"Creative Writing (My Name is Earl)", 10-18-2007

One of the first signs of burnout for a series writer is to pitch an episode dedicated to the pains of writing a story. This allows the writer to write about the difficulties of writing, instead of writing anything that might contribute to characterization. Furthermore, the writer gets to fob off his own creative difficulties on the audience. Some shows have dedicated episodes to character/writers trying to come up with ideas --and most of those shows aren't very good -- but with "Creative Writing" the "My Name is Earl" writers actually add new touches to characters about whom we think we know everything worth knowing.

This Season 3 episode continues with Earl right where we found him at the beginning of Season 3 -- in prison. Earl takes a creative writing class offered to the prisoners because he believes it will offer him the opportunity to take a mental vacation from the awfulness of prison. However, when the instructor (wearing helmet and flack jacket, no less) asks the inmates to write something, Earl finds himself stumped. Earl has never been a writer, and he finds filling up the page virtually impossible.

Television traditionally recreates the "landscape" of a character's writings through a sort of a dream sequence, and Earl is stuck in an endless expanse of white space. He can't fill up his imaginary realm and until he can, he is stuck surrounded by nothing whenever he picks up a pencil.

In the meantime, the storytelling meme spreads. Randy finds writing a story very easy. His story is sort of a stream-of-consciousness action adventure story, where he teams up with H. R. Pufnstuf - you can't make this up - to fight crime. Randy, through his training, mastery of the arts of ninjitsu, etc. etc., manages to defeat the evil forces that have kidnapped Earl and Catalina. (Hint: one of the evil forces is a loud blonde with pigtails.) The story is very much in character with Randy's gentle, childlike nature.

Joy can't get her kids to do homework, so she tells them a story about what happened to two losers who didn't do their homework. This vignette is told in cartoon form, and the two losers happen to have the last name of Hickey. Joy's cartoon portrayal has her as glamorous as a porn star, and both losers meet bloody ends with a little assist from God. I don't have the exact lines, these are paraphrased from memory:

GOD: Looking good, Joy.
JOY: Just usin' what you gave me, God!

Crabman (Darnell) is busy suffering from some existential woe, worrying about the fate of the crabs who get cooked at the Crab Shack. He sings a song about his pain at the death of all those crabs, and Joy and Earl lend a hand with an assist from some appropriately-rapped stanzas.

Meanwhile, Catalina is being pestered by a suicidal stalker at Club Chubby, and has time to write a story on her own while evading his attentions. Titled, "Catalina: Woman of a Thousand Tears", the drama on Catalina's paper plays like a telenovela, where Catalina's attempts to marry a rich man and rescue her kidnapped brother are thwarted by an evil Joy.

However, Earl still lacks inspiration. He decides to write about the simple things that give him pleasure, in this case, an imaginary scene of a typical dinner at the Crab Shack, with Randy, Joy, Catalina and the Crabman nearby. When reading the scene to the prisoners, he gets applause: they enjoyed his straightforward detailed glimpse of freedom over the more fanciful renditions offered by other prisoners (one of Earl's cellmates relates a story of beating up a gymnast, and it takes a while for Earl to work the gymnast out of his mental "white space").

One of the high points of a good episode is that it tells you things you never knew before but keeps the focus on humor. With Crab Man's affection for Mr. Turtle, I never thought much about Crab Man cooking live crabs at the Crab Shack. It seems that Crab Man believes in protecting all living things, and for the first time we learn that the details of his job deal a little angst.

Furthermore, despite Joy's trailer-trash manners, we get a stronger glimpse of how much she cares for her kids -- her tale of the perils of not doing homework has them running for their books. We got one of our most significant tender glimpses of this affection at the Season Two final episode, "The Trial", and I'm glad to see that the writers have not forgotten.

Randy's tale is just pure wacky fun, but Catalina's falls a little bit short -- Catalina comes off as a cartoon, sometimes, and I suspect that the writers don't have the grasp on her essential character the way they've mastered the other main characters. But on the all, this was a good episode. I only hope that the use of the "character must write a story" trope has seen its last use, and that there are no "character must film a TV episode" episodes in the future.