Fri, October 19, 2007
My Name Is Earl—1:08 PM
My Name Is Earl began as a fairly inventive half-hour comedy. Seeing the world through the eyes of a dumb guy struggling to expand his mind provides fun and amusing insights. It's never been a top five show for me, but I've enjoyed it.
Last year, there were a few moments when its frothy brew of goofy charm and quirky darkness seemed to be curdling. I brushed these concerns aside at the time, but given the start of season three, I'm worried they might have been warning signs of an oncoming implosion. Rather than embracing its characters and the comic opportunities they provide, the show seems to be struggling under a self-imposed mission to constantly reinvent itself. (Claymation, flashbacks, dream sequences, incarcerating the main character.) This comes at a cost of narrative consistency and general watchability.
All this focus on Catalina's backstory is making her less fun to watch (but no less fun to look at). Earl's brother Randy was once a Homer Simpson-style well-intentioned oaf. His circular monologue about the differences between men and women still dazzles me. But lately, he's been grating on me like you wouldn't believe. For the last few weeks here at the onebee compound, there's been a proposal on the table to watch all Randy-centered scenes on fast-forward. I doubt it'll come to that, but last night's episode definitely gave the "Yes" vote a big spike in the polls.
Maybe I just need to lower my expectations for the show. Being selected for NBC's "Comedy Night Done Right" is no proof of excellence. (Don't believe me? Tune in Thursday at 9:30.) My Name Is Earl was created by the Yes, Dear guy, after all.
Brandon — Mon, 10/22/07 12:45am
How much were your feelings affected by the creative writing episode? Because it was quite awful, I must admit. Just wrong choices from beginning to end.
But I do think some of the re-invention is good and even necessary. I'm not crazy about the incarceration, but I can see why they felt the need to shake things up a little, and I thought the episodes previous to this one had all been well within the usual Earl standards: good, but not great. I've always been concerned about where they'd go with the storylines, just because there's such a dominant premise.
Hopefully episodes like this one will remain the exception, but yes, at some point, we should probably expect Greg Garcia to regress back to being Greg Garcia, at least a little.
Bee Boy — Mon, 10/22/07 12:21pm
Well I wrote this whole thing in response to the creative writing episode. So it affected my feelings to the extent that it finally got me to that point where I thought, "That's it. Someone has to stand up and say something."
I felt the departure was unnecessary (in line with the claymation, etc.) but I didn't mind the individual segments that much, with the exception of Randy's. Although the H.R. Pufnstuf callback was charming, the rest of it just made me hate him even more. The episode had its ups and downs, but removing it from the Earl history would definitely be a positive step.
I wonder if we should start allowing TV creators to select an episode from each season to remove forever, the way some college professors drop your worst test grade for the semester. If we allowed these credits to roll over, Sorkin could've used all the ones he earned on flawless seasons of Sports Night and The West Wing to obliterate the entire middle three-quarters of Studio 60.