Unemployed Earl Loses to Office Jerks

By Kanrei

I have not watched very much TV last season, so I cannot really comment on 95% of the Emmy winners from last night, but I did watch “The Office”. I must admit I am upset “My Name is Earl” did not take any big ones. It did get best direction and writing for its pilot episode, but I think it deserved best comedy as well.

I think that show is brilliant in its originality. “The Office” is just another British sit-com import reworked for an American audience. It is bad enough most scary movies are coming from Japan, but must we import our sit-coms as well?

“My Name is Earl” stars Jason Lee as Earl Hickey, a man who has never done anything honest in his entire life. He has brought nothing but pain to anyone unlucky enough to cross paths with him; be it stealing his father’s car at age twelve to drag race the neighborhood bully or stealing the wallet of a man using the facilities at a gas station bath room. Earl is just a bad guy, until the day he steals a lottery ticket worth $100,000 and gets hit by car, losing the ticket as well.

After waking up in the hospital, he realizes that his life sucks because he has never done anything good. He learns of Karma and realizes he owes Karma for a lifetime of evil and makes a list of every single bad thing he ever did. Crossing off his first bad thing from his list returns his lottery ticket returns to him and he becomes obsessed with fixing every bad thing and making it right to the person offended.

The plot of the show is but one of the original aspects of this overlooked masterpiece. It dances the line between surreal, satire, and realism beautifully. It creates the most absurd characters, but gives them realistic emotions and reactions. Add in just a little satire of the “poor white-trash” criminal, the illegal immigrant hotel maid, and every other ethnic stereotype you can think of and you have just perfection.

The beauty of the show is in its positive message. The show does show many bad acts committed by Earl over the years, but it shows him as paying for those actions. It never glamorizes the things he did, but rather shows them as the stupid things they were. By having Karma play a constant roll in every episode, the “treat others how you want to be treated” message comes through very clear and the show always ends with Earl crossing something off his list because he made it right.

The cast of the show is more than just a one man show too. Each and every actor, from Ethan Suplee as Earl’s brother and Jamie Pressly as his trailer-trash ex-wife to the guest stars ranging from Giovanni Ribisi to Beau Bridges give their all to their roles. Each character is given a full and rich back story as well. The guest stars are real characters in the story and not just well placed cameos.

While “The Office” is certainly a funny show, it does not strike me as a better show than “Earl”. “The Office” is yet another work place comedy, only with improvisation based on situation. The cast is perfect and the directing captures the “documentary” feel they are going for, but there is little original or unique in this show. Besides, we can always watch the original on DVD, so why bother with a remake? “Earl” was robbed and given token prizes.

Like I said, I really do not watch very much television. "The Simpsons", "Family Guy", "24", and random documentaries are about it. My Tivo’s schedule is filled with "Modern Marvels", "Histories Mysteries", and things like that, but I never miss an episode of “Earl”. It really is refreshing to see a moral show that knows how to be bad and a show about bad people that can teach morals. It is a show parents can watch with their kids and it is expected for them to not approve of what Earl did. That is the point of the whole show. He is amending for bad deeds. It shows that even a bad person can amend their ways. It deserved “Best Comedy Series” infinitely more than yet another show about work place personality cliché conflicts.