Date of airing: May 16, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.36 million viewers, 6.8/13 in Households
written by: Carla Kettner
directed by: Gary Nelson
When you haven't established any story rules for your science-fiction-ish television drama, then you can do whatever it is that you want, even if it doesn't make sense. The writers never went into explaining where the paper comes from, why it comes with the cat, and if there might even be a black hole involved for Gary to get a taste of the spacetime continuum. This episode took the cake by having Gary factually travel through time, because it seemed apparent that this time, Gary would not have been able to "solve the case" in the present time without also having
"solved the case" more than 100 years ago in the past. And who else would have been able to take on the task of time travel and try and prevent one of the greatest folklore stories of American history? Yes, the same guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper today.
Thanks to the grounded nature of the show, the writers never even needed to explain the backstory of the paper, as the series is never too deep in the fantasy or sci-fi genre to need the paper's origin explained, but when you come with a literal time travel premise and have Gary wake up in 1871 to experience the Great Fire of Chicago for himself and try to stop it from ever happening and change history in the process, then maybe you should give some science-fiction-ish explanations for your story decisions. Not that it was needed in this episode, but why even bother bringing Gary back in time and saving at least two lives, when the only thing that trip to the 1800s was good for was to convince a random person in the present time to stop a construction worker from messing things up greatly? In a way, the only reason Gary "was sent" back to 1871 was to explain the existence of Jesse at the end, to explain how the serious construction accident was stopped.
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| The cat follows Gary through space and time. |
If you can't prevent a huge and deadly accident from happening in the present,
maybe go to the past and manipulate certain events so that they help you prevent that accident in the present? Is that one of the superpowers the paper gives you? Damn, what if you
get the New York Times from September 12, 2001, on the day before and face one of the most traumatic days of anyone's life that you can't just stop by "being there?" Are you going to jump back to, I don't know, 1993 and manipulate Bin Laden's first
effort to bring down the World Trade Center? Are you going back even further to manipulate events that would cause the terrorists to be ... uhm, good people?
Okay, that's about enough of my bitching. The episode was actually pretty cool. If you have a time continuum show set in Chicago, it seemed like a question of time when it would go back to the city's famous 1871 event, and in fact, I am a little surprised that NBC's TIMELESS, which I was watching as well at the time of this writing, never made it back to that historic event, considering they could have just stolen the premise from this episode and made an action thriller out of it, because in reality, this episode of EARLY EDITION and the general idea of TIMELESS in its second season aren't that much different from one another. The only difference is that Gary does not have guns to shoot, or does not like to fight with his fists, although, for some reason in this episode, he did swing his fist and threw some rocks and turned to violence for help, only because someone went out and about to make Marissa's life a living hell in 1871.
The story around the Great Fire of Chicago itself wasn't really that big though. Eleanor was just the black woman in the nineteenth century living a harsh life like any other black person in America, and Jesse was just another kid in a family-friendly television drama with nothing really interesting to offer, since he couldn't be the one saving the day, even though he did by copying a key to break out a friend from prison (so, that's how easy it was? In case I travel back in time one day, I must remember to bring candles with me, so I can break out of American prisons with ease). Maybe the episode could have focused on Eleanor and Jesse entirely and not made a fuzz about the major historic event, because then maybe the episode could have gotten some entertaining drama, considering it's what the show is made out of usually. Bring Gary into a domestic situation and have him help out, turn things for the better (in hindsight, season one's “Gun” might actually be one of the most prolific episodes of the entire show, because of that hour's domestic premise). But in this episode, Gary was too focused on the Great Fire, because the writers thought it was what the viewers were interested in. Daisy, Mrs. O'Leary, the barn... There is no way this episode could have been about anything else, because why care for Eleanor and Jesse's story, when you have an entire movie's premise to work with during your 45 minutes of 1998 television?
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| The greatest Chicago folklore is being extinguished. |
Meanwhile, it has become noticeable that the writers were giving Shanesia Davis-Williams more to do. Her character got more involved in Gary's "good deeds," and she was even something of a central character in this episode, thanks to the fact that Eleanor was not blind and could interact with other people as anybody else could. Here is to hoping that Marissa would become more of an involved character in the next season, due to [spoiler alert], because she has been underused and undervalued for so long. Seeing her getting more screentime lately has been great, and all I want for Marissa is to at least be involved in Gary's daily missions to save lives, if she doesn't already get a proper chance to have a love life with someone who is not a psychopath.
