Review: My Name Is Earl
Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available I get the chance to catch up.
My Name Is Earl; NBC, Tuesday Nights 9:00 pm
Last year, I reviewed the series Rodney and said, in part:
But if you like your comedy served up on the end of a two-by-four, and don’t mind being treated as if you’re dumber than Rodney Hamilton, then this is the show for you.
I have to admit, I was a little surprised Rodney actually hung in for an entire season, but was awfully glad to see it not renewed depressed to see it was renewed…it helped reinstill destroy my faith in the television-watching public.
What does all this have to do with My Name Is Earl? Because in this series, the writers apparently decided a two-by-four was too subtle, and instead hit him…and us…with a car.
The pilot sets up the embarassingly simple series premise; Rodney…er…sorry…Earl (Jason Lee) is a rotten human being, who gets lucky and wins $100,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. But he loses it when he gets hit by a car immediately after scratching it off. In the hospital, in a drug-induced stupor, he hears an episode of Last Call with Carson Daly (yeah, we gotta promote the late-late-night show somehow) which discusses “karma” - now Earl is way too stupid to understand what it means, but decides he needs to make up for all the bad things in his life anyway.
I was going to describe his brother Randy, the motel maid, his wife, his wife’s new husband and father of Earl’s son (don’t ask), but it doesn’t matter, as they are embarassing stereotypes anyway. By the middle of this episode, I could actually hear my subconscious screaming to be set free so it could run away from this embarassing excuse for a sitcom.
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