Monday, September 26, 2005

My Name Is Earl

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been able to watch *a lot* of the brand new television shows. I'll spend some of my blog space over the next few weeks discussing my reaction to what I've seen so far. Although I would normally probably order these from least to most favorite, I'm going to take the opposite approach. Some of the shows I either dislike or don't care much about may be off the air before I get to them, honestly, and I'd like to make sure to spread the word as much as possible about the truly good stuff.

And frankly, the truly good stuff begins and ends with My Name Is Earl. I think some of the season's other new entries have shown some promise and I haven't given up on them yet, but My Name Is Earl is inspired, hilarious, extremely re-watchable television.

The premise is almost ridiculously elegant in its simplicity. Earl, a redneck who has devoted his life to thievery, whoring, and drinking excessively, wins $100,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Immediately after doing so, he is hit by a car and put in the hospital - losing the ticket in the process. While stuck in traction, his wife has him sign some papers, and then informs them that they are now divorced. With nothing to do but watch the television, Earl watches Carson Daly elaborate on the concept of karma and realizes that perhaps if he does good things himself, bad things will stop happening to him. He sets out to correct his past wrongs, and the results are uproarious thus far.

Jason Lee is outstanding in the role of Earl, and Ethan Supplee and Jaime Pressly are terrific in their supporting roles as well. The show is extremely wry and unafraid to take advantage of Earl's redneck nature in order to throw out some extremely politically incorrect humor. And it works. I've watched the pilot twice now, and I've laughed hard both times. In the beginning, I had planned to give My Name Is Earl a try simply because I'm a big fan of Jason Lee. The premise looked horrific to me and I was working on the assumption that it would be cancelled in short order. Then, lo and behold, I started seeing good critics' reviews come in and started getting my hopes up...a little. I'm really pleased to say that if it can continue to maintain the greatness it started with, My Name Is Earl is definitely a long-term keeper.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment



<$I18NLinks to This Post$>:

Create a Link

<< Home


 
     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.