John Walker's Electronic House

One show that’s been continuously great, but rarely gets any coverage, is My Name Is Earl. And its third season is developing really nicely.

Season two ends with Earl taking the rap for his ex-wife Joy’s kidnapping crime, and has gone to prison. Which you’d imagine would put something of a dampener on a series about a man trying to make up for the wrongs in his life by helping people on his list. But, no.

Thanks to the show’s frequent use of flashbacks, and Earl’s dealings with a number of other prisoners, there’s no problems there. But interestingly, recently they’ve entirely ignored the list, and yet the show hasn’t lost anything for it. Over the first two seasons they built up such a fantastic collection of recurring characters that it’s almost as developed as the Simpsons for being able to spin off new stories by mixing and matching from the collective (except unlike the Simpsons, it’s funny). So the one-legged woman, the middle-aged hooker, drunken Timothy Stack, the weedy thin gay guy… these ludicrous stereotypes, all presented with real affection, let it concoct any nonsense that comes to mind. The feel-good, do-gooder morality that spoiled the endings of some of season two’s episodes is completely abandoned now, far more interested in really well presented silliness.

A recent double-length episode saw them returning their second season idea of showing the characters through the eyes of Fox’s show, COPS (which is a weird collaboration between NBC and Fox). Again, it gave them an excuse to set a show in the past – the prisoners were watching the episode – this time set in 2002, on the 4th July. And, amazingly, the entire episode was a satire of the over-reaction to terrorist fears inspired by 9/11. Sure, it’s six years later, but it’s hardly any less topical, and some of the gags felt surprisingly close to the knuckle, mocking not the government, but the public response. Even the show’s pun jokes were delivered in a surprisingly deadpan manner, creating a weird atmosphere that felt far from sitcom. A highlight was a cop walking around with two paint sample cards, one a beige “Swiss Almond”, the other a brown “Coconut Husk”, seeing if people’s skins fell between the two to see if he needed to question them.

Then the following episode takes the mocking in another direction, tackling last week’s completely daft initiative by NBC to have a “green” theme in every programme, with their peacock logo all green. 30 Rock apparently did some whoops-my-trousers-have-fallen-down-vicar references to networks overreaching, but My Name Is Earl’s approach was far more direct. There’s a story about the inept, incompetent prison warden asking Earl to organise a “Scared Straight” initiative (with the obvious jokes involved) taking prisoners into primary/junior schools to scare children out of committing crimes. During a meeting about this, there’s the following exchange:

Warden: Just had another thought. What if the Scared Straight show had a green message too?
Earl: I don’t follow.
Warden: Green! It means environmentally friendly.
Earl: Yeah… The thing is sir, going green… doesn’t fit with the rest of the show.
Warden: Well work your magic, make it fit.
Earl: Well I’d just be wedging it in.
Warden: What if I told you you had to do it because I’m your boss?
Earl: Then I’d say I could take the shower kill in the story and turn it into something about the importance of conserving water?
Warden: That’s good… And how about if we start the show when the guy bends down to pick up the phosphate-free soap?

It must have been the exact exchange between the writers’ room and the network execs.

Another line later on:

Prisoner: Things were going from worse to even worser. Not only did the cops have my footprint from the casino vault, but my carbon footprint was off the charts.

And finally,

Randy: Great show guys! I heard one kid say he’d never stab anyone, or order Chilean sea bass.
Huge Terrifying Prisoner: They are dangerously over-fished.

Don’t forget it. It’s been consistently brilliant this season, with a much more careful use of guest stars that the sophomore year, and the smarts to know when a character is good enough to keep coming back. If you ever worried that the show would die with the list, put that aside. Also, try to forget that Jason Lee is a Scientologist.