My Name is Earl Fodder

My Name Is Earl: The Frank Factor

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This episode fills in a great many gaps in Camden County lore, and explains how the gang got together. And finally Nadine Velazquez gets some screen time. Ah, all is right in the Earl-iverse. And oh, by the way, Earl’s prison number (28301-016) just happens to be the same number as Lewis "Scooter" Libby’s was. (Frank’s is 27841-875 for you MNIE trivia heads.) Let’s get to recappin’!

The ep opens with Joy visiting Earl in the joint. She’s getting patted down, and not by the usual Pittsburgh Steelers lookalike female guard, but by Randy. And he’s taking his time and patting her down reeeeeal goood. Think teenagers in a closet. But she’s brought cupcakes and socks and TV Guides with naughty bits drawn on all the photos because they won’t let her bring in dirty nasty skin mags full of…oh, you know.

As she’s conversatin’ with Earl, she sees an old acquaintance, Frank, over yonder. As Earl turns around and recognizes the guy, we’re treated to a series of backstories and flashbacks the likes of which this show positively excels at. Okay, that was an awkward sentence. Sorry about that. I’ll try not to dangle any more participles.

Cue flashback whoosh.

Earl and Randy are crashed on their folks’ couch. But all is not wonderfulness in Hickey-land. Earl’s dad (played by Beau Bridges but is a no-show in this ep) has a coupon for a fumigation, so he’s getting rid of the pests. And any and all insects too. But the fumigation guy has a big heart and gives Earl and Randy three minutes warning. The boys are fairly quick to take him up on his offer, but they still get a good whiff of toxins. As they start walking around the neighborhood looking for new digs, Earl is looking quite dapper wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt and listening to Journey’s Wheel in the Sky (”…don’t know where I’m goin’…”).

Meanwhile, Joy (remember, this is a flashback, and Earl and Randy have yet to meet Joy) is taking a pregnancy test in the aisle of the Quik-E-Mart. ("Irv, clean-up on Aisle four!") It’s blue. Crap. And she thought if you did it standing up at a White Snake concert you couldn’t get pregnant. Much like if you eat ice cream while walking there’s no calories. But Joy’s pregnancy soon makes itself apparent to her parents, and they give her the boot. She moves into the Palms Motel, and begins her search for a sugar daddy telling her bump, “Don’t be alarmed if some company pops in for a visit.”

So the boys are still walking around Camden County looking for a place to crash when they find a flyer looking for a lost boa constrictor right above another flyer looking for missing cats and chickens which is right above another flyer looking for roommates.

Enter Frank (played by Michael Rapaport). Joy knows him from back in the day when he worked at the Crabshack pre-Darnell (more on that later). Frank offers Earl and Randy some luxurious accommodations in his kitchen. Paco has dibs on the parlor. Who could resist? Paco is softly crooning Delta Dawn to a photograph of himself and a quite lovely girl from back home in his village south of the border. Why, it’s Catalina! Coincidence of coincidences. Or not. Is that Karma I see peeking around the corner?

Speaking of Catalina (oh Catalina we’ve sorely missed you), she’s a maid (go figger) cleaning up a motel South of the Border with her mom. Actually, they’re not so much cleaning up as they are setting bait traps. With kittens as the bait. One wonders what they’re trying to catch.

Meanwhile, Frank has finished working out, and is giving himself a kitchen sprayer shower, being sure to hose down all the “sweet spots.” Earl is wet and green with envy. Frank’s really got it all, a nice place to live, and a sweet sweet ride, a frickin’ El Camino. According to Earl, “It’s like the Cadillac of cars.” And Frank’s got a cushy job at this new place the boys have never been to before called The Crabshack. But Frank’s a demanding landlord and he wants the rent from Earl and Randy. Rent which they do not have. Patty the daytime hooker may provide the solution to their problem. She introduces her latest paramour, Yoshi, who’s wearing a really nice watch, one that could possibly be stolen and pawned to pay one’s rent if one were of such a felonious bent.

To complete our trifecta - or would that be quadfecta? - of backstories, Darnell, or should I say Harry Monroe, is in the Witness Protection Orientation and Instruction seminar. They’re doing the old Let’s Go Around The Room And Introduce Ourselves bit when Darnell, I mean Harry, gets whacked with a pointed stick by the instructor for admitting who he is.

Over in a corner booth of the ‘Shack, Joy is entertaining Mr. Tim Stack, who’s wearing his full Son of the Beach regalia. He’s pretty liquored up, and Joy asks him to marry her, but Tim’s no fool, drunken or otherwise. He ain’t buying no cow before he’s sampled the milk.

Earl and Randy are breaking into what will one day become their room at the Palms Motel where Yoshi is passed out and still wearing his fancy watch. There, they run into Frank and Paco who have similar designs. After a brief but violent interlude in which Paco catches a nice nap courtesy of Randy’s fist, they all laugh off the misunderstanding, steal the watch and blow.

Curiously, Joy is in the next room, put off by all the noise the boys are making next door, and she’s waiting on Tim to come out of the bathroom. When he does, he’s wearing a diaper and bonnet and sucking on a pacifier. A handsomer hunk of manhood I cannot imagine, but alas, he fails to ignite Joy’s libido and she calls off the tryst.

After pawning the watch, Frank and Paco have enough money to invest. Randy wants to buy an orangutan with his share - he hates eating bananas alone. Frank and Paco have grander ideas. They’re going to buy some guns and knock over an Indian casino. On Howie Mandel night no less. Why, with his share, Paco’s even going to send for his Catalina. She’s going to sneak into the country, and then they’re both going to sneak out. Seems a tad convoluted to me, but hey, how else are we going to get Catalina to appear infrequently in this show? Earl and Randy want in. How could this possibly go wrong?

Over in the WPO&I, Darnell - yes, he’s Darnell now - is getting his fingerprints ground off. Ouchie momma.

Catalina and her mom are dealing with the guy who’s going to bring them to America. It turns out one of them will go into the box, and one of them will have to pony up a liver and become deceased in the process. Catalina’s mom starts to strangle the lovely Catalina, but our girl didn’t get to where she is by being easy to strangle. After a brief struggle Catalina comes out on top (“It was either her or me…”) and she’s in the box with a lovely bunch of bananas and a newspaper. Suffice to say the paper ain’t for reading. I wonder if she’ll ever find anyone to eat bananas with?

Back at Heist Central, Frank and Earl & Co. are going over their plan to knock over the casino. It goes pretty well, but it soons becomes apparent that Randy may be the weak link. Ocean’s 11 they are not.

With her bump and delivery date looming large, Joy is in the stirrups at her Ob/Gyn. She’s still looking for a meal ticket, and she tells the doc, “Hey Doc, I don’t feel a ring on that finger.” Classic Joy.

With the heist only eighteen hours away, Frank and Paco are heading over to Nathanville so Frank can see his son. And steal a van. And Earl is headed over to the Crabshack for a last snootful. And a fateful night of margaritas (“Nice boobs, Peggy.“) and marriage. To Joy. As Earl says, “A shotgun robbery was replaced by a shotgun wedding.” Randy stays home to enjoy a Sid and Marty Krofft marathon. H.R. Puf ‘n’ Stuf? I am so in.

Two days later, Mr. and Mrs. Earl and Joy (“No, really, what’s your real last name?”) Hickey return to find Randy all alone, Krofft-vision blaring on the TV. No Frank and no Paco in sight.

Frank and Paco pulled off the heist all right. And they even got clean away. In their stolen van. With Howie Mandel accidentally kidnapped in the back. Howie just wants to know if Frank and Paco are going to kill him. “I dunno,” says Frank while singing Gin and Juice ("Mind On My Money And My Money On My Mind...") by Snoop Dogg. “Put a rubber glove on your head and we’ll see if it makes me laugh,” Frank tells Howie.

Meanwhile, Darnell is getting dropped off in Camden County by a couple of fibbies in another van. As they pull away leaving Darnell on the side of the road, who but the lovely Catalina, having successfully evaded the Border Patrol, should approach Darnell asking, in Spanish, if he knows where Paco might be. Darnell, being fluent only in French, Russian, and Arabic, is unable to help her. Paco, driving the Howie Mandel-ed getaway van, sees Catalina and promptly crashes into the back of the FBI van. Howie gets away, but Frank and Paco are sent up the river for twenty years. Poor Paco never even gets to see his beloved Catalina again, but we are forever in his debt.

Back in present day, Joy quickly figures out that if she hadn’t prevented Earl from joining in on the casino heist, he’d be in prison for twenty years and not just the measly two that he’s currently serving (for a crime she committed). Earl says that this is the first time he’s ever been glad that Joy tricked him into marrying her. Frank is just happy to check out the vagina on Al Roker in the TV Guide.


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