Date of airing: January 25, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 13.48 million viewers, 8.7/15 in Households
This being a family show, the climax of the episode became a game of predictability. Family shows don’t tend to show how characters are killed on-screen, so when Theresa was apparently shot (notice how the show did not depict bullet wounds or blood) and then fell into the river, it was pretty obvious that this was just Frank’s way of making sure he is the one “killing” Theresa, instead of another mob family killing her to make a statement. This being a family show, not only was Theresa unable to die, but Frank was unable to be the real villain of the episode, while the federal agents were unable to be actual federal agents here, being mean to Gary and all that stuff. In addition, Frank managed to prove that he had a heart by protecting Theresa this way, by guaranteeing her an exit from this life and also enough safety to start a new one somewhere else.
That should not be possible in a real-life mobster scenario. Sometimes, being a family show hinders you in making sure that characters are characters and adversaries can be antagonists. At the end of the day, the only one who had actual control over everything was Gary, thanks to his magical newspaper. He even managed to make a deal with a mob boss and saved two lives in the process, with the physical help of the newspaper (I assume Gary gave him a snippet of the paper?). That can only happen in a show that doesn’t bother with killing off people with the audience watching. It also makes Gary something of a hero. When he can talk a mob boss down from doing some killing after supper, what else can he do that would save the world?
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| Welcome to the mob life of Chicago, Illinois! |
The episode was kind of boring and entertaining at the same time. Sticking the characters into a mob story could have been a good idea, but for a family show, it’s kind of a crappy idea, considering mob characters are usually killers that dump you into the ocean with a brick of cement on your feet. Yet nothing of that could be depicted in this show due to its family-friendly nature. Then again, I’m not so sure if Gary would have been able to stand the test of time against actual mobsters, even with tomorrow’s paper, because Chicago mobsters should be as evil as Italian mobsters in New York, or so I’ve seen on THE SOPRANOS, of which I have never seen more than the first season of (I never got into it, yet every time I see and hear the HBO stinger, I imagine that “Woke Up This Morning” is about to play). I might also be just applying the general cliches of Italian mobsters, because I’m not even sure if Italy sends all their criminals to American metropolitan cities to run them from a random sports bar. Is this a real-life thing that happens?
Anyway, the mob premise stuck the characters in a weird story, one that didn’t fit with the characters, especially when Chuck became the central figure who decided to fall in love with a pretty young woman because of Hollywood and male writers. If there is ever a story, written by men, about a man who does not fall in love with the female guest star of the episode, especially on 1990s shows and earlier, please tell me. This episode is just another one on the long list of television episodes that promote male wish-fulfillment. Only the male central characters are allowed to fall in love with the female guest star and no one else. That is one of the unwritten rules of television.
But hey, at least Theresa wasn’t a boring character. Pauley Perrette must have been somewhat of a household name even in the 1990s, otherwise, she would have not been given a role like this, let alone being credited as “Pauley P.”, which I found to be enough of a weird fact already. That Theresa would fall in love with Chuck of all people was maybe just a little bit absurd, but it did good things for Chuck as a character, who for once was not the jerk or the idiot of the story. It almost looked good on him that he was in love and I would almost consider this episode’s version of Chuck to be the one I would love to see throughout the show, but knowing the series, and seeing how the character has been treated by the writers so far, it’s probably going to be a “never going to happen” situation, and I can get myself prepared for another episode in which Chuck is the jerk and the idiot of the story, making me question why Gary is still friends with the man.
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| Gary doesn't like his best friend at the moment. |
One can hope that Chuck has an opportunity to get back to being the character he was in this episode. After all, the writers gave Meredith two episodes and Gary an opportunity to flirt with the guest character of the week. The same could happen for Chuck, and Theresa seemed like she would be the right character – she is snappy, she can take care of herself, and for a moment she looked like she wasn’t just a plot device for Chuck’s story. It’s almost like she is made for a return in a future episode. By the way, it’s noticeable how Marissa was not allowed to get that same kind of storytelling. Heck, she wasn’t even in this episode, because she is a woman, black, disabled, and therefore unable to go up against mobsters with guns in their coat pockets. Male wish-fulfillment usually cuts out actual women characters on shows, and EARLY EDITION is a prime example of how a show mistreats its only central woman character.
