This week, My Name is Earl made an interesting choice for its special, one-hour episode by barely featuring its title character at all. Instead we get a flashback of sorts, as we view a supposed Cops rerun from several years before our hero set off on his quest of redemption. As the Cops cameras go throughout Earl's town, just about every supporting cast member is featured, and we get a bit of history about the characters' pasts as well as some social commentary of the times.


We open with Randy being picked on by the inmates. With a "Stab Me" sign taped to his back, we see that Randy is not respected at all by the inmates, despite being a prison guard. When TV time ends, he finds that one of the inmates has stolen and eaten the "on/off" knob for the TV, making it impossible to turn off. Fortunately, Cops is on, and Randy perks up, calling Earl over after discovering that their "other" Cops episode is the one being shown. The signature theme song and we are whisked away to the past during Earl and Randy's criminal days.

As the Cops crew responds to individual calls, we check in on Earl, Randy, Joy, Catalina and Darnell before they were all brought together, as well as the whereabouts of other series regulars such as local celebrity Tim Stack, the old prostitute and Earl's one-legged ex. Since this episode was supposedly shot the first Fourth of July after 9/11, we get some heavy commentary about the general paranoia of the time, which has a couple hits, but mostly seems pretty forced.

Basically what happens is that Earl and Randy are running off trying to find a good way to make some money. Since this is before the series began, they try to get their cash by stealing things, which inevitably leads to a series of run ins with the local law enforcement and their film crew.

As Earl and Randy fail over and over again, with such attempts as trying to steal a bumper car, Joy and Darnell are constantly sneaking off to pursue their affair which, at the time, was a secret from Earl. Catalina is working at a strip club and also gets into a series of altercations that require the police to come, namely a feud with a fellow stripper.

Eventually, the cops, who have a stand at the local carnival, decide to put on a demonstration of all of the brand new anti-terrorism equipment they got because of 9/11, including a helmet camera and a fiber-optic camera. Soon after, the whole lot gets stolen and, because of the times, they immediately start racially profiling assuming that a middle-easterner stole the equipment. One of the officers panics and announces that all of their homeland security equipment was stolen by terrorists causing the whole town to panic.

Soon after, we learn that Earl and Randy have stolen the equipment. After playing around with the cameras, they eventually get caught by the police when the cops crew responds to another domestic dispute with Earl and Joy and find Randy wearing the helmet-camera. Randy, Earl and Joy are arrested and, after Earl is tortured using the fiber-optic camera in an unspeakable manner, he confesses to being a terrorist. But Earl, Randy and Joy end up just stealing the cop car. When trying to ditch the camera man, they are caught again but as they are arrested, the drunken Tim Stack drives by on the stolen Bumper car and its sparks set off some nearby fireworks. The fireworks are so beautiful that everyone in town stops their feuding and unreasonable paranoia to admire the sky as they all unite in singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Really. That's what happens.

Back in the present, Randy's found that the inmates now respect him after seeing him on TV and discovering his criminal past.

The episode wasn't a complete loss, however. The scene where the cops chase after Darnell's grandmother in a domestic dispute call, only to find out that she's an unbelievably fast runner, capable of scaling a pickup truck and hurling a hedge had me giggling. And there's a clever scene where Earl unknowingly walks in on Joy in the middle of a romantic tryst with Darnell, which is shown almost entirely through the heat-sensitive lens of the stolen camera, highlighting each of the characters' levels of excitement.

But for the most part, this episode was a pretty big letdown. As bold a move as it was to keep Earl in jail for an entire season, the fact that they are resorting to bad Reno 911 comedy to carry the show is not a good sign. Hopefully, this was just another throwaway episode, and we'll be back on track next week.


-George Freitag, Buddy TV Staff Columnist

(Image Courtesy of NBC)