My Name Is Earl: Season 4

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, there were ads for a Nickelodeon show called 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd. The concept was that a school bully had been turned into a dog - by God? Karma? - and that he'd resume his human form if he could do one hundred good deeds. Even back then, I was jaded enough to know that the show likely wouldn't last a hundred episodes, and that there'd be no "happy ending" so to speak. (I was right. A quick Wikipedia check reveals that there were indeed only forty episodes and that the series was canceled while Eddie McDowd was still a dog with sixty-odd good deeds left. Anyway, I couldn't help but think about that show as I dove into the fourth and final season of Earl, a show with a strikingly similar concept - Earl has a list of wrongs he needs to right - but no definitive endgame. Sure enough, when the fourth season drew to a close, Earl was nowhere close to finishing off his list. Clearly, the showrunners thought there'd be an order for a fifth season, as the series finale ends with a pretty gigantic cliffhanger. Don't you hate that? I'm not even sure why Earl was canceled. Though ratings had slipped from season to season, even Season 4 was pulling in 6.6 million viewers. For comparison's sake, the current show airing in the 8:00pm time slot on NBC's Thursday night line up, Community, gets about 4.5 million viewers a week. (Not that I'm complaining about the birth and continued existence of Community!) Of course, TV renewal and cancelation decisions are a strange thing, and whether or not Earl deserved to be canceled after 96 episodes, it was. As far as the fourth season is concerned, I think it was a huge improvement over the experimental and quirky third season. The writers took a back-to-basics approach and just allowed Earl to continue working on his list to set up humorous episode-long arcs while the other characters functioned as broad but lovable stereotypes of the lower-middle class. After Season 3, I was glad I was almost done with Earl. But after Season 4, I kind of wish there were just a few more episodes that could neatly tie a bow on the ending and give the people of fictional Camden County some kind of closure. But, hey. Far better shows have ended far more prematurely. (Speaking of which, have you guys heard that Arrested Development is coming back next fall for ten episodes?)