What if s1 and s2 are both single item frames or series though? Having to add .item() or .values each time I know I have a single value is pretty inconvenient. I understand it's ambiguous for more than one in a series, but I don't see the harm in returning a boolean for a single item in a container like numpy. If numpy's been doing this for so long and after many mailing list discussions, there's probably good reason right? Doing simple things like this

```
if pd.isnull(dataframe.ix[single_row, 'single_col'])
```

has to everywhere become

```
if pd.isnull(dataframe.ix[single_row, 'single_col'].item())
```