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Can't We Just Be Friends?

The traditional stereotype that spring is the quintessential season of love applies in the world of Ed Stevens. America's favorite small-town lawyer continues looking for love more than ever, while the leaves are falling from the trees and cozy cups of coffee fill the hands of Stuckeyville residents everywhere they go. It's such a beautiful day in Ed's neighborhood that you almost expect to run into Mr. Rogers, with Choo-Choo Trolley and a newfound special friend, to teach the boys and girls of Stuckeyville all about lawyers in love.

But Ed has more of a John Mellencamp small town air about him, rather than a Jackson Browne sensibility. He may be a lawyer in love with his high school crush, but he was born in a small town. Ed has come home to roost, albeit in a bowling alley, and he's one lawyer who can't take no for an answer when it comes to matters of the heart. Well, at least, for another episode.

That is because Carol, the girl of his dreams, still isn't ready for a new relationship just yet. She and her ex, tavern owner and fellow teacher, Nick, are trying to sort out seven years worth of feelings for one another, after their relationship came to a standstill over waffles last week. A break up over waffles takes time. Especially after Ed helped Carol with her heated waffle debacle by bringing over some cool Ben & Jerry's.

Carol makes it clear to Ed that it's too soon to delve into a new relationship following her break-up with the lonely, confused, and much older Nick. That's why it's "so important to have friends at a time like this," she tells Ed. Not taking comfort in feeling put off, Ed does what any high class guy from the Midwest would do: he hires a skywriter to write a not-so-little love note to Carol high above the town for all to see. "Please be mine, Carl." That's right - Carl. In a dash of lawyerly know-how, Ed whips out his mobile phone and calls the pilot (who is still skywriting in mid-phrase) to stop writing, in an attempt to quash his feelings for Carol, the woman who made clear moments earlier that he shouldn't bother trying to win her affection.

That leaves Ed free to help resolve the hair-raising controversies that one engaged couple faces right before their wedding.

Hair-Brained Haircuts

Ed meets with a couple about the mother of all horrors that could happen before any wedding: a bad haircut. The bride-to-be tells Ed that she asked for the Martha Stewart hairdo, but that she did not get what she asked for, "this is not the 'Martha' cut," she tells him, removing her hat to reveal a disheveled patchwork of something that bears no resemblance to hair. This "'do" is bad enough to destroy any relationship, let alone a wedding. "We don't have a lot of money," her fiancée tells Ed, "and this could cost us thousands."

We never have any idea of how Ed charges his various clients. Maybe it's a T.V. writer hang-up, but given the fact that this show is all about how a lawyer runs his business, some small details would be appropriate. Don't you want your clients to know that they are going to have to pay you for your services at the end of the day? You get the feeling that Ed's law practice is more like a drop-in legal clinic than a real law office.

Whether you bill by the hour, on a flat-fee basis, or on contingency, the fact that we never learn how clients pay Ed does not give his character the credibility that he deserves. Even though Ed reminds us, yet again, that his bowling alley needs to make more money, we never hear the same thing about his law practice. He listens to Stuckeybowl manager Phil's idea about skywriting, and he vetoes a proposed Stuckeybowl stripper commercial (not consistent with the alley's "family-friendly" theme).

We also never learn if Ed and his newly crowned paralegal Kenny, the former pediatric nurse, are ever paid for spending hours staking out the local hair salon looking for negligently curled customers. Perhaps Ed is just doing some homework to check out the merits of his clients' case. On the way to the salon, he meets the omnipresent Carol (how does she seem to manage having so much time off from school during the day?) and eventually meets the salon's owner and the self-described "shampoo guy," both of who swear that they gave the bride-to-be a perfectly good haircut.

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But by the end of the show we learn that the marriage of Ed's clients was never meant to be. Her haircut was just a coded message to her fiancée that she was not ready to get married just yet. So Ed found himself doing what lawyers often find themselves doing outside of court -- playing counselor and social worker to clients who don't need legal advice as much as they do some encouragement to speak openly about what is really on their minds.

And that is exactly what Carol does by the end of the show -- convincing Ed that she does care deeply about him, but as a friend for now. "Ed, I'm sorry," she has the skywriter spell out at sunset. Skywriting each other little notes (at $20 a character, are they friendship notes or love notes?), one can only hope that their relationship continues to grow in the quiet, pastoral setting of Stuckeyville, Ohio.

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