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.

The real kicker to me is how much everyone else seems to love this brain-dead program; other reviews call it “quirky” and “novel” instead of what they should - terrible. The acting is so over-the-top I wanted to throw something at the television set - the only solid performance in the pilot is guest star Gregg Binkley as Kenny James, the first person Earl is going to pay back; he was litteraly the only person in this entire program to make me laugh. His performance is broad comedy initially, but soon displays layers of subtilty, something this series does not have elsewhere. His character becomes more “real” in his short screentime than any of the other over-broad characterizations; Mr. Binkley should be thrilled he’s outta there. The other reviews talk about Mr. Lee’s “likeable” characterization; personally, I found him mostly to seem bored with the role and the show…no more so than I was, of course. The entire cast has a one-note, overboard, and embarassingly simplistic approach to the performances, which again can be summed up in the single word, “stereotype.” If anyone pulled a stunt like this with an ethnic group instead of “white trash,” these same critics would be howling to the heavens; instead they proclaim this clap-trap to be, “charming.”

While at the local fall fair (a profit-making endevor for the leaders of an allegedly non-profit group), our local NBC affiliate had a big sign up for the show…I kept thinking, “dear lord, if this is the best NBC has to advertise, I now understand why they are in fourth place!” And, “if this is the ’salvation’ of the sitcom, it’s doomed.”

The buzz for this show is amazingly good, which makes me wonder whether the other reviewers saw a different pilot than I did, or whether they all had too much moonshine before watching the silly thing. I can only tell you that long before the end of this ponderingly low-brow show, I was hoping I’d get hit by a car, just to end my suffering.