By Sabrina Cognata

I am still not sure if this week's episode of MY NAME IS EARL sucked or not.  It was one of those lame “to be continued…” episodes that always leave me feeling the same way I do when I wake up naked & alone after a night of heavy drinking. Basically my major complaint this week is that I hate “to be continueds” and I walked away with a generally dissatisfied taste in my stupid mouth.

Earl (Jason Lee) talks a lot about how he’s spent most of his life taking care of his little brother Randy (Ethan Suplee).  While Earl’s in prison & Randy is a prison guard, Earl still ends up taking care of his inept little brother.  Mostly Earl finds himself catching Randy before he lands himself in a terrible situation that would lose him his job, but Earl isn’t always around.  Earl takes some responsibility for the fact that Randy doesn’t know how to function without him, but still, he feels as though he is continually his brother’s keeper and it’s getting old—fast. 

While trying to sort that out, the Warden (Craig T. Nelson) calls Earl into his office.  As an aside Randy calls the Warden the landlord & the principal before Earl corrects him.  Really, what would Randy do without Earl?  In the Warden’s office Earl finds out that the Warden is working on a “scared straight” program where a select few inmates travel to local schools and literally scare the children into being productive members of society.  The children use to travel to the prison, but attempted breakouts have caused the Warden to change the policy. 


Joy’s surrogate pregnancy is annoying the hell out of her.  She’s over 9 months pregnant and the parents, her half sister and her husband, will now allow Joy to induce labor because it isn’t natural.  Joy decides to try anything that is natural in order to get that baby out of her body, including squatting for over 5 hours and plunging it out of her crotch.  Eventually, she goes to the hospital and demands drugs.

Earl’s allowed to form a team to workshop with and take to schools to scare them straight.  He picks two of the scariest dudes I have ever seen and his stupid friend Frank (Michael Rappaport).  They work on a skit designed to scare children and teach them the importance of going green and being ecologically aware, as later on instructed by the Warden.  The day the guys are suppose to go to the school Randy & Earl have a blowout fight.  Randy tells Earl he’s been banned from going on the field trip just to spite Earl and flex his proverbial muscle.  Earl asks Frank to look out for Randy.  DO I SMELL MORE FORESHADOWING?  Frank tells Earl he’ll watch over Randy cause he’s a great friend.  Wrong.  After the show at the local school, Randy decides to take the convicts out for ice cream, but due to the fact that he has to parallel park he allows the two badass looking inmates to get the ice cream while he watches the car and Frank sleeps.  When Frank wakes up he asks Randy where the other guys are and tells him he can’t allow convicts to go into an ice cream shop alone.  Randy goes to fetch them and on his return he finds Frank missing.


Back at the jail, the Warden makes Earl & Randy personally responsible for capturing Frank.  The Warden is mostly upset because his wife is the Governor of the state and she questioned his judgment when it came to the scared straight program.  Now the brother’s have to find Frank & get him back to jail within 46 hours.  I guess if we want to know if Frank’s captured and Joy squeezes that baby out we’ll have to watch next week.