| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: Comedy |
| The Format: 26 episodes across 4 DVDs from Fox,
as a slim-pack box set. |
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| The plot: After Earl loses a winning lottery
ticket worth $100,000 after being hit by a car,
he attributes the act of bad fortune to bad karma
and sets about making amends with everyone he has
ever wronged. Having written a very long list, Earl
begins on his quest to earn himself good karma and
right wrongs from his past. |
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| opinion |
| Television, in many ways, is an odd beast.
There are, of course, many genres of television
shows, just like there are many genres of any entertainment
medium, but there are also distinct types within
television that you don't generally get in other
forms of media.
What I mean by this is that televisions episodic
format often lends itself to the maintenance of
the status quo. When you watch a film, or read a
book you generally expect certain narrative conventions,
which include things like a 'beginning', a 'middle'
and an 'end'. But there are also expectations of
things like proper motivation, change (either in
terms of change as the desired outcome, or change
as a return to a previous 'good' situation), character
development and of course poetic justice.
Now these things are certainly true of TV shows
where they play the 'long game'. These shows have
longer arcs, or stories that span the entire series
and it's these shows that better equate to books
and films, with them just being a bit longer.
Generally, I prefer these types of shows. I like
to read, and I like films, and I prefer that more
normal narrative structure. I think that's one of
the reasons I tend to prefer anime and manga, where
the majority there too, rely on the long game, even
if sometimes it really is a very long game indeed.
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The other format for television shows,
which I think represents the vast majority
of American entertainment television, is the
previously mentioned maintenance of the status
quo. In these, at the start of every episode,
the character ostensibly returns to the status
they held at the beginning of the previous
episode.
To better explain what I mean, think about
The Simpsons. Here, we have both the archetypal
example of the status quo show, as well as
an innate parody of it. In the Simpson, sometimes
extraordinary stuff happens each week, but
the next week, everything is back as it was.
Which isn't to say things can't and don't
change in such shows, it's just that it's
not generally to do with a long-term, over-arching
plot structure. Changes sometimes occur more
because an actor retires, gets ill or dies,
for example, than because the desire for change
and development is driving narrative structure.
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I'm much less keen on this show as it's fundamentally
less engaging. This isn't to say it can't work,
just that my list of good shows tends to be more
about the long games than the status quos.
Now, I've said a lot already and not really even
mentioned what this review is about--My Name is
Earl. That's because I wanted to emphasise just
how good Earl is at doing what it does.
In Earl, we basically have a maintenance of the
status quo structure. I mean, we do have development--stuff
happens in one episode and has relevance in later
episodes, for example--but the central idea that
Earl has something else to cross off his list at
the start of each episode, and the fact that the
same gang of supporting characters re-appears without
any real changes occurring in their lives, shows
how cleverly My Name is Earl manages to slip this
format in under your radar.
Also, and this is perhaps an even bigger achievement,
My Name is Earl is, fundamentally a 'and the moral
of the story is...' show. And I hate those.
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What I mean by a 'and the moral of the story
is...' show is one where our character learns something
each episode, and what they learn is a 'good life
lesson'. They never learn that cheating, lying and
back-stabbing are the ways you really get on in
the world, no, they learn that always telling the
truth is the best policy.
This type of show is very common in the kids TV
world, and is something I normally really can't
stand. There are many reasons for this--often the
lessons are bullshit, it represents the height of
patronising, and is very lazy in terms of story-telling,
as prime examples--but the key reason is that I
don't want to watch TV and be told how to live my
life. I want to be entertained.
My Name is Earl then, achieves a spectacular double
whammy. It manages to use the status quo system,
which I'm less fond of; and it also has the 'and
the moral of the story is...' structure to its episodes,
and yet it still makes me love it.
I could spend the rest of the review analysing
just why and how it is it manages to do this, but
I think it boils down to one thing. The characters.
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We have such a brilliant cast of characters,
and this story is set in a world of people
that are so intrinsically interesting and
unusual, it just takes me right past these
two issues and dumps me squarely in the realm
of good TV land.
Oh, and it's funny. Real funny. My Name is
Earl is funny on many levels--there are great
one-liners, good long-gags and some fundamentally
silly plot arcs that give it such a rich depth
that you can watch episodes several times
and laugh at different things each time.
There's also a clever knack to how the actors
play the world of My Name is Earl. Everything
is ever-so-slightly exaggerated in such a
way that it at once feels like a parody, but
also a loving homage to the white-trash world.
And it's oddly unsubtle--often Earl, Randy
or any of the others are hamming it up like
you almost wouldn't believe, but it still
works and stays believable.
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Part of the reason it works, I think, is the
voiceover. The voiceover just makes it feel like
the things being shown are being told as tall tales
a long time after the fact by Earl, and he's embellishing
for comic effect.
The best thing I can compare My Name is Earl to,
for those that haven't seen the series, is the Coen
Brother's "Raising Arizona". This film
(as well as much of the Coen Brother's work) is
such a good comparator for both the story telling
method and the My Name is Earl World, it's hard
to believe that it wasn't a major influence. But
My Name is Earl almost picks up the story afterwards.
My Name is Earl is what happens when someone who's
bad tries to make up for the bad things they've
done. And perhaps that's really why it works--because
really we'd all like to make amends for the bad
things we've done in our lives.
The DVD package is pretty good. It's a slim-pack,
and is very good value for money. We also have quite
a few extras, including a few commentaries and things
like out-takes, deleted scenes and a documentary
or two. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: An innovative and clever central
concept, with great characters and which is also
truly funny--all that with the hated "and the
moral of the story is" structure. |
| The Score: 5/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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