Date of airing: May 1, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.68 million viewers, 5.4/11 in Households
written by: Alex Taub
directed by: Scott Paulin
You can file this episode under “No one ever listens to Gary,” and you are all set on what the main premise of this episode is. Mostly I do not care when people do not listen to Gary’s warnings, since it comes with the premise of getting tomorrow's newspaper today every once in a while, and sometimes is a plot device to further some of the suspense of the story, but in this episode, it seemed rather ridiculous that no one was listening to the man. The news coverage began with the prison break of two prisoners (who conveniently were not established with what they were in prison for – murder? Rape? Dropping a television on a cop's foot?), so everyone should at least have basic knowledge about the events that unfolded not far. So if someone like Gary comes around and has information about the escaped convicts, then maybe get your butt moving and investigate? If someone thinks they know where the escaped convicts are and what they are going to do, police should listen and not be a dick to Gary, just because his words sound a little crazy and because you did not like him during high school.
Especially Joe, that lazy son of a mother who did not teach him to listen. The writers might have helped themselves conveniently by including a plot of jealousy between him and Gary, but Joe should not even be the Chief of Police if he does not even take Gary’s words seriously. Granted, Joe started to think about what Gary said later and went to the Hobsons' house, but if he would have focused on his job from the beginning, things would have been a lot easier for the good guys, and a lot harder for the bad guys. But yeah, I guess that is what a plot device like jealousy does to the story. At least the writers knew how to extend the episode to the 45 minutes I eventually watched, even if it was not fully to my liking.
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| Two inconspicuous prison breakers walk around in broad daylight. |
Bringing Gary back to his hometown Hickory was fun though. I loved that everyone greeted Gary like he never left and he is the one person everyone knows – the guy was gone for 15 years, but apparently, everyone knew what he looked like, and no one had any interest in talking to him about what he was doing in Chicago (okay, his parents were juicing up his life most likely, so no one needed to ask), or how his day is going, or why he came back to Hickory. I believe you could consider that part of the story a smalltown satire, especially with the old librarian coming after Gary and almost wanting to throw him in jail right there and right then for not returning a book when he was still in high school. The whole smalltown charade was actually intriguing and served up some good comedy I chucked at, and as the writers tried to include some backstory into Gary’s life (sometimes successfully, sometimes with an incentive to roll some eyes), this episode could almost be considered part of Gary’s general backstory. You know who Gary is today and what he is like, but you have not quite figured out what he was during his high school years and when he was a teenager, and as it turns out he might have been something of a popular jock back then, making me wonder how he ever managed to have a high standard of morale, which allowed him to receive the paper in the first place. What happened in his life that he let go of his days as a popular jock and became a loner with a couple of friends who receives tomorrow's newspaper today?
The story of the two convicts could have easily been used for comedic elements, and I am thankful the writers did not go that far. They could have turned out to be the two idiots from the first THREE NINJAS movie (that movie did not age well at all), but they were in fact a little dangerous, only waiting for the perfect time to commit another serious crime if Gary had not been around to stop pretty much all of their attempts at criming. In a way, I am thankful that the writers decided to focus on Gary during this episode, and not his effort to change the headlines too much, even if that is what he has been doing all day long. Putting his hometown right in front of his feet to stop him from doing his “job” was kind of funny though, and elevated the episode to a surprising level. Not to mention the return of Lois and Bernie, who are delightful characters, but put into the show in perfectly small doses – twice, maybe three times a season, which is the perfect amount to deal with them and then forget they ever existed. They are fun when they are around, but you would become crazy if you had to deal with them all year long.
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| Gary does not mind being locked behind bars by his former high school rival. |
And finally, you can consider Gary an action hero now. He went into the house, knowing he would have to knock out one of the bad guys whom he knows now is a killer. He jumped onto the hood of the car that was about to crash into the farmer's market, hoping he could stop it like that – but of course, because Gary is not a real action hero, he had no idea what he was doing. At least he knew that he did not know, making the scene at the market a little funnier. But yeah, Gary has been getting his hands dirty lately, and suddenly I am wondering if the show would ever have survived a fifth season if it could have gotten closer to stories told on all the action dramas that came out after 9/11. Great, now I am thinking about what Gary had to go through if he had to prevent a 9/11-style disaster. When that headline pops up on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper, what does one like Gary do exactly?
