‘Earl’ to remain man behind bars
By Alex Strachan, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE, August 23, 2007

It’s a rule of thumb in TV — especially comedy — that a baby kills the show, but don’t tell that to the people who put together My Name is Earl.

Earl repeats one of its funnier episodes of the past season, Guess Who’s Coming Out of Joy, in which the nefarious Earl (Jason Lee) flashes back to Joy’s (Jaime Pressly) pregnancy with a baby he assumed — wrongly, it turns out — was his.

The episode, which first aired in February, was written by My Name is Earl’s creator, Greg Garcia, who was responsible for lame-o sitcoms like Yes, Dear before he struck it rich, creatively speaking, with Earl.

This is a change-of-pace episode, in that Earl doesn’t repair any past misdeeds or cross anything off his to-do list. It’s all about karma and life’s strange twists and turns, and — in a strange, almost offhand way — it reflects My Name is Earl at its sweet, wise best.

There’s a deliriously zany reveal, in which Earl (Lee) learns definitively that the baby isn’t his, and a wonderful “whoa there” speech by Earl’s best bud Darnell (Eddie Steeples), in which Darnell talks about hypotheticals and what-not (“What if things are complicated with the real daddy right now? What if Joy doesn’t seem to love the real daddy anymore, and the real daddy’s fiscal instability, volatile living conditions and possible secret identity doesn’t lend itself to creating an environment that is conducive to raising a child right now?”).

When My Name is Earl ended the season in May, Earl found himself in the crowbar motel as a guest of the state — with free room and board, you might say — and when the new season picks up next month, he’ll still be there.

“He’ll be in prison for a while,” Garcia confirmed at the Television Critics Association’s recent summer meeting.

“We didn’t want to come back in season three and go, ‘Oh, he’s out. There was a technicality.’ When we decided to do it, we knew we were going to go all the way. We’re fortunate in that Earl has a past where he knows a lot of people in prison.”

Earl will still work on his karmic list from behind bars. There are people he wronged who are in the hoosegow with him, so he will continue to do good deeds, to make amends.

Garcia insists My Name is Earl won’t morph into Prison Break; he plans to rely on flashbacks, and there’ll be an hour-long homage to Cops at some point during the season.

Garcia says that if Earl is to remain fresh, each season has to leave a distinct mark.

“In the first season, we felt we needed to set up the premise of the list, and really stick to that. We tried to find as many ways to tell that story as differently as we could, and we felt we did a good job going into season two. Then we decided to tell some stories (that) take place over the whole season. And now we’ve put him in prison. It’s about wanting to keep it fresh every year. We’ll always have the list. The list will always be there. But it’s fun to have other things to go with, too.”

My Name is Earl returns with new episodes Sept. 27. Until then, do catch the reruns, if you’re so inclined. Earl is that rare TV comedy that holds up well on repeat viewing. Global, NBC

From CanWest News Service

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 12:44 pm and is filed under My Name Is Earl, TV Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.