My Name is Earl Fodder

My Name Is Earl: Joy in the Plastic Bubble

Dudley Earl-right of the Camden County Mounted Police is good deeding again. Poor lovely Catalina is late for work and Earl's giving her a ride. It's just a bonus that she's changing into her Club Chubby ensembe in his car. Can Earl really be blamed for gazing longingly down Division Street as Catalina leans over ever to unsnap and shimmy and adjust her...selves? I don't know about Earl, but Karma was smiling on every red-blooded man on the planet.

What ho? Is it? Could it be? Yes, it most certainly is. It's an abandoned hot tub on the side of the road. And that reminds Earl of # 72 - Cost Joy a Hot Tub.

Back in the day when Earl was still married to Joy, Earl woke one fine morning to see Joy dolling herself up for a modeling gig. Everything pushed up and stuffed in just so, and all that remains is to spray the hair with enough hair spray to keep Donald Trump's comb-over in place in a farting contest. So it''s probably not a great time for Earl to light up that cigarette. Ka-blam and Ka-blooey, shock and awe, and Earl and Joy look like a couple of extras from The Day After.

Back on the side of the road, and Catalina is helping Earl hoist the abandoned hot tub into the back of the El Camino. One more try, says Earl to Catalina, and I promise to not to fart and I promise not to look if your...selves...fall out of your top. Oh why couldn't we have been there five seconds ago? Earl and Cat hoist the hot tub and...what the hell? There's a bum living under it. Joe the bum is in a trading mood, and he swaps his home for a bar of deodorant. Really tough to say who got the better of that one, but it advances the plot so let's go with it.

Earl pulls in to the Pimmit Hills Trailer Park with a hot tub, and when Joy sees it her jaw drops. It's a matter of seconds before Joy has on her bikini and is indulging in an alcohol-fueled twenty-four-hour soak. And Earl crosses # 72 off his list. Oh but we're only a few minutes into the ep...things can't possibly go that smoothly now can they? No, not so much.

Darnell is peering into the water, and not just because the refraction makes Joy's chest look ginormous, but it also makes her toe appear freakishly huge. Joy agrees and it's a chuckle-fest until Joy lifts her toe out of the water and OMG her toe is freakishly huge! TO THE HOSPITAL!

The doctor takes one look at Joy's toe, and after trembling and cowering informs Joy that she has a nasty flesh-eating staph infection. In fact, the doc tells Joy, the only other case she's ever seen was from a homelss man named Joe who lived in a hot tub on the side of a road. Hmmmmm...could it be?

Joy catches up to Earl at the Crabshack and tells him that he's gonna be paying all her medical bills. Earl agrees that he might possibly in some small way be responsible for Joy's condition. Darnell has had some experience with bio-weaponry and takes appropriate measures. He's covered the floor of their trailer with aluminum foil. Joy's not so much upset at that that she is that he laid the foil shiny side up and now she's gonna hafta wear underwear when the boys are home. A new spin on the old patent leather shoes trick from Catholic grade school I'm sure.

It's bedtime in the trailer and Joy climbs into bed next to her man. But something ain't right. What is that? Joy flips back the comforter and Darnell is wearing a bio-hazard suit. He ain't takin' chances. Impregnating another man's wife is one thing but a flesh-eating staph infection uh-uh, no way Jose. Just like when Joy sits next to Darnell on the couch for some tube time. She's got a plastic baggie on her foot, but even that extreme level of protection isn't enough for our man Darnell. Into the kitchen he leaps and he's boiling his clothes like Glenn Close did the bunny. But it's the plastic sheeting that Darnell erected that has Joy hollering, "Bring me Earl Hickey!"

Earl tells Joy that it looks like she's living in a snow globe. Without the snow. Joy tells Darnell to kick Earl. Darnell kicks Earl. Looked painful, man. Joy has come up with her own list. And until Joy's better, Earl has to do Joy. And not in a good way. Earl takes over Joy's jurisdictions like buying meat out of a car trunk, gathering gossip at the salon, tormenting the ice cream man, and rubbing Darnell's temples when he gets a migraine. All while the Allman Brothers Band plays Oh Lord I Feel Like I'm Dyin'.

It's during this time that Earl gets some insight into the lives of Dodge and Earl Jr. It appears that they have no friends. Can't imagine why, but, hey, it advances the plot so let's roll with it. When Earl goes the school to pick up the boys he sees a lady, Phyllis, handing out party invitations to everyone but Dodge and Earl Jr. Earl ain't havin' it. He confronts the woman, and she tells Earl that it's not the boys that she has a problem with, but their mother, Joy. Cue ELO's Evil Woman. Joy isn't exactly Mother of the Year material by a far stretch. Giving bra-filling advice to a four-year old girl was just the icing on the cake. Earl chills the woman out, and she agrees to invite Dodge and Earl Jr.

Joy's feeling cooped up in her plastic bubble when she notices that the boys are being suspiciously quiet. Quiet, hell. They're gone. And Joy wants to know where the hell they are. Earl tries circumventing the truth but Joy's seen the Hickey Maneuver before. She wants her boys back, and it's not too long before she browbeats the truth out of Earl. She bursts out of her plastic bubble, steals Earl's El Camino, and it's off to the park.

Joy is daydreaming while driving - not as bad as drinking or God forbid dialing - but hazardous to the health nonetheless. She even imagines forcing Phyllis to suck the pus out of her gargantuan toe. Ewwwww. She even dreams about slashing up the bouncy house. Now that's just downright mean.

Earl hoofs it over to the park. He finds Joy parked, watching her boys have fun from a distance. She's having a genuine maternal moment, and doesn't want her boys victimized any more. Cue Dylan's Just Like a Woman.

She asks Earl, "Do you think I'm a bad mother?" Earl replies, "If you were you wouldn't be asking me." Joy says thanks, and just like that Jaime Pressly bags another Emmy. Then she tells Earl that he might want to wipe off the gas pedal as her toe might've been a bit weepy. Damn, I love this show.

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Posted by Randy Welk on October 3, 2008 11:37 AM
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