Date of airing: May 15, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.82 million viewers, 6.5/13 in Households
Written by: Jeff Pinkner, Carla Kettner
Directed by: David Grossman
So, Erica and Gary were officially seeing each other all these months? Well, I would figure that to be the case after they kissed at the end of the Valentine's episode, but since then, the writers have not made any attempts at depicting that relationship, or having Gary and Erica ever be together – either on a date, for movie night, having lunch together, or simply just kissing each other on the cheeks when one leaves McGinty's to save the day for others. Gary and Erica have never been in the "dating scenario" in front of the cameras, making me wonder why that was the case. Either Kyle Chandler and Kristy Swanson did not like each other very much behind the scenes, forcing the writers to not give them scenes together and the producers kept them apart within the narrative for most of the time, similar to how Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi were kept in their own individual storylines throughout the later seasons of THE GOOD WIFE due to the conflicts between the two women behind the scenes.
Or maybe it is because the writers were never interested in a romantic storyline that was forced upon them by the network, so they just decided to not follow the executive notes given to them – which the writers probably could afford, considering the fact that the "youngification" of the series during the early stages of the season did not succeed in bringing new audiences to the show. Or who knows, maybe it is because EARLY EDITION was one heck of a conservative show, so an active romantic relationship was too hot and steamy to be showcased in this television drama that was targeted at an entire family. Because Kristy Swanson left the show after this episode and was not returning for season four, it is imaginable there was trouble behind the scenes. Either her with Kyle, or her with the entire team of producers – do you remember that Swanson was in the title credits for only one episode? Maybe she was removed for some nefarious reason...
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| Gary tries his best to make friends with a cop, so that the police stops asking too many questions. |
This episode was pretty good. I always remembered the instance of Gary waking up, opening his apartment door, and the cat was not sitting on any paper, because the paper was not there, and Gary had to investigate why that was the case. I never remembered what episode it was or how the story turned out, but during my teenage time of watching the show in the afternoons after I got home from school, it has become one of those plots I always remembered for some reason, and after watching this episode now, I figured out why: The bomb plot was actually thrilling, and it brought the action into the show without having to focus too much on the action. Having a chase scene on foot and a little thriller on the El train was good enough to get the hearts pumping and hope for Gary to come on time and save some lives, and it did not even look like those scenes were expensive to shoot. Okay, the production team still had to set up scenes in a moving El train, let alone the explosion of various things, but it is interesting how EARLY EDITION managed to create thrill and tension without necessarily having to create a whole new setup for doing so. Sometimes, it is perfectly fine to get a thriller going inside the El train.
Anyway, this episode had a split personality. At first, it was all about
re-purposing the existence of Detective Armstrong who was suspicious of
Gary in the episode "Fate," followed by a little double date with Gary's
girlfriend and Armstrong's pregnant wife, and all of a sudden, it
became a story about a bombing, in which Gary had to risk his
life to stop the bombing. He knew that the Sun-Times building was about
to be bombed, but he was still stepping into it and trying to convince
Molly to help him. Gary knew that he was dealing with terrorists, and
yet he still went head-on into it to stop the explosion, even if it
means making himself look more and more like a suspect in front of
Armstrong (as well as making Molly ask a lot of questions about Gary).
Gary walks straight into a building about to get blown to pieces, and he
does not even think that he might lose his life and leave people
behind. That part of the episode was definitely intended, considering
the break-up with Erica just before, but it makes me wonder if Gary will
ever get to know that there are people around him who love him, and
that they might be a reason for him to think about before stepping
straight into life-threatening danger. Story-wise, this might have been a
proper reason for Erica to leave Gary, since he would never stop
getting into danger.
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| After a year of being useless characters, they finally took a train ride out of the show. |
Maybe action movies should go think about bringing back action scenes on
a grounded scale – houses do not have to burn down or explode in every
film, worlds do not have to end in every superhero blockbuster, and cars
do not have to explode when hitting walls or other cars. Sometimes a
simple chase on foot does it, in which one character runs after another
character, and both of them bump into random people on the street.
Preferably a scene that is not cut together like the ones in QUANTUM OF
SOLACE or THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (the Berlin foot chase in that film is
one of my favorites, in spite of the wild editing), but something that
can still be exciting for the audience without being too absurd. It is
no secret though that Hollywood has lost that sense a bit and is now out
to excite the masses with big-budgeted CGI festivals – what a shame
that the writing always has to suffer for it.
