This week, Earl (Jason Lee) found himself in a classic be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation. After having Catalina (Nadine Velazquez) get rid of his talkative neighbor Cappy, he and Randy had to live next to Lloyd, one of the creepiest characters featured in recent memory. It just so happens that Earl also wronged him in the past, and Lloyd just might be planning to take out his frustration on everyone.
Randy (Ethan Suplee) was upset to see Cappy go, but Earl insisted. Soon after, they both realize that they're not quite sure who they're dealing with. At one point, they were faced with the stereotypical problem of being kept awake by mysterious, loud noises. After Lloyd answers the door carrying a lit blowtorch and wearing a mask, he listens to Earl's complaints and calmly replies, "I don't know what you're talking about, I was sleeping." When Joy (Jaime Pressly) stops by, she recognizes Lloyd as a person she and Earl sold a shoddy car to back when they were newlyweds. After Earl explains his karma list, Lloyd claims he's not interested in receiving compensation — he even thanks Earl for opening his eyes about how "people are scum." But when Earl sees him carry a box of explosive material up to his room, he knows he better make Lloyd see the good in people, and fast.
But before we get to that, let's touch on what's going on with Joy in this episode. So Jane Seymour had a cameo in tonight's episode as herself. She appears to Joy as a dreamlike figure in the bathroom mirror. It seems her only purpose is to pitch the Jane Seymour Open Hearts necklace from Kay Jewelers, which Joy has her own heart set on. She convinces Joy to create a winning project for Dodge's science fair so that she can use the prize money for the necklace. Hilariously, Joy decides to do a project which attempts to disprove the theory of evolution.
I'm somewhat unsure of what to make of the Seymour cameo. Not being a Kay Jeweler expert, I wasn't even certain that this was a real product until I saw an ad for it during the show's commercial break. I then thought that perhaps the proceeds were going to a charitable cause, but I didn't find any information of that sort on the Kay website. So was the entire purpose of this cameo to sell jewelry? No big deal, I suppose — it just strikes me as slightly strange.
After Earl and Joy gave a "hillbilly tuneup" to a car and sold the clunker to Lloyd, he wised up and did the same to an unsuspecting older woman. In an effort to convince him that people are good, Earl traces the owners of the car to find someone who didn't selfishly pass it off to someone else. Unable to find one, he has Darnell (Eddie Steeples) pose as "Pooky James Johnson" and claim that he used the car to perform a good deed for an orphanage, which was another of my favorite moments of this episode. Lloyd finds out this is a lie though and goes back to his room with Earl hot on his heels.
But it turns out that Lloyd was actually building a space shuttle to escape Earth, not a bomb. He comes to the realization, though, that Earl's thinking there was a bomb and trying to save everyone is proof that there are good people in the world. I thought this was a great ending — usually Earl needs to perform a definite task in order to spread his message and increase his good karma, but in this case, just the fact that he was willing to be good in a difficult situation was enough to save the day. And Darnell even sprung for Joy's necklace, so everyone wins.
Here are a few of my favorite moments. What were yours?
- Joy's science experiment: Put food outside of a fish's reach and wait for it to grow feet and walk out of the tank. When it turns out she caught a tadpole instead of a fish, it looks like Darnell gained a new pet — Mr. Frog.
- When the lemon was bought by Nescobar Aloplop, he gave it a "Nairobi tuneup" and sold it to the next sucker.
- Randy constantly losing battles of "Not it" and having so much respect for the childish game that he doesn't even argue.
- When Joy tells Jane Seymour that she doesn't know much about science, she says, "First time I ever used birth control pills, I put them inside me."
show less
This week, Earl (Jason Lee) found himself in a classic be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation. After having Catalina (Nadine Velazquez) get rid of his talkative neighbor Cappy, he and Randy had to live next to Lloyd, one of the creepiest characters featured in recent memory. It just so happens that Earl also wronged him in the past, and Lloyd just might be planning to take out his frustration on everyone.
read more