Date of airing: November 7, 1998 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 12.00 million viewers, 7.7/14 in Households
written by: Alex Taub
directed by: David Grossman
The episode's title could not have been truer for this anti-Chuck viewer. I did not like Chuck throughout the first two seasons, because his antics were just horrible, they had me constantly asking how he and Gary can be friends, and they had me wondering why Chuck wasn't in prison by now, considering how often he was about to break finance laws, simply by wanting to use the paper to get rich. I am wondering if there was ever a thing he did right in the life of the show (one time, he did go out to save Gary's life in the season one freezing episode "Frostbit"), but let it be known that he did absolutely nothing right in this episode, and I would have loved it if Gary had thrown him to the wolves.
And I was getting used to Chuck not being in the show... Seven episodes later, and he had to return for a guest spot and annoy the cookies out of me with his self-obsession again, making me think that Chuck has learned absolutely nothing about life while living it as a rich man. By the way, how can you burn $100,000 in less than six months? Okay, Chuck mentioned he lost the most of it in Las Vegas, which is something I think he predicted would happen sooner or later, but damn, this guy is even more ridiculous in this episode than he was during the first two seasons of the show when he was a main character. Not to mention that his handling of money is very much a sign of the fact that he cannot deal with money at all – his illegal actions at the stock trading market when he knew what would happen at the market; the fact that he managed the bar into blinking red numbers... Do not give this man any more money or he will burn it like a crypto bro. As Gary was asking himself how he and Chuck were ever friends in the first place, I was asking myself how Chuck, the asshole that he was most of the time (except when he actually had the heart Gary was talking about, and saved some lives, including Gary’s), turned out to be one of the main characters in a television show for two years, while a black woman was neglected for that
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| For his surprise return, he is expecting a big hug. |
The episode was really not that great.
I would have wished for Chuck to never exist after his exit in the second season finale, and for
the writers to have just moved on without him, placing Gary with some
new friends and people (isn't that why Patrick, Erica, and Henry are here in the first place?). With Chuck in this episode, it felt like just another episode from the first or second season, in which the "best friend" annoyed me with his inexcusable behavior, and even made me reconsider what he understands as "friends." Chuck was his crazy
obsessed self again, trying to use the paper to enrich himself (albeit indirectly this time around) and putting Gary into a different kind of peril once more. Chuck decides to start a new business that has Gary involved in it, only without asking Gary first. Chuck gets into trouble with people he owes money to (thank the heavens that Leonard was not a professional mobster) because of bad business decisions. Chuck is obnoxious and constantly puts Gary in danger. Chuck has always risked his friendship with Gary, making me question why Gary never broke up that friendship ever since he started getting the paper, as Chuck was always a bad influence and caused trouble ever since.
And this time, Chuck's atrocious antiques brought him and Gary in front of rolling cameras at THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW, which, for some reason, decided to air live that day, so that Patrick and Erica can conveniently catch the show and speed to the set quickly to help Gary and Chuck (note that they never arrived at the studio and caught Gary randomly on the street). I guess Jerry Springer had to get involved in this episode, due to the fact that he was at the peak of his fame during the time this episode was produced (a year later, AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME would also employ his services as a talk show host for story purposes), and THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW was beating Oprah's talk show in the ratings. It looks to me like the producers of EARLY EDITION hoped to get some of that stunt casting with Jerry Springer and get the ratings up. This seemed to have worked, with this episode getting twelve million viewers, the highest audience reach of the season so far. EARLY EDITION hasn't gotten this many viewers since the beginning of 1998, for the episode in which Gary is a politician for an hour ("Run, Don't Walk"). Although I do wonder why CBS would give attention to a TV show that was not being produced by CBS at all – THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW, albeit airing in syndication, was produced by NBCUniversal, and therefore didn't have any synergy with CBS.
Anyway, there could have been a real story of Chuck and Gary breaking up as friends and fighting it out, due to their individual and unique ways of handling their stressful situations, but midway through the hour, when it became time to guest on THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW, it became a plot full of confusion and forced comedy, It was forced because the writers decided to throw Chuck and Gary into this construed plot of anger and mistrust, a story about getting stabbed in the back and risking someone's reputation for the purpose of getting rich quick. It was never a story about Chuck and Gary's friendship, the way it maybe should have been after the two were separated for a while. Chuck's return should have been handled as something of a "Hey, nice to see you, haven't seen you in a while, let's have a beer and chat" thing, but Chuck came back because he needed money. This egotistical behavior ruined the episode for me. Maybe the writers should have turned the story into a bit of a character drama, to show that life in Hollywood wasn't rosy or successful for Chuck, but instead, they forced the audience to laugh and cheer the violence happening in front of Jerry Springer and his audience, giving the "worst TV show of all time" too much attention and even telling the viewers that it is okay to be excited by Jerry Springer's violent episodes, because in this episode of EARLY EDITION, it was fine and used for comedic effect. Or it was supposed to be used for comedic effect, because I sure as heck was not laughing.
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| Live on The Jerry Springer Show, friends fight to the death. |
In the meantime, I consider it part of the mythology that the paper does not want its recipient in the news or on the front page. The cat being angry about Gary's appearance front and center was a nice move, and the paper fading in front of Gary’s eyes to “punish” him and force him to action seemed like a big deal for the paper to take, even if the entire plot felt extremely convenient. But it was to depict that the paper has something of a soul, too. It decided to come to Gary because of his morals (the ones he grew up with, thanks to his good parents). And now it decided to punish Gary for inadvertently causing a bit of a ruckus, even if the paper most likely knew that none of it was Gary’s fault. Maybe the cat should have been angry at Chuck instead.
Yes, this episode was up chuck. Let's forget about it.
