  Jason Lee, as Earl, heads down south of the border in two new episodes of My Name is Earl tonight. |
One of the most commonly used comic devices is the fish-out-of-water routine.
Even after multi-decades of movies and TV shows, we still apparently find it uproariously funny when someone from a sheltered environment is plucked and placed in a new environment that he or she does not understand.
Heck, Borat recently conquered North America with that very simple concept.
Which brings us to tonight and the back-to-back new episodes of the sitcom My Name Is Earl. They’ll be shown at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on NBC, and at 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Global (the Canadian network is back on the Earl bandwagon after forgoing new episodes for more than a month).
Tonight’s episodes are titled South Of The Border Part Uno and South Of The Border Part Dos, which should give you a decent indication of what’s going to happen.
Earl (the hilarious Jason Lee) accidentally gets illegal-immigrant Catalina (Nadine Velazquez) deported back to Mexico. Subsequently, Earl and his brother Randy (Ethan Suplee) have to gather their courage and embark upon a trip outside their native United States in a noble quest to bring Catalina back to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
In a side plot, Earl’s ex-wife Joy (Jaime Pressly) takes some medication to control her raging temper, but her new demeanour does not sit well with her current husband Darnell (Eddie Steeples).
Earl is amusing enough as he grapples with his own environment, so it should be funny to see him grappling with a foreign environment. For the uninitiated, the series is based upon Earl’s attempts to turn his life around by atoning for all the bad things he has done, and Lee plays the role with a deft combination of humour and vulnerability.
Even though Lee had been around for a decade, we first remember being made acutely aware of him through his roles in the feature-films Dogma (1999) and Almost Famous (2000).
Lee apparently turned down the role of Earl more than once, because he felt he was a movie actor rather than a TV actor. But Lee finally acquiesed after meeting with series creator Greg Garcia, who based the lead character in My Name Is Earl on his own step-father.
Most TV historians would agree that this isn’t exactly a golden era for situation comedies. When the most-watched sitcom among Americans is Two And A Half Men, well, do the math.
But even though the wider landscape is dominated by schlock like According To Jim and The King Of Queens, Thursday nights remain a bit of a sitcom oasis, comparatively speaking, thanks to NBC.
Besides My Name Is Earl, there’s Scrubs (9 p.m.) and 30 Rock (9:30 p.m.). The much-talked-about 30 Rock has its weaknesses, obviously, but Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are so darn likeable that they draw you in.
And there’s also The Office, which normally is a Thursday staple. Tonight, however, The Office gets bumped to accommodate an hour of Earl.
But fear not, Steve Carell fans. Next week, the reverse will be true, and My Name Is Earl will get bumped for a full hour of The Office.
TV that truly makes you laugh has become a rarity. But seeing Earl south of the border tonight might just have you squirting cerveza out your nose.
