Date of airing: November 14, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.80 million viewers, 7.3/13 in Households
written by: Sean Clark
directed by: Scott Paulin
I would say that death row episodes in any television drama is the one I could go all in for, since you could bring all the drama, as well as a race against time in the same episode, creating both tension and a flow of emotion for the audience. I will always remember “Nine Hours” fondly, an episode of THE GOOD WIFE, and I can almost say that this episode of EARLY EDITION has been equally dramatic, albeit less logical when it comes to the legal drama aspects. After all, barely anything made sense in this story when you look at it from a real-life angle – the murder of Tom Fletcher was most likely not fully investigated, because any homicide detective who thinks of themselves as the next great Columbo would have soon built a connection between the murder and the Fletcher company shenanigans that happened right after Tom's death. Not to mention that a jury would not go for the death penalty when the murder weapon has not been found and there was a witness, even if said witness didn't see a lot..
But hey, Gary was getting involved in a death row case and he practically investigated a murder case and became a cop in this episode – maybe he should think about becoming a homicide detective one day. With the paper in tow, he could definitely solve quite a few cases, least alone prevent those cases from being cases in the first place. With Gary's involvement in a death row case, this became an emotional episode, and it was one which pushed Gary almost to the limits, as he was trying to save a life. This time not by quickly running and stopping them from doing a grave mistake, but by literally going against the government and stopping them from legally killing someone.
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| They are here to hear your story one last time. |
Of course, a bit of nitpicking is appropriate, as this episode was definitely not close to perfect. Lucius Snow got a little bit of backstory once again, and the viewers got to hear about another case he was working on, besides the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was just a bit weird though that Gary has never even heard about the Fletcher murder before, considering how much the case was doing numbers to Lucius during his days of receiving tomorrow's newspaper today. All the paper and information Lucius left behind for Gary, and none of them were about the Fletcher murder and how Ricky was innocent. All the pressure for Lucius to help out Ricky, and he left no information about the case to his successor. All this talk about Lucius Snow between Gary and Morris, and the latter never brought up Ricky and the Fletcher murder. And let's not forget the business card Marissa found in the drawer (the same drawer Morris said he just cleaned out), kicking off the second act of the story and driving it toward the conclusion. Yeah, the writers created a line of convenient twists to move the story along, but while it might be a problematic way for some to write for television, it at least didn't take away the emotional drama of the premise.
The setup to Ricky’s story was simple as heck, as it was the center of a 45-minute episode that needed a beginning, a middle, and an end, so there could not have been any more complex twists and turns to jerk around the story. In fact, maybe it had a few too many characters in the story in the first place, as Ricky's story was not just about his innocence in the murder case, but he was also involved in something of a love story here. The flashbacks of Ricky and Allison, as well as the conflict between Allison and her brother Tom, seemed like they should have been part of a different kind of story, and unfortunately, they filled up the screentime that should have belonged to Gary and Chicago Sun-Times reporter Molly Greene teaming up to investigate the murder, and to advocate to the audience the absurdity that is capital punishment. The episode needed a little bit less of Ricky and Allison, and a little bit more of Gary and Molly. Although, the episode also needed a little bit more of the backstory of the murder, as the conclusion of it came over as extremely rushed and almost incomplete. The real murderer confessed on tape, and two scenes later, Ricky was already walking out of prison and into the arms of the love of his life. This episode could not have sped through the story any faster than that.
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| They are here to pay respect to the one person who always believed. |
Meanwhile, EARLY EDITION may have changed just a slight bit under the new showrunning leadership of Jeff Melvoin. Gary's adventures as Supervisor in the season two episode “Walk, Don't Run” have been referenced for a second time this season (the first time being in the season premiere), with Molly Greene even returning from “Walk, Don't Run” to join forces with Gary and save the life of another man. It's almost like previous events in Gary's life are not forgotten in the writers' room, and the attempt to have some past characters return for another appearance or two looks like an effort to make it certain that Gary's actions will be noticed at some point. Lucius' successful attempt at stopping a train derailment in 1990 got the attention of the paper back then, and Gary almost blew up his whole deal in the previous episode when he needed to prevent being identified as Chicago's silent samaritan, but that doesn't mean there is no one questioning what is going to happen when Gary is around. A few people already do that when he shows up, and at some point, one of those people will be another reporter. Maybe it will be Molly, who is already freaked out by Gary – freaked out enough to start her own investigation into him? It's a backstory of the series that seems to start building up these days, which definitely sounds exciting.
