! Hurry! Look at this!" directed at me. I didn't want to drag myself up all those stairs to see something. Too tired. I mean, come on. Did it anyway.

The bathtub was empty. The little two-year-old was standing there naked and dripping wet, doing a silly dance in the tub. Mommy was holding the baby, who was watching her intently. Mommy looked at me, smiling, and my first reaction was something selfish, like, you called me all the way up here for this? And then she said, "Look at him," referring to the baby. I still didn't get it. "No, watch this. Okay, do the dance!" and the Little Ditchman went for it, twitching, stomping, and giggling. It was silly. The Little Digger thought it was funny. He laughed. And that was just it: he laughed for the first time. A little yuk-yuk-chortle at his goofball sister prancing naked around the tub. My wife called me up to see it. We were all there, just laughing, and an otherwise humdrum day was immortalized on the spot.

Anyway, I hope he laughs like that the rest of his long, funny, sweet, and slightly profound life. I hope we all do. Given a choice over anything else, I'll take it. It's all any of us really want or ever need, and there's nothing sickly about it.


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