Date of airing: September 26, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.61 million viewers, 7.4/15 in Households
written by: Star Frohman
directed by: Gary Nelson
Do you see what happens when you get rid of Chuck and bring Marissa into the story, without turning the episode into a Marissa-centric hour? This was essentially the first episode of the series that utilized Marissa like a true other half of Gary's, like the partner is is for her, both in business and in life as friends. Sure, the writers had to use another instance of Marissa's death notification in tomorrow's paper to get her into some trouble, so that Gary has to come and save her (how often has this happened in the series already?), but when Marissa gets utilized in one of Gary's stories like the way she has been in this episode, it makes her a more intriguing character.
For the first time she wanted to help, she went out there directly, without being told so, because she wanted that feeling to be helpful and not be useless, and she wanted the sense of being a normal person and for her blindness to stop her from that. For the first time, she went out to simply just help, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. This should be part of her character now – just because she almost died after making the decision to go out there and help, and do part of Gary's job, it doesn't mean she should stop now. Sometimes, you just need a little bit of exercise and a "getting used to it" phase to be the hero in Chicago. Similar to how Patrick slowly warmed up to be the traffic cop at the intersection. He was shy about it first, but as soon as he got a wink and a kiss from a woman, he was all in.
 |
| The joy of being a traffic controller during rush hour... |
The blackout premise was a good one for the show, considering Gary had
to jump from one crisis situation to the next, always having to save a life here and there, which is how I like EARLY
EDITION. Let's go back to the third episode of the series ("Baby"), where he and Chuck were walking through Chicago during the evening hours, talking about random stuff, all while Gary was doing his little deeds – stopping a robbery before it even happens, preventing a girl from running away from home turning away a politician before meeting his secret lover in front of paparazzi. The series should have done those moments more often throughout its run, but for some reason, it never went as far. This episode's idea of a city suffering a minor malfunction could have been used for Gary to race to save a life, but in the end, he was only focused on stopping a riot. I guess not much happened in Chicago when the lights go out during one of the hottest days on record. It was nothing like in the season three finale of THIRD WATCH, in which the cops and firefighters have to save some people every couple of minutes.
Of course, the story of the riot was still generic and quickly established (it only takes two for an entire neighborhood to go berserk), considering it only happened at that one place when it maybe should have happened at different spots in Chicago, judging by the length of this blackout. Of course, one of the white guys had to be a racist about Chinese people working across the street in one of the stores (even going so far as to call him “Chinaman,” which I learned is a racist remark after Don Blankenship called Mitch McConnell's wife and family “Chinapeople” during the 2018 primaries), and of course, only men were involved in this brawl, with no woman in sight to stop these men from behaving badly. Heck, the writers even made sure that Mr. Lee's daughter-in-law was absent from the climactic events, just so no one stops these terrible men from being awful to each other. Sometimes I think that men deserve to be part of a mass extinction event – they have always been awful to others, and you don't even need to watch the news about riots to come to that conclusion. Anyway, the white guys with possibly Italian backgrounds in this episode could have behaved a little more human, but I guess the writers needed an inciting incident for Gary to prevent, and all the racist subtones right before the riot led to a nice final picture in which the whole neighborhood is having a blast getting together for a barbecue.
 |
| It's time for Marissa to go home and rest. |
In the meantime, I might have to get used to the fact that Gary is doing
the voiceovers during the opening and closing moments of the episode now. I got used to Chuck doing his meaningless sentences and "morals of the story," and maybe the writers could bring a bit more sense
into these voiceovers, now that the receiver of tomorrow's paper himself gets to open and
close the episode with his own words. With Gary doing them now, he could turn into a narrator of sorts for the series, which could change the narrative a bit. As Gary receives tomorrow's newspaper today and therefore knows what happens throughout the episode, his voiceovers could be used to make him something of an omnipotent character – someone who knows what will happen in the episode, because he is giving you the moral Gary has learned or will learn
