Take The City And Run

My Name Is Earl, when you get right down to the bare bones of it, is a pretty sappy show. Or at least, each of the first three episodes has ended on that sort of note. But what else would you expect from a show for which the premise is that good deeds performed now and in the future will atone for all the bad ones of the past? Earl, the titular character played by Jason Lee, isn’t exactly a cynical person to begin with— he’s more of a good-for-nothing loser. But after his discovery of the concept of karma (via a series of coincidental events and Carson Daly), he decides to try to redeem his loserish, not to mention criminal, ways. With no aspirations for sainthood, he just wants to set himself back to zero, and escape the other good-for-nothing losers around him (or get them to change their ways as well). A cynical person would not have come to a similar realization or made the same decision based on it. So, yeah, it’s sappy, but at its best it’s at least interesting because Jason Lee, through a surprisingly sincere performance, goes a long way toward selling the premise. At its worst, it seems stagnant. Over the course of three episodes, Earl’s quest has only brought him closer to home: first, he set out to make something up to someone he was a bully to, then to someone he was once friends with, then his own brother. Earl’s quest could theoretically take him across the country or around the world, but so far he’s pretty much stayed in his own backyard, so it seems like there’s a potential that has yet to be tapped. Once it is, this show could become great. As of now, it’s merely slightly better than good. In other words, so far it’s no Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm, but at least it’s not another Everybody Loves Raymond or Two And A Half Men.