The other reason that this specific episode was funny (outside of Geraldo) was that it didn’t exist in a vacuum. The episode overtly referenced the Cops episodes of seasons past, and even the stuff that has happened to Earl in previous episodes. At one point last night Earl said something along the lines of “me in a coma, no one wants to see that.” Which, if you read the preceding paragraphs you’ll know is funny because it’s true – no one wanted to see that. Earl saying that wasn’t quite an apology for the wayward storylines we were subjected to last year, but it was probably as close as the show will ever get. At least, that is, until the show gets dropped from NBC at the end of this season (okay, that’s not a done deal, but rumors abound).
The episode even finished with a relatively funny tag. Inside Probe announced that they would have to continue the story next week because they were out of time. When some of the gang complained about the show not being an hour long, Darnell explained that the network hadn’t ordered enough episodes and didn’t want to do a repeat during the all-important Sweep so they divided the episode into two. Want to guess what the opinion of the folks over at Earl is about this episode not getting aired as a full hour?
Perhaps someone should have explained to them that no one wanted to see Earl in a coma and that if that hadn’t taken place the numbers for the series might be better and NBC would have ordered more episodes.
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