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My Name is Earl on NBC

By Greg Rock

As part of the continuing trend of adult themes shown during the traditional Family Hour, My Name is Earl on NBC, featured multiple depictions of illegal drug use and attendant paraphernalia.  In the April 17^th episode, “No Heads and a Duffel Bag,” we find the titular character Earl still comatose in the hospital, having been struck by a car after a failed familial intervention.

“No Heads,” recounts the time Earl ruined his parent’s vacation to American Samoa. The episode is almost entirely a flashback and takes us back to Earl, Joy and Randy picking up alcohol at the grocery. A nervous drug-dealer hides a duffel bag filled with marijuana in the back of Earl’s truck. Back at their parent’s house, Earl and the others open the bag, revealing a large amount of illegal marijuana. The idea of smoking the drug is quickly ruled out, but the notion of selling the drugs for profit is agreed upon by Earl, Joy and Randy, even though they agree to “only sell it to bad people. No women, no children.” The plan gets more complicated when Joy tries to buy groceries with some marijuana, dumping the drug on the store counter. Eventually the nervous drug dealer tracks Earl back to the house, where both find Earl’s parents have burned the illegal drugs.

There are several jokes based on the premise of a marijuana “contact high” (a person becoming intoxicated through second-hand smoke inhalation). Earl’s father burns the marijuana in his backyard, and the smoke drifts over to his neighbor, who later hugs Earl’s father in an obviously altered state. The nervous drug dealer exhales marijuana smoke in the bathroom – we don’t see him inhaling – and we follow the cloud through the ventilation system to the nostrils of Earl’s mother, who later starts cutting her hair and believes she is a “kite.”  Earl, Randy and their father find another drug dealer to replace the destroyed marijuana. The dealer tries to coerce Earl’s father into smoking marijuana with him from a bong.  Earl’s Father grabs the bong and smashes it over the head of the drug dealer’s henchmen.

With multiple depictions of marijuana use and paraphernalia, the episode can be viewed as a primer on the effects and the conveyances of the drug. Even though the idea of selling or using marijuana is associated with criminals and other undesirables, the fact the program aired at 8 p.m., the top of the Family Hour, doesn’t seem consistent with content appropriate for family viewing.