Date of airing: May 2, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 9.15 million viewers, 6.2/12 in Households
The writers really wanted that play on words in the episode's title, but this episode didn't even have a painting by Claude Monet that was being stolen or imitated, it was all about the one and only Vincent van Gogh, possibly the most famous of all the famous painters in history, because the writers apparently thought that using a lesser known name, like Monet, would have created confusion amongst the viewers. This means this episode is a good example of how to find lazy episode titles and how they can be wrong every once in a while.
It was an entertaining episode, albeit another one of those absurd ones that couldn't figure out what the series wanted to be in its sophomore season. You have a $30 million painting hanging in a random Chicago museum, and the security of it is crap – a passive infrared sensor, and only one watch guard on duty – giving would-be thieves and professional heist experts an opportunity to just waltz in and take the damn thing as if it's a bag of Skittles in a 7/11 store. Heck, even a tiny, slightly overweight guy with a small pistol was easily able to walk into the museum and threaten the thieves while walking out of the building with the painting, making me wonder if the concept of security even existed in the series universe of EARLY EDITION. It's one of those huge inconsistencies about television that annoy me greatly, but every once in a while those ridiculous moments are funny enough that they turn the episode into more of a comedy.
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| This is not your usual master/student relationship. |
Which was helpful in this case, because Clive Harbison, the most British character on an American television comedy drama, lightened up the story and brought some levity into it with his charm. The light and funny-enough story also helped make me feel like I was watching a no-budget version of an OCEAN'S ELEVEN movie, only in which Ocean's (Clive's) crew consisted of five people (six, if you include Faye Davis) and the object of the thieves' affection was not money in a casino, but a painting in a small, barely secured Chicago art museum. And while I didn't mind the comedic charm of Clive, who opened this episode by lying to us and telling us he was working for MI-6 (because for Americans, every handsome and charming Brit is a spy with a license to kill), I would have hoped that some of the threatening and danger coming from Marty would have created a sense of tension and thrill in the narrative. After all, Faye was being held prisoner by Marty – one would think that this would be a dramatic situation for some of the characters involved, but this episode wasn't here to shock the audience or give them a high-concept thriller in 60 minutes. EARLY EDITION was still supposed to be a fun show first and foremost.
But Clive was still a fun character. I felt like I was watching a TV adaptation of the 1999 heist flick ENTRAPMENT (a movie made famous by its Catherine Zeta-Jones butt shot), or, who knows, maybe this episode was the birth of that film's premise, because something intriguing can be made about a pair of lovers who quarrel over a stolen painting one is the expert of and the other has to steal. something. Although maybe Clive and Faye could have had a story that took itself a little bit seriously, instead of making me wonder if Faye was about to grow some muscles and throw the entire bed at Clive in their breaking-up flashback scene. This episode being light and fun, there wasn't a whole lot of drama and emotion in Clive and Faye's scenes, making their romance useless and unimportant for the story. The narrative could have done it without their romance, and it would have worked exactly the same.
At least Clive got a story in this hour though – in fact, his backstory was pretty huge for a 45-minute episode, and it almost looked like Clive was the central character here, instead of the core three consisting of Gary, Chuck, and Marissa. However, the latter did get out of McGinty's for a change and became part of the story though, which was exciting to see. In fact, this may be the first episode of the series in which the three worked together to "solve a case," as if the writers finally realized that they have criminally underutilized the character of Marissa. I believe this was the first time Marissa was actively involved in Gary's shenanigans (albeit directed by Chuck, and executed by Clive), but still, this episode was all about Clive, and he remained the central figure of this episode's shenanigans. You finally get all three main characters together to do something, and someone still had to upstage them...
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| Fake cops, real heist. |
Marty in the meantime... He looked and sounded like he came straight out of the second HOME ALONE sequel, ready to put a bullet in little Kevin. As a villain, he was a complete and utter idiot. He was trying to run over his adversary and then try to shoot him in the middle of Chicago during the middle of the day, with witnesses being everywhere (by the way, no one in the bus cared they were being shot at? I guess that's Chicago...). Together with his decision to walk out of the museum with a stolen painting in his hands, it makes me think that he really wanted to get back to prison, as he did not give a flying fart about who was catching him in the act of committing a federal crime. Of course, he is the perfect villain for a family-friendly show, which is what I meant by Marty coming straight out of what should have been HOME ALONE 3, instead of Alex going at it against high-tech robbers that were more than electrocuted on a cold winter's day in 1997.
