My Name is Earl Recap: Robbed a Stoner Blind
During a heat wave, Earl recalls a time when he and Randy were on a bit of a wave of their own - a crime wave. They broke into an apartment, and while they were cooling themselves by the air conditioner, the owner of the apartment strolled by. Luckily he wasn't all there, having partaken of the weed a bit too often. He just thought that there were some friends who stopped by.
Since it was so hot that summer, Earl and Randy end up staying and eating a sandwich, and when they realize how nice and cool it is, they take their time ripping him off, stealing one item at a time, until the only thing left is the air conditioner.
The stoner is played by Christian Slater, and when Earl and Randy go by to see if they can return the air conditioner to him (the only thing they have left), it seems that he has moved out. Luckily he left a forwarding address, so they track him to a commune in the hills where he and his cohorts are trying to do their best to live off the grid and not take anything from the planet.
This leads to a bit of a dilemma for Earl and Randy, as an air conditioner doesn't do anyone any good if they don't have electricity. So they agree to stick around the compound for a week and try to learn something from the folks about making a difference in the world instead of living wastefully.
Up until this point the episode has been a riot, with the remarks about the mice in the pool and using the ice to cool off and then put it back in the ice machine and everything. But here it slows dramatically. It's funny when Randy eats the conditioner and visualizes everyone in clay, and the play where the commune members act out Friends is good, but it's pretty slow from here on in.
Ultimately, as can be expected, Earl learns that he's wasteful, Randy doesn't like it, and perhaps even more predictably Earl decides that everyone else is offsetting his good behavior, so he tries to figure out how he can take care of that problem. Christian Slater as an eco-friendly quasi-environmentalist fits okay, and his dispensing of wisdom isn't bad, but the second half of the episode just doesn't match up to the first.
