'My Name is Earl': Pigsquatch!

Watching back-to-back episodes of My Name is Earl and following it with a Vice-Presidential debate is kind of like spending two-and-a-half hours with the best and brightest of Camden County. Thank goodness it's only my responsibility to recap Earl, because there the funny is intentional, the other kind of makes me cry.

Our first episode started off with Earl driving Catalina to Club Chubby because Catalina was changing in the car. Though she may have started off being a little late to the club, she ended up a lot late when Earl stopped the car after seeing a hot tub by the side of the road.

No, Earl didn't figure that he was going to get lucky with Catalina in the hot tub (good guess though, I like where your mind's at). He owed Joy one. Earl had inadvertently caused a minor explosion by lighting a cigarette as she was applying an incredible amount of hairspray in preparation for a modeling job that was going to pay for her own hot tub. So, Earl displaced the homeless man living under the thing and drove it back to Joy.

Yes, Joy was thrilled at first and swore that she'd never get out, but after 24 hours her big toe (which may have been the same one that had an ingrown toenail previously) was huge, and by huge I mean ridiculously, monstrously, insanely large. The doctor informed her that she had a flesh-eating staph infection (apparently the only other case in Camden was this homeless guy who lived on the side of the road in an old hot tub).

Despite our having learned last week that Camden's doctors aren't the best, I'm pretty sure they were capable of giving Joy something that after a week or so would fix her right up. Whatever they did though wasn't good enough for Darnell (apparently he worked in bioweaponry for a while and consequently was scared of diseases). After trying several ways to keep her toe away from him, he ended up quarantining Joy in a plastic room in her own trailer home (but only after boiling his own clothes to sterilize them).

To make it up to her, Earl ended up having to do items on Joy's to do list, including picking up Dodge and Earl Jr. from school because the kids didn't have any friends to hang out with. While the lack of friends was absolutely believable, it turned out not to be their actual problem. The other kids liked Dodge and Earl Jr. (something about "cool hair" and "wiener tricks"), it was Joy that none of the parents liked. It was because of her that no one invited her kids anywhere. Not surprisingly, Joy had taught all the kids in the area fabulous new words and phrases that other parents didn't approve of.

Stupid Earl, he got Dodge and Jr. invited to a party by promising Joy wouldn't show up. After a single punch to the face, he gave up the info and Joy was off to do something horrible to the people at the party. Somehow, in possibly a never-to-be repeated moment, Joy's good sense won out and she sat in the car allowing her kids to have fun. Now if anything was ever unbelievable about the show, it was that.

By the second episode tonight, Joy's toe was all better and while taking some garbage out of the trailer she saw Pigsquatch. That's right, Pigsquatch -- you know like a sasquatch, but a pig. Joy was determined to catch it in order to charge people to see it, and catch it she did. But in drugging the Pigsquatch to subdue it, she inadvertently killed it.

Earl didn't care much for Joy's trying to get Pigsquatch, but it did remind Earl of the time that Earl, Joy, and Randy stole a guy's RV and blew it up (after paying 10 bucks each to see the world's largest anthill). So, it was crossing off Jerry, the poor guy whom they stole it from that Earl focused on in tonight's second episode.

Jerry was one of those folks who was incredibly attached to his RV, and when it was stolen from him, his life went downhill. When Earl found him, Jerry was living in a shed where the RV used to be, and just waiting for death. It wasn't until Earl and Randy started trying to replace items Jerry lost that he came back to life.

I'm not quite sure why Jerry accepted some of the replacements, it doesn't seem to me that a blow-up doll made to look old woman would replace pictures of his wife, but it worked for Jerry. That's neither here nor there however, once Jerry had his life back, he wanted to take someone else's. Not just anyone's, he wanted a replacement "pendant" that turned out to be an ear and Jerry figured that as long as he was taking an ear he ought to take a life too (Jerry was apparently a "killing machine" when he was in the Korean War).

The life and ear in question belonged to an ex-war buddy of Jerry's, Joe, who had abandoned Jerry in the war. All Jerry had been able to hold onto as Joe ran for his life was the man's ear, and he had kept all those years right up until Randy didn't turn off the stove and blew up the RV.

Speaking only for myself, I think it would have been fantastic for Jerry to get Joe's other ear. He didn't. After a brief skirmish, both men ended up with heart palpitations and Joe gave Jerry his last heart pill, saving Jerry's life in the way he hadn't back in the day.

Both men lived, became fast friends, and they even helped Joy dispose of Pigsquatch by blowing the sucker up.

Thoughts and questions:

• Randy apparently has a thing for hats, whenever he tries one on, he does funny voices and takes on the personality of whomever he imagines wears that style hat. I thought I was the only person who did that. The other day I did an awesome Dick Tracy.
• Joy to Earl as she was getting ready for the modeling job that was going to get her the hot tub "I know, when I see myself looking this good I get horny too."
• I thought both episodes tonight had some genuinely funny moments in them. Perhaps I'm still a little starved for comedy, but I don't think that's it. What do you think, was the show funny? Is it on the right track?

The TV and Film Guy's Reviews - Where Pigsquatch lives.

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