My Name Is Earl + How I Met Your Mother – Season Two sets

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Episodes: C+/C

 

 

Lightweight is the way to describe live action comedies on TV today.  The animated series Family Guy, South Park and The Simpsons are more on the cutting edge than anything else and make adults look idiotic.  There are two ways that can be and both hits My Name Is Earl and How I Met Your Mother show how.  First, you can find out more about each show from our previous coverage:

 

My Name Is Earl – Season One

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4397/My+Name+Is+Earl+-+Season+One

 

How I Met Your Mother – Season One

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4760/How+I+Met+Your+Mother+–+Season

 

 

Earl is a show that is knowingly having fun with its half-witted characters, while Mother is the kind of show that brainwashes its audience into thinking everyone is nice/dumb in a way that is as disturbing and problematic as it is unacceptable.  Skipping an all gross-out comedy, the kind that also tries to deny reality in sinister ways, that these are hits at all is a sad sign of so much that is wrong with TV.

 

At least Earl has Jason Lee, a naturally comic talent who knows how to make this kind of material work.  It never pretends to be something it is not, unlike Mother, which thinks it knows it all and is somehow high class comedy.  Did Friends ruin TV this much?

 

If you must, start with the first sets, but both shows are nothing great despite Earl just trying to be dumb fun that does not insult its audience.  Technical specs and performance mirror the previous sets, while both have few extras.  Earl has deleted scenes, some audio commentary track on select shows and a few featurettes, while Mother offers some of the same, but adds a gag reel and an Easter Egg somewhere.

 

Your time is yours.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo