My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 2 – “Jump For Joy”

Originally posted on September 29, 2006.

This week’s episode was different for two reasons: it didn’t involve a single item from the list, and it wasn’t particularly funny. It was also a direct continuation of last week’s episode, which may be totally different, but since I watched last season in non-sequential reruns I’m not sure about that.

Earl begins the episode by telling us that he begins most mornings thinking about the list, but on this morning he was thinking about other things, mainly going to court to help get Joy out of jail – then he recaps the events that happened in last week’s episode, landing Joy in jail in the first place.

The idea to create episodes that don’t involve the list seems like a decent one. The show is popular and it seems quite possible that the list could run dry before the show runs out of episodes, plus the concept of writing certain wrongs could become tiresome more quickly than the producers would like. But if tonight’s episode is any indication of how it will go without a list, Earl had better start thinking about his past mistakes more often.

The judge sets Joy’s bail at one million dollars due to this being her third strike. In flashback number one (or two if you count the opening recap) we see that Joy once tried to make counterfeit money by copying bills at a big copy center like Kinkos. Strike number two occurred when she was being fingerprinted for that crime and struck the officer due to him breaking her newly minted fingernails.

Randy, as usual, isn’t concerned with the events of the day, but with a walnut – he wants to see if the judge will crack it with his judge hammer. Amazingly, the judge obliges, even after tossing Joy out of court.

So, a million-dollar bail is set making it a cool $100,000s needed for a bondsman.

Earl no longer has that kind of money, but Randy makes a helpful list of folks they can borrow it from – Richie Rich, the Beverly Hillbillies, and the like – but the list of fictional characters is written on a Chubby’s Pork bag, and Earl thinks he might be able to borrow the cash from Chubby himself.

Chubby, played in full-on sleaze mode circa Striptease by Burt Reynolds, relents to the money request, but only if Earl can bring back his favorite dancer, who happens to be Catalina.

Turns out Catalina loved being a dancer, but her unusual method of jumping up and down was hazardous to local citizens – an old man died of a heart attack from watching her “assets” go boingy-boing. Thus she reserved herself to a life of cleaning motel rooms.

Ever the helpful lot, Earl and Randy (who can’t seem to think straight after Earl mentions Catalina being half-naked) track down the dead guy’s family and it turns out the old man was a slave driver in a sweatshop. His death has brought happiness to the sweat shop workers (for the son brought in a fan) and everything is better.

Catalina agrees to dance prompting Randy to ponder “which half’s going to be naked – I hope it is the front half.” But all doesn’t go well when Catalina finds out her dancing will get Joy out of jail. Catalina refuses to, as she puts it “jump for Joy” in what has to be the cheesiest clever pun in the history of television.

Joy agrees to apologize for all the wrongs she has committed against Catalina in hopes that she will agree to the dance. But as usual, Joy can’t play nice and the apology turns into a catfight over which of the two is hotter.

Somehow Joy convinces the judge to release her for a one-night Chubby dance in order to raise bail money. Joy gets drunk to calm her nerves and instead of dancing, she pukes all over the front row.

In the end, Catalina saves the day and agrees to dance – not for Joy, whom she still loathes, but for Earl and his quest to make people’s lives better.

Though in the episode, Earl was unable to scratch something off his list, the episode still revolved around him trying to help people out (in this case getting Joy out of jail, and Catalina back to dancing.) This causes me to ask what’s the point of moving away from the list if all you’re going to do is set up the same type of situation. Without the list, Earl seems a little unfocused. The show focused even more on juvenile gags (witness Randy’s long gag with Catalina’s half-nakedness) and less on any moral center involving karma.