Selective product availability at Wal-Mart

Yesterday, while still in the bucolic confines of Smalltown, I was compelled to go to Wal-Mart to buy cat food. And a flea collar. And some guppies. (Why guppies? What injured person rises from their bed and says, "Some fish, that's what we need!"? My mother, that's who. She rocks.) I asked around about the Smalltown pet store, and there was none. I could have gone to a real pet store in the bizarre suburbs of Columbus, which was only fifteen or so miles down the road. Or I could go to Wally World, which was only two miles away. I'm weak, I admit it.

But there was an up side; Battlestar Galactica 2.5 was released yesterday, and while I was ambivalent about giving more money to Wal-Mart, I figured I could at least go over to the media section and look at the pretty cover. Except that Wal-Mart wasn't stocking it, on the day of its release. (They carry a big poster with the dates that different titles drop, the better for their flock to plan their consumerist impulses. I'm not mocking; I was all about the consumerist impulse yesterday.)

I even asked, and the "associates" looked a little confused and said, "Battlestar what? You mean that old series from the seventies?" One worker had heard there was a new series, but he didn't know that there were new DVDs coming out. I looked around and found season 2 of Desperate Housewives. I found a random set of Charmed discs. (Damn you, Charmed, for living on after Angel got cancelled!) I found Saw II. So why weren't they carrying BSG? From their selection, it looks like it's not the sex, not the violence, not the polytheistic/pagan overtones that Wal-Mart objects to.

Is it, perhaps, the political commentary? The fact that in BSG, the side that talks about "God" also engages in suicide bombings and sneak attacks?

Or perhaps I'm just a niche market, and BSG can't command the wide audience that Saw II does. That network presentation of "The Story So Far" must have been some kind of fluke.