Date of airing: March 8, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.75 million viewers, 7.5/14 in Households
Oh, what would have happened in this episode if Linda had been a guy? How much trouble everyone would be in if a guy had climbed into a woman’s hotel room, to join her in her shower as she was singing? What kind of criminal investigation would have started if the guy were to be found in the woman’s bathroom? But this is EARLY EDITION, a family-friendly Saturday night TV drama, there is no way for a story like this to keep the characters busy or to make attempt at recreating a world that is similar to the real-life version. This is a TV drama written by men – the first season of EARLY EDITION has two credited women writers, Deborah Joy LeVine and Gina Wendkos – so it was only natural that a bit of male wish-fulfillment needed to be in this episode, for the sake of comedy and light storytelling, written by two men (one of them not even being credited for this episode on IMDb). Only was Linda one of the creepiest characters I have ever encountered on television. Even Chuck comes over as a saint in general, and especially in this episode, doing his best “Hi, honey” shtick to help Gary out.
This is an episode that would never have been written in the #MeToo era, or at least not like this. It makes one wonder what kind of privilege the writers’ room was working with, or how much they were thinking about the stories they developed and if they fit the tone of a family-friendly weekend TV drama. Maybe no one cared about how questionable some story choices looked before the internet came to be, and maybe the writers thought that the only thing they had to face after an episode aired was print media and the standard entertainment reviews of newspapers and magazines. And who would want to review a weekly TV drama that lands mid-table in the Nielsen charts and has absolutely no importance to anything? How many TV shows with similar stories are hiding in the 1990s and beyond, and need to be discovered for how inappropriate they are now?
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| As a member of the jury, you always have to listen. |
The episode was okay. Gary getting the paper right in the courtroom was quite the sizable plot device to have him change his mind in the middle of court proceedings, because I would have loved to know how tomorrow’s paper knew that Deluca could have been innocent and why that would have been a news story in the middle of the trial. Deluca, who was not sequestered since it was his own trial, would have read that paper during the day of the jury coming back with a verdict, and the knowledge of his wife possibly having evidence for his innocence would have been public knowledge, therefore it would have tainted the trial no matter what, at least leading to a mistrial. In addition, Gary decided not to read the paper as he was walking out of his hotel room to rejoin the jury, but he decided not to notice the headline about Deluca’s innocence, because for some reason it needed to be a plot device during the trial, right before Gary was supposed to read out the verdict. And by the way, none of the other eleven jurors had a problem with Gary changing his mind on the spot and essentially prolonging their duty as jury members? The writers just conveniently forgot that part of the story?
The court case itself seemed a little boring and severely underdeveloped, but I guess that’s what stealing money is all about. I’m getting the feeling that television writers only know how to write murder cases, because the story, while not going very deep into the case at all, only focused on how it was important for Gary to realize that Deluca is innocent, and how his handling of the case will give Deluca at least a small chance. If the entire thing with Linda had been cut out of the episode, the writers could have spent some time on the court case and developed Deluca as a character, to explain why he would be so easily scared into resting his defense and accepting prison time, knowing that he will kill himself as soon as he loses in court. There was no consistency in the story, and it hampered my enjoyment of this episode, even if it seemed like fun to see Gary being a little extra as foreperson of the jury. There is no way that anyone would have liked him after the stunts he pulled, but yet, this episode had an attractive woman at Gary’s side who was still interested in hopping into the shower with him, uninvited.
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| At last, they are getting some alone time. |
At least Chuck’s involvement brought me some joy during this episode, which by itself is a surprise, considering how often I have had problems with Chuck as a character. The moment between him and Gary at the hotel room door was fantastic, and I loved that Chuck was all in for this scam, here to help Gary help an innocent person, and go the whole nine yards for it. Besides that story being a pro-LGBT comedy moment (that kind of makes you want to forget that a woman was about to join a man in the shower without consent), it also showed that Chuck was truly interested in assisting Gary with his good deeds, and that he didn’t even question about what to do or how to do it, or ask for the lottery numbers or stock tips. Seventeen episodes in, Chuck isn’t the self-centered and narcissistic asshole any longer, and instead, he serves quite well as Gary’s right-hand man, even going so far as to play a role dutifully. More of that, please. And with that I mean Chuck being the opposite of who he was during the first few episodes of the show.
