My Name is Earl Fodder

My Name Is Earl: No Heads and a Duffel Bag

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Earl’s still in a coma, which I normally would find to start wearing mighty thin. But as this show has proven to me time and time again, never get too comfortable in Camden County. Much like the weather around here, if you don’t like it just wait five minutes and it’ll change.

In Earl’s hospital room, the nurse changes Earl’s fluids bag. Mmm…now with cobbler! It’s Randy’s turn to pick something on Earl’s list. He picks a good one, and it’s off to the Hickey-rosa ("We got a right to pick a little fight, Bonanza!").

Randy makes it to his parent’s house and tells them since Earl’s in a coma he (Randy) is doing Karma’s laundry.

Kay, Earl and Randy’s mom, says Earl’s in a coma?

Yeah, Randy tells her, he got hit by a car after he got out of prison. Kay: Earl got hit by a car?

Carl, Earl and Randy’s dad, says Earl was in prison?

Much like a non-sitcom family, there’s lots of communicatin' that ain’t gettin' done.

So the Hickeys head over to Camden General. Kay and Carl are shocked to find that Randy has been making all of Earl’s life decisions including getting Earl’s tonsils removed and the DNR, which (thanks to ER - on NBC Thursdays @ 10, 9 central) I know stands for Do Not Resuscitate. Kay wants to talk to Earl’s doctor, and I mean now!

Carl’s looking at Earl’s list and sees the one Randy picked - Ruined Mom and Dad’s Vacation. It had been many many years since Carl and Kay took a vacation. Ever since conceiving Earl on their honeymoon, Carl had kinda shied away from getaways with his lovely bride which also would've meant leaving the boys on their own. No good can possibly come from that. But now that his boys were older (and Kay was unlikely to catch one of his little swimmers), Carl felt the time was right to journey to American Samoa (“See why the Japanese wanted it!”) and leave his boys house-sitting. “C’mon,” he tells Kay. “They can’t disappoint us if we don’t leave.”

No sooner are Kay and Carl out the door then Randy and Earl are into the liquor cabinet. Unfortunately, since the cabinet has been emptied of liquor, it’s now just a regular cabinet. About this time Joy comes in. She’s deposited her boys at their other grandparents house because she doesn’t want them getting used to two-story houses for fear that they’ll get all snooty and want to go to college or get vaccinated or some such silliness. So there’s only one thing they can do – Beer Run!

At the liquor store, there’s an unsavory character loitering in the parking lot when one of Camden’s finest cruises through. The unsavory character deposits a large duffel bag in the back of Earl’s El Camino and innocently saunters away. Right about this time Randy comes out of the store and the pre-inebriated trio drive off leaving the unsavory character holding no bag whatsoever. And he don’t look happy about it.

Back at the Hickey homestead, to CCR’s Bad Moon Risin’, Earl, Joy, and Randy discover an extra bag, a bag full of a suspicious green leafy substance. The whole physics of getting high eludes the Hickey Three. Getting stoned just makes you want to eat and get fat. At least drinking too much makes you vomit which makes you thin. And smoking pot kills brain cells, not like getting drunk which only hurts your liver, and besides, that’s why you have two of them. So they decide they’re going to have to get rid of the evidence, preferably one little plastic bag at a time.

So it’s back to the liquor store to get some flavored vodka (Joy: “That’s only for pregnant women and little children."), and some plastic baggies. Well, who’s hanging around the liquor store but Duane the drug dealer, and he’s surprised and pleased to see that El Camino again. He hops in the car and at gunpoint he makes Earl take him to his pot.

Back home at Casa de Hickey, Duane and his three hostages come upon Carl and Kay who are back from their vacation. Well, not exactly back. They never left because their plane was delayed five hours. And Carl and Kay were very surprised to come home to find a big ol’ duffel bag full of reefer on their coffee table. Kay’s beside herself that her boys would do drugs, so she grabs her duty-free bottle of vodka and heads off to the bedroom.

Duane wants his pot back, but Kay tells him that they destroyed it. Duane’s gonna start popping some caps in some people when Carl admits to stashing the pot, not destroying it. Duane’s not so dumb as to fall for the old You Wait Here While We Go Get Your Stash gambit. Duane keeps Joy and Kay hostage while the men-folk go to get the dope. And I don’t mean Earl or Randy.

Turns out Carl really did destroy the pot. He burned it in a garbage can. Carl’s so angry he tells Earl that he’s finally and completely given up on him. He does, however, hold out some hope for Randy.

Earl can come up with only one person who can get them out of this mess, so it’s off to the Crabshack to visit Darnell. Darnell’s figured out they’re looking for weed as soon as the white people started whispering to him. Carl's really not liking any of this. He'd had a bad experience with drugs back at Woodstock. He was just trying to enjoy Sha Na Na when Kay crawled up to him. She’d eaten some hippie brownies and was trippin’ freaky-deaky.

Not to be overly anal about this, but Woodstock took place from August 15th through August 18th, 1969. Earl (who shares the same birthday with Jason Lee) was born April 25, 1970. So unless Earl was a preemie, Kay was roughly one month pregnant with Earl at Woodstock. I'm just sayin'...could explain a lot...

Darnell takes a quick sniff of Carl’s shirt and determines that they’re looking to score some Mendocino Greeno. And Darnell knows just the guy – Circus, over at the Palms Motel, Room 231. Now why does that address sound familiar? Hold on…it’ll come to me…

Joy meanwhile has been spending some quality time with Duane when she finally recognizes him. Hey, she says, you’re that boy from school, the one who used to lay on the floor and suck his fingers. We used to call you Floor-Finger-Sucker. He reminds Joy that they had a nickname for her that ended in Sucker as well, and then he tapes her mouth shut so she can’t call him names or practice her nickname.

Carl sneaks into his own home while Duane is in the bathroom getting high and sucking his fingers. Kay in the bedroom gets a few heady whiffs of pot smoke and gets a juicy buzz going. Carl comes out of the house with Earl’s childhood Savings Bonds. They’re going to cash them in and go buy some grass.

At the Palms Motel who do we run into but the lovely Catalina. She directs the Hickey clan to Circus’ room, a room that looks extremely familiar. Carl tells Randy that if he keeps following Earl around they’re going to end up living here. Truer words were never spoken. Randy doesn’t think this is terribly possible as there’s only one bed in the room with three seriously underdressed stoners on it ("Dude, that's my skull. I'm so wasted!") and they are two dudes.

Circus comes out of the bathroom where he’d been trying to shave a kangaroo.

There is nothing that I can come up with to top that.

Darnell sent us, Earl says, and we wanna buy some pot. Circus takes one look at Carl who’s dressed like a narc and thinks that Carl is a narc. One of Circus’ associates frisks Carl, longingly and lovingly, and says the boys are all right. They could’ve worked in a Baba O’Reilly music bed here, but probably couldn’t afford the rights what with all the CSI shows monopolizing Who tunes.

Circus agrees to sell the Hickeys a duffel bagful of dope for two grand, but first he wants them to take a taste. And when Carl says no to a quick hit on the bong, Circus says hey Pops, that’s a cop move. Circus' friend holds a gun on Carl and Circus says smoke some dope or get shot. Carl’s had enough. He snaps. He smashes the bong over one doper’s skull and grabs the gun. Finally in a position of authority, Carl throws a wad of cash at Circus and tells him here's your money, gimme my pot.

To Stealer’s Wheel's Stuck in the Middle With You, we find out that Carl hates violence, people with unclear sexuality, exotic animals kept in small places, and drugs. We got a Bingo! Can I get a hallelujah?!

Meanwhile, Kay is high as a kite. She’s standing on an ottoman in front of a fan, and Joy has tied a string around her waist.

Back at the hospital, Carl leans in close to comatose Earl and tells him about what happened afterwards. Stealing the gun and taking charge made Carl feel alive, the most alive he’d ever felt. He thought it was exciting, and he felt like a new man. And when the rush finally wore off, he went back for more. The major difference was that when he went back he was wearing a wire and had a bunch of cops waiting outside.

Carl and Kay never made it to Samoa. But Carl admits to unconscious Earl, you gave me more. I found out that I could protect my family, and that was the best feeling I ever had. Carl crosses the item off of Earl’s list.

Carl whispers to Earl that he never really did give up on Earl, and that he never would. He kisses Earl gently on the forehead and leaves. A slight Mona Lisa smile creeps onto Earl’s face, and we FTB.

Posted by Randy on April 17, 2008 11:06 PM
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