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| Ed NBC Wednesday 8 pm/7 central | |||||||||
Reviewed by Joel Zand February 28, 2001 Third-Life Crisis Ed's realization that he is no longer an 18-year-old high school student should come as no surprise. The combination of getting a physical at Dr. Mike's, working with his newest client, and giving big brother guidance to Stuckeyville High's Warren Cheswick make the bowling alley lawyer pause for some serious introspection. Where is he going? How should he live his life? Can he eat two pies in one sitting? Serious questions, indeed. Wake Up And Smell The Bacon Ed's latest client, chemical engineer Willie Johnson (Kevin Pollak, Cruise's co-counsel in "A Few Good Men," Hockney in "The Usual Suspects"), prompts Stuckeyville's legal eagle to smell the bacon - literally. He goes to Ed for help with a patent application to make bacon more "baconey." Everyone who eats the stuff swoons and salivates for more. The secret to his $2,300 a slice discovery? He puts bacon in a machine to shake out the flavor. The metaphor is not lost on Willie and the show's cast of characters. Stephens gets a call from Dr. Mike to rush to the hospital right away. Willie's life was shaken up like an extreme sport when he went back to his lab to extract even more flavor from the bacon to make it more affordable to consumers. The near-death experience unleashes a whole new side to the inventor. He gets arrested for climbing Stuckeyville buildings, becomes the life of the party at The Smiling Goat, and orders everything on the restaurant menu when he takes Molly out on a date. Ed argues in court that the inventor should not be arrested for disturbing the peace after climbing buildings, alleging that Johnson suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder triggered by his near-death experience in the bacon laboratory. Willie's desire to live every moment in life to the fullest leads him to write "Do Everything - Willie Johnson's Guide To Life." Willie's brings his zest for life enthusiastically to Stuckeybowl to do what may soon become the next fad: nude bowling. It sounds like a good time, but not good enough for the Stuckeyville judge who decides to put Willie in jail before the inventor goes riding off into the sunset on a horse for new adventures. Like convicted New York City parking magnate Abe Hirschfield (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/nyregion/02ABE.html), Willie seems to think that a night in jail is just another adventure. This guy is fearless. Crazy, but fearless. Having woken up and smelled the bacon, he rides off -- literally on a horse -- for new adventures outside of Stuckeyville. Thoroughly Thoreau Stuckeyville High's Warren Cheswick wakes up to smell the bacon in a way that's quite different than Willie. When he learns that Carol assigned him to a reading group for Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," the same group that Jessica Martell is also assigned, he's delirious with joy. Warren is radicalized. He wants to follow in Thoreau's footsteps by living the simple life. "Time is but the stream I go a-fishin' in," he reflects. Stuckeyville's equivalent to Walden Pond is Mt. Precipice, and that is where Warren asks Jessica to put Thoreau's theories into practice by spending the weekend with him on a little extra-curricular project, camping out and living the simple life. Jessica rejects the request by citing the disapproval of her parents, but Ed fans know that Warren's been rejected. Not missing a beat, reading group member Donna, who has her eye on Warren, shares her view of the rebuff: "Do you really think that Jessica Martell is what [Thoreau] had in mind when he said simplify?" Warren ends up spending a snow-filled weekend up on Mt. Precipice, where Ed finds him during a personal retreat of his own. The big news is that, like Thoreau, Warren "advances confidently in the direction of his dreams to live the life which he has imagined," and he's doing so with his classmate Donna.
The "creaks" that Ed feels his body is making, and the experiences that he has with his client Willie, make the lawyer look back to happy times as a teenager. Can he turn the clock back to the time when he was a member of the Two-Pie Club at The Pie Shop? He can, but not without getting sick. Ed looks back on a journal of his life's accomplishments for some guidance on what direction he should take. In the process, he caves in to Phil Stubb's demands for a piece of Ed's income from lane fees, bowling shoe rentals, and even his law practice (an ethical no-no). In a smart move, he gives Phil 5% of all bowling shoe rentals. Having listened to self-help tapes for guidance regarding the demands from his boss, Stubbs is pleased with his achievement in his "doggy-dog world." There is, however, nothing like a cool winter run up Mt Precipice to help Ed look deep into his soul for direction and answers in his life. Should he read Walden for guidance? Does Willie Johnson's Do Everything book have the answers? Perhaps a little of each. Whatever the answer is for the lawyer, fans can't help feeling that Ed's going to stay in the race a long time. |
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In a curious role reversal with the show's protagonist, Joel Zand is a New York solo practitioner who left his Midwestern roots behind to work with Findlaw. He has represented New York City landlords, tenants, and folks with pets in pit-bullesque litigation (always representing the underdog, of course). Zand received his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and his B.A. from the University of Chicago. |
