Date of airing: December 20, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 11.61 million viewers, 7.6/14 in Households
This was a lighter and funnier episode than the previous ones, making it a better episode of the second-season bunch, although that may not mean much for EARLY EDITION these days. At least the writers could establish that they were able to do weirdly comical episodes with intention, instead of making me laugh about the absurdities of chloroforming professional football players. There wasn’t a dramatic plot in this episode to try to look like a TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL episode, and the characters felt like they never belonged in a serious TV drama in the first place, making EARLY EDITION the right kind of show for them to appear in. Granted, it’s still not the version of the series I want to see, but at least it was less awkward than “A Regular Joe.” And it still managed to continue with the depiction of characters who are a little nutty at times.
But I do believe this episode may have been a victim of a CBS schedule shuffle. This is essentially a Valentine's Day episode that aired right before Christmas. With love and romantic pairings being a topic, I would have thought that this is an hour of television you could put into the first or second week of February to get your audience into a mood, but in this case, it serves as the episode to leave you to the Christmas and New Year's celebrations. And even if this was not a CBS schedule shuffle situation, it should have been – I may have watched this episode for this review on a muddy day in March, but why waste a potential Valentine's Day episode in December? Just delay the episode by two months and everything is going to turn out fine.
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| The hero rides in on a horseback. |
Abby was not a well-written character. A woman who thinks she is falling in love after not even knowing the guy is one thing, but not listening to the guy when he says he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings, and having her still be in love with him made her ridiculous, proving that she was the wish-fulfillment for a male writer (this episode was written by Alex Taub, a man). Abby was completely foolish of everything that would make a woman character a woman character, which makes her a great example of how not to write women characters in television shows or movies, and not have her be all about falling in love with random people. It’s a fantastical premise, almost a fairytale-type one, showcasing that women will cling to you, even if you don’t want them to, since that is apparently what women are here for in this episode. They are only supposed to fall in love with you (or another man), and they don’t have anything that makes them stand out as independent characters. They have no agendas for themselves, they only serve the story of a man. It's quite disappointing to see, actually.
But at least Jessica Hecht performed the character well enough to not have me feel disgusted for an entire hour. It won't help every time a weirdly-written woman pops up in a male-dominated series written by men, but in this case, Hecht's performance overshadowed some of the questionable story choices, as her charm was winning me over every once in a while. Even if I believed that Abby was generally a person I would never want to hang out with. Abby is the Overly Attached Girlfriend of the 1990s – yes, the meme already existed before memes even existed.
Then there was Chuck, who has also been written in a somewhat
horrible way, as he fell in love with a stranger as well (it was, once again, an attractive woman), and as obvious as it was, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of Rabbi Ellen her and had to do
everything to give himself a shot at a proper relationship. This
time around, Chuck even transformed as a character and was a wholly
different person halfway through – one that would not have existed during
the first season if he had been in a similar situation. Not to mention that it sounds ludicrous that Chuck would turn into a truth-teller simply by dating a Rabbi. Why was that a necessity in the plot, and why was this the only thing the writers came up with to give Fisher Stevens screentime? Yes, giving him another woman he could be an asshole to, as he has done on numerous occasions, would have been old and stale at this point, but at least that would have been in his character's spirits. Seeing him become Jim Carrey in LIAR, LIAR (only without the physical comedy bits) was anything but truthful to Chuck's spirits.
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| The black-eyed brothers meet to have a chat about love. |
At least this episode was mostly set in McGinty’s Bar, giving me the chance to see how Gary is actually conversing with his staff, even if there was only the same bartender to talk to (Robin, this being Ellen Mills' only acting credit, as she was mainly active as a producer and production manager), or whichever cook or chef was the guest character of the week. But hey, this was the first episode of the season that gave me a feeling of Gary actually owning the place and socializing with staff in between his life-saving missions. The only thing that’s missing is a packed house every evening, because this is a sports bar after all. Business is never booming during the day, although I could imagine that Chuck and Gary could spring for a couple of TV screens that show sporting events from other countries and time zones.
