What’s Your Name Again?
When My Name is Earl came on four seasons ago I absolutely loved it. Then it jumped the shark, big time. In case you aren’t familiar with the show here is the premise, Earl Hickey is a bad person, a very bad person. One day he wins $100,000 in the lottery and is hit by a car at almost the same time. It’s at that point he learns about karma (from Carson Daly no less), and Earl makes a list of everyone he’s ever wronged in his life and decides to use the 100 grand to make it up to them. Every episode is dedicated to Earl crossing someone off his list.
This worked great for the first two seasons and I think the writers ran into a snag. They only gave Earl $100,000. Don’t get me wrong this is a lot of money for most folks, myself included, but is it enough for Earl to support himself, his brother, and go ahead and keep spending it on the people he’s wronged. That money is going to run out fast. So what do you do? You jump the shark, that’s what. You take a formula that is working well and you completely change it. You put Earl in jail for a season.
This is where the show lost me. It started piling up on my DVR and by last summer I had nine unwatched episodes. I slowly finished them over the summer, but I was not looking forward to any future episodes and was pretty sure I was done with the show. Although I didn’t remove the timer from my DVR.
Last weekend I noticed I had six episodes from the current season and very little else that I hadn’t watched so I figured I would give the first one a shot, and you know what? It was good. It really was. Earl is out of jail and back to his list. On top of it all they’ve made him get more creative because it looks like funds are low.
Many shows get off track and I don’t think it is a hard thing to do, even for the best shows. I applaud the creators of My Name is Earl for finding their way back to where they started and hopefully realizing their mistake.
3 years ago