Date of airing: April 4, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.8 million viewers, 7.0/12 in Households
This episode not only crossed over with a medical drama that didn’t have the need to be promoted by a Saturday primetime family drama, but it also went straight into the supernatural or paranormal for the first time, after the series has teased that it would go there a couple of times now, making EARLY EDITION a weird show in this episode. Yes, the cat and the paper are supernatural elements, but the writers never put a lot of effort into explaining the supernatural rules behind it, and instead just accepted those elements as part of a down-to-earth show, almost making these science-fiction elements realistic in the process. But for this hour, the writers delivered mummies, they included jewels that may or may not be cursed when you wear them, and there were two Egyptian idiots who may or may not have been turned into part of the exhibition in the end, as if the mysterious cat wasn’t a goddess, but Medusa herself. I don’t mind the supernatural part of this episode, but it kind of bit itself in the butt with a whole different part of the story, marrying two genres that don't seem to be fitting together at all: The story about a cat mummy cursing people who stole her jewelry, and the story about a couple of doctors from the neighboring Chicago TV show CHICAGO HOPE trying to stop an epidemic from breaking out. Who would have thought that a David E. Kelley drama would be set in the world of supernatural mummies and cats?
The crossover was a neat idea, albeit useless in general. I always wondered what a network TV universe could look like if all of their shows would be set within the same universe, sometimes crossing over to each other, and having characters interact like it’s the case with Dick Wolf's Chicago universe over on NBC. That is one heck of a TV idea, and it should be utilized more often. The doctors of CHICAGO HOPE weren’t necessary for this episode (except of course the plan was to expand on the epidemic story and continue it on CHICAGO HOPE in a follow-up episode), but they gave me a sense of television being more grander and more of a spectacle, without the writers constantly having to rely on generic stories that need to be concluded after 45 minutes. Sometimes, stories can finish in one episode and spin off into another TV show entirely. A world in which the adventures of BLINDSPOT and THE BLACKLIST happen to be set in the same universe? It would not only be logical and enrich both shows, but it would make television a little more exciting for a few weeks, even if the NBC Chicago franchise and the Arrowverse crossovers weren’t particular hits with audiences and in the ratings.
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| Marissa gets a new romantic love interest. Hopefully, he's not a psychopath. |
By the way, I was smiling a bit when Diane and Keith were discussing how they wanted to keep some of the virus, which could have been smallpox, just in case this whole thing is going happen again. As it turned out, in a whole ‘nother medical drama franchise over at NBC, smallpox was a danger to the entire city four and a half years later. Not to mention that a real-life pandemic would create angst and chaos (and a whole lot of angry anti-vaxxers) 22 years later that could have been stopped if scientists had been doing constant research on the viruses. Maybe the CDC should have crossed over to CHICAGO HOPE and got a sample from the three victims of potential smallpox in this episode, and maybe the ER season nine premiere “Chaos Theory” would not have been such a rather silly opener in September of 2002. Also, consider me surprised that CHICAGO HOPE did the smallpox thing before ER did – it makes me wonder if ER stole the plot from this episode, which didn’t even happen to be CHICAGO HOPE, and decided to amp it up a few thousand notches.
Then again, this wasn't even smallpox. It was just a term used to make the story more understandable and "logical" for the doctors of this episode. The scientists didn't believe in Egyptian curses, so they needed to explain the events with the scientific terms they have studied for years on end. Not to mention that "smallpox" as a term is known enough for an audience to get freaked out just a little, without needing to know a lot about the virus itself. All you need to know about smallpox is that it was a deadly disease back in the day, and it's officially eradicated from the planet. Drop that word in scripted entertainment and you keep the topic alive, and the viewers will never forget that smallpox actually existed. All of this was in an episode of television that was about Egyptian curses.
In the meantime, Marissa was dating a foul man once again. One can only hope that the next season will see Marissa happy, instead of on death's doorstep because the man wants to kill her. What a shame that the episode was already filled to the brim with
the supernatural and the CHICAGO HOPE crossover, because there could have been a
great opportunity to focus a bit on Marisa here (especially after Shanesia Davis-Williams was absent for three episodes in a row recently) and give her a love life that was good for more than just one episode. Even fictional black women who are blind are deserving of a romance.
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| When two television shows are about to collide... |
And finally, whether or not the writers were serious about Bastet being able to see into the future, and Gary’s cat being a descendant of the Egyptian goddess, it was an interesting, albeit tiny plot that probably made the viewers think a little, and gave them an opportunity to create a canon backstory. But in reality, the writers were most likely just having fun, forgetting all about what they have established so far. Because why would Bastet give away her power to random people in America, and condemn them to change the future, when she could have done the same in Egypt and kept the power in her "home country?
