Back when I was a kid (no, dinosaurs were not around then) Sunday even was reserved for Lassie, the wonder dog that did everything but take dictation. I was a city kid and while people had dogs in my neighborhood, none roamed as free as Lassie, except for Caesar, the ravenous killer canine and escape artist that held our neighborhood in a grip of terror for many years.

Caesar was a mutt, but whereas most mutts exhibit qualities that make them lovable, Caesar qualities might best be attributed to rottweilers, wolves and rabid squirrels. Unlike Lassie, who likely had a hand (paw?) in the writing of the Bill of Rights, Caesar had only two things on his wee canine mind: escape for his small backyard prison, and eat children. While Caesar excelled at escaping. he seldom caught kids. Whenever a flash of brown and white fur was seen the alarm could be heard for blocks, "CAESAR’S OUT!!!"

Mothers grabbed babies and ran home, men grabbed bats and pitchforks, kids climbed anything that would get them out of jaws reach.

During those times, as I stood on top a neighbor’s car and waiting for Caesar’s capture, I often wondered what was really on Caesar’s mind. What if Caesar could talk, not like Lassie, who could only bark out his (at times she was a he) answers to probing questions, but real speech.

I imagined Caesar talking like Woody Allen, a misunderstood pooch who was only happy to be free of his confinement, and who may have harbored a notion of revenge against those who teased him from beyond his fence. He’d say something like, "Oh, this is interesting? I’m free, but there’s no one to bite. This is hardly worth the effort. At least there are some good smells ..."

Anyway, talking dogs, either real or imagined, are cool. They are doubly cool if they are animated and hang out with gray haired professors. Well, cool for kids at least.

This week, PBS Kids is offering a free download of the first episode of Martha Speaks, a new kid’s show featuring a talking dog.

Martha, the talking dog, learns to speak by eating alphabet soup. An interesting concept that I wish were true, then Lassie could have been far more helpful and we might have understood why Caesar felt it necessary to chase moving cars (which is how he met his end, sadly enough).

Anyway, if you’ve got wee ones running around you might want to hook them up with Martha Speaks.

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Talking dogs are not, for the most part, real. Neither are super-human clone/android SIMs, but watching Rosario Dawson hunt them down may be fun and an ideal way to plug Microsoft and Cisco powered devices.

If that sounds like a good time to you then grab the first four episodes of Gemini Division, a new NBC show that is strange in its own right.

First on the Weird-o-meter is that the episodes are only about eight minutes long. They are Webisodes actually, designed exclusivly for showing on the Internet, so big hairy shows are likely not what people want, or not what the NBC execs want.

The second thing is that there are only a handful of people that actually appear in the show. Ana (Rosario Dawson), Nick (her boyfriend), and some mystery man. I suppose this makes sense since budgets for shows like this must be constrained, even with gratuitus product profiling throughout the show. Notice the iPhone-like device Ana records her video memos on?

The third oddity is that the whole show is told through video messages Ana sends to her friend. Again, low budget means no shooting on location, any location.

While each of these weirdnesses are, well, weird, but taken as a whole they work because Ana seems real somehow, even with all the fake scenery. Ms. Dawson should be commended for her performances.

Another oddness is that you can watch Gemini Division for free on NBC’s website, but they charge real American dollars for episodes in iTunes. Of course, the iTunes Store has no commercials, and you can load them on your iPhone, but is that worth a buck a shot?

Anyway, you can grab the free episodes sans commercials at the iTunes Store.

While we’re at it, you may want to know where all of the free TV episodes are at the iTunes Store. Well, Apple has (finally) made it easy to find them by lumping them all in one spot.

All Free TV Shows

Go into TV Shows then slide down the screen until you see Free on iTunes. Six screens of freebies, all for you!

That’s going to do it for this week.

Here’s more free stuff on the iTunes Store (with direct links):

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.