Date of airing: October 4, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 13.46 million viewers, 9.1/17 in Households
I think that, for the first time, one of Chuck’s opening and closing
voiceovers had some meaning for the story or the viewers, as he was
telling the audience to look closer the next time they are on a subway
car or in the grocery store, because the person next to them could be a
hero. It’s certainly a way to see the world with different eyes, in a
different light, and it’s definitely one way to travel through town and
imagine one big heroic story after another, while you scribble down
thoughts in your notebook, in case you were attempting to write a novel
or a screenplay and needed the muses to hit you. During the previous
season, Chuck’s voiceovers have been quite useless most of the time, but
now that some purpose was being thrown at them in this episode, I’m
wondering if things will get better from here on. After all, the
producers must have liked giving us Chuck from the off, or else, they
wouldn’t have updated the title intro by adding his voiceover into it, let alone kept the voiceovers for this season.
This episode was solid. The writers were a little shy to go into PTSD as a narrative device (they didn't even name it here), or fully go into describing suicide, despite the fact that Jim Matthews was trying to kill himself every ten minutes in the story. In the end, the writers focused heavily on the backstory set in Vietnam, to give the audience an explanation as to why Jim was trying to end his life, without ever going into the notion of somebody committing suicide. A reason was given for an action before the action was properly included in the plot. And for that, I blame the fact that EARLY EDITION was a family-friendly TV drama, and hitting the audience with deep PTSD drama that goes all in on the premise of suicide would have been too much. Then again, maybe EARLY EDITION needs some respect to come up with such a story in the first place, as today’s shows for families possibly would not go into the idea of suicide, especially after 13 REASONS WHY got blowback for having a scene depicting suicide (so much blowback in fact that Netflix removed that scene from the show's first season finale). There is no need to jump straight into a depressive overload here and emotionally confuse the viewers, although that is what probably would have happened if EARLY EDITION hadn’t been a show airing on Saturday nights on CBS.
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| Gary gets another "thanks" for saving someone's life. |
Although it has to be said that this episode was most likely the darkest of the series so far. During the first season, the writers and directors were hesitant showing death and murder on screen, which is why the "mobsters" who hunted Gary and Meredith in the fourth episode "The Paper" were either not killers or they offed Richie between scenes, and not even that was clear, since Richie's fate was never established. In this episode however, the writers went with a story about suicide, and there even was a human death depicted on-screen. It was shown how Jim killed the girl in the tunnels. The blood on his fingers was shown as well. So much for EARLY EDITION being a family-friendly weekend evening series on television...
Sometimes it seemed convenient though how Gary was able to handle each and every problem like he is just following the clues from one plot point to the next. Gary was immediately able to figure out whose Medal of Honor he just found, because a memorial with the medal recipients was written about in the Sun-Times, just so Gary can have Jim’s name and follow up on his family by talking to them like he is a counselor or something. At least this time around, Gary had some difficulties talking to the family members – Jim’s wife thought about calling the cops, and Jim’s college-bound kid wasn’t interested to hear anything the strange white man had to say to him about his father. And yes, Gary is supposed to have it easy like that (knowing about the family of the person he was supposed to help), since the show simply just couldn’t force him through various obstacles when the writers just wanted to get across the "moral of the story." But sometimes, maybe it was not such a bad idea to have Gary run into dead ends for a change, or have him be unsuccessful in helping someone out. Or is there an unwritten rule in family shows that says to have the character “win” every time?
Meanwhile, Chuck’s story was weird. He saw a beautiful woman, and he thought he can do anything to get her wrapped across his fingers. By now, this plot device has become absurd and annoying in the bigger picture of the series, and for once I would hope that the next time the man sees a pretty young thing, he is not going to behave like a gentleman who deserves to be around her, to talk to her, and doesn’t turn into a pretentious douche as he attempts to woo her over and win her. In this episode, Chuck was that jerk, who thought he could talk tough to some low-life Chicago enforcers thinking they are mobsters, and Chuck thought this entire time that by getting into it, he would win over Mae and he would live happily ever after with her. And the most annoying thing about this story was that Mae seemed to have been eating it up. That’s usually a sign of the story being written by a man, as Mae’s behavior around Chuck was almost male wish-fulfillment. Plus, Chuck thought he could be the boss of Chicago, alienating a food company on the phone, right after he got a management position. The fact that Chuck alienated a company on the phone like this should have been a fireable offense, but for some reason, the guy is still working with Gary.
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| The hero emerges with the key to open the locked door. |
Then there is Marissa, who still gets small amounts of screentime when she was deserving a lot more than that by now. But I did appreciate that her disability was used visually for a change, as she was reading braille on screen. I have no idea how realistic that looked, but it was a sign for things getting better for Marissa. Just like Chuck, she is now working for (or with?) Gary, which means as Gary is waking up to tell his staff of two what is day is going to look like, after having looked into the paper, Marissa will continue to have screentime, even if just in smaller doses. But it would also mean the writers were about to realize whether or not the character had importance for the show.
By the way, I'm sure that the producers of the series planned to get a couple more A-listers to guest-star on the series. After all, Louis Gossett Jr. came into this episode with an Emmy Award nomination for his guest appearance in a TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL episode that aired in February 1997. If EARLY EDITION would also score some acting nominations, would CBS use it to market the series and hope for more viewers? But first, they needed to cast actors who would be recognized by Emmy voters.
