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On NBC's premier of Ed, we quickly learn that New York City lawyer Ed Stevens (Joanie's former "dog-boy" from NBC's Providence) has had better days. If, like Ed, you spend ninety billable hours a week at your firm pouring over client contracts, every free moment away from firm drudgery is a gift. Ed's firm rewards him with such a gift: they fire him.

So, the Big Apple lawyer comes home to his tiny Manhattan apartment, only to find his wife in bed with a mailman. "He's not the mailman," Ed's wife points out. "Your wife and I met a couple of weeks ago at Starbucks," the mailman confesses. Ahhhh, subtleties that only a lawyer would appreciate.

With natural disasters unfolding a mile-a-minute, Ed does what any self-respecting young lawyer from the Midwest would do. He grabs his high school yearbook, gets all melancholy perusing pictures of high school sweethearts that never were, and quickly hops a plane to his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio. Cute name. For those of you familiar with the Midwest, Stuckeys restaurants are as easy to find on the highway as a Gap is in New York City. They're everywhere.

Ed quickly drowns his sorrows with high school buddy Mike Burton, his wife Nancy, the Burton's 4-month-old daughter, Sara, and Ed's unrequited junior high and high school love, Carol Vessey. The foursome goes out for a night on the town at Stuckeybowl (where Ed worked in high school), and knock back a few beers. Before we know it, Ed and Carol are necking like a bunch of hormone-raging teenagers. The next day (Ed's hormones must have still been raging) he buys the town's bowling alley.

For a legal eagle, Ed has a thing for assuming risk. In the midst of an impending divorce from his wife, he probably used marital assets to buy the bowling ally, doesn't do any "due diligence" to see if Stuckeybowl actually has any steady business, and knows very little about its employees. But Ed's saving money in a big way by letting the Burton family put him up. When Mike tells Ed that he's got the run of the house, but doesn't have to pay rent, Ed makes a half-hearted offer to pay rent. Mike refuses. "I know, that's why I offered," Ed replies.

Spending the morning at his new office, the bowling alley lawyer (he hates the phrase) tries a little bonding with the Stuckeybowl staff, telling them that, "Ed Stevens is one of you." The staff includes live-in manager, Phil Stubbs, who was recently evicted for paying his landlord (Phil lives in lane 16). There's Kenny, the bartender and cook. And then there's Shirley, whose church-girl character lacks any background, except that she has a cat named Kenny (hint, hint, hint).

Phil is a sole practitioner's marketing whiz, albeit a confused one. He turns a bowling alley, that's busy only once each month on league night, into a bustling legal consulting center. Bowl three games at $2 each, and get a free consultation with the lawyer. Never mind that Phil has a hard time understanding the difference between a judge and a lawyer ("Here comes the judge, here comes the judge," he announces to the long line of potential clients), or that he's probably helping his boss violate the state's disciplinary and ethics code by advertising on a hastily crafted cardboard law school diploma that Stevens is actually "Ed Dershowitz." Phil is a wheeler-dealer who doesn't take no for an answer. No free consultation until you actually bowl three games.

We get a glimpse of Ed's legal muscle when he represents former high school classmate, Molly Hudson, in an action to have her car restored to its pre-low-rider status. For a contracts lawyer, Ed quickly puts his new trial lawyer skills to good use. He gets the Stuckeyville Municipal Court judge to believe that the good 'ol boys in Molly's body shop installed hydraulics in Molly's car without her consent and then tried to shake the customer down for $1600. Not only does Ed get Molly a court order that her car be restored to its rightful condition, but he also gets her $500 for her pain and suffering.

Since this is a romantic comedy drama (a "dramady," according to NBC), Ed cannot let the first show end without going after his new sweetheart, Carol. Like her best friend Molly, Carol is a Stuckeyville high school teacher. And, like Ed, Carol's looking for a new love after her struggling-artist boyfriend reneges on his commitment of a romantic weekend.

In a tender moment, Ed and Carol hesitate and decide to take their new relationship slowly. After all, Ed suggests, they're on a "double date" away from the significant others that they appear to be leaving - Ed's wife in New York, and Carol's old boyfriend Nick, who is somehow clueless about what's happening.

Can this lawyer go home again? Will he find happiness and justice in his back home in Stuckeyville , where the grass is always green, and the Foo Fighters' music propels that cast on their merry ways?

This is a great romantic comedy that turns away from the urban legal life of Ally McBeal, and substitutes Ed, the guy who you can't help feeling sorry for. The legal scenarios on this episode were not all that credible (Come on, can you really have a trial the day after you leave the auto dealership with your client threatening litigation? My process server never worked that fast, and neither do the courts). But this is television, folks. NBC and the producers at Worldwide Pants Productions (comedian David Letterman's production entity) look like they've got a good thing going. This is "lawyer lite," and it works.

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