TV-Reviewed

My Name is Earl is finding itself with somewhat of a dilemma this season. Last season, they did too much and took Earl away from the list, so to fix this problem the writers have made Earl focus on his list. The problem with this is that it does take us back to the first couple seasons of the show, but this is season 4, so you have to kind of give us a little something more than just the first couple of seasons. This is where the problem lies, the writers have gone back to the way it was, but after last season they’ve become scared of doing anything more. Sadly, this episode does nothing to improve this, but it still manages to be in the watchable range, but it’s starting to bore me.

This week’s Earl had him running into Lloyd, a happy guy who got sold a car that didn’t work. Lloyd bought the car only to realize he had gotten ripped off and thus he began his life of thinking all people are scum. Lloyd ends up moving next to Earl and at first, Earl is just annoyed by the sounds from the next room and doesn’t even realize it’s the guy he screwed over, but eventually remembers him and works on fixing this, because after all it is on his list.

Ethan Suplee as Randy, Nadine Velazquez as Catalina

This story was weak from the beginning. It’s hard to feel too bad for a guy who buys a car without driving it first and it’s also hard to believe that someone would hate the world based off buying a bad car. Earl usually has some weird and quirky characters on the show and Lloyd was quirky and weird, but not in a good way. We couldn’t feel bad for him, because he seemed quite crazy especially when we find out he’s been trying to build a rocket ship to go out into space. This episode just reeked of a bad plot all the way through.

The other storyline had Joy helping Earl Jr. with his science project so she could win the grand prize. I do like that we’ve been seeing Joy take an active interest in her kids, even if it is because she’s trying to win money. Her project was pretty stupid and felt like it was just filling time and then in the end when Earl Jr. ends up using the rocket, it made the rest of the storyline feel useless. There was no character development or anything that amusing about this episode.

It was a watchable episode, but it was far from Earl’s strongest episode. If Earl wants to get better it’s going to have to take some risks again that hopefully pay off. It wasn’t a great episode, it wasn’t a good episode, it was barely a decent episode, but it was watchable and that’s what most of this season feels like it’s been; just watchable.

Rating: 5.3