Our 'Cops' Is On

"Our 'Cops' Is On"

"Our 'Cops' Is On" is an episode of the American sitcom My Name Is Earl.

Synopsis

Everybody was gathered around the television at the Crab Shack to check out an old episode of the show, Cops. It was the episode when they came to Camden County and featured Joy, Randy, and Earl fighting in a trailer park. The cops are played by guest stars Kathy Kinney (of The Drew Carey Show fame) and Mike O'Malley (returning as the cop who loves bowling from episode 22).

The episode of Cops followed different citizens around Camden County. The cops came across Earl and Randy in a quarrel with a cashier at the convenience store. When the cop was distracted, Randy and Earl escaped the store with stolen batteries.

The cops came by the trailer park with their camera crew to find Joy on top of her trailer roof. She had gotten in a fight with Earl and was throwing all of his belongings off the roof. The cop had to intervene before Joy did anymore damage.

The cops responded to a break in at a local house. When they arrived, Earl and Randy were caught red handed stealing from the vacant home. Just then, Earl dropped everything and ran from the scene. Randy just sat there and continued to talk to the camera crew from the show. Earl ends up stealing the cop car.

Earl showed up to Joy’s front door with the cop car. She was turned on by Earl’s generosity and especially when she found out there was a cameraman in the back seat. She asked the cameraman to later film her and Earl having sex. Later, she and Earl had fun pulling over strangers with their stolen cop car.

Darnell was hiding from the cops because they found his marijuana stash. It wasn’t that hard to find him, he buried himself in leaves, but his hair gave his hiding place away. Another cop found Randy crying on top of a tree.

After the episode of “Cops” was done, everybody at The Crab Shack applauded. Earl, Joy, Darnell and Randy were proud of themselves for actually making it on television, even though it was on “Cops” and was years ago. They all felt special and famous. The episode even reminded Earl of a few things to put on his list.

The List

Main article: The List (My Name Is Earl)

Earl didn't cross off anything on his list in this episode; after seeing his episode of Cops, Earl stated that he was reminded of things that needed to be added to his list. Some things added to the list are:

Item	Number	Source	Status
Kidnapped a camera man	unknown	2.12	Outstanding, Note: May not be exact name
Stole a police car	Unknown	2.12	Outstanding, Note: May not be exact name
Peed in the back of a cop car	23	1.1, 2.12	Outstanding

Songs

#	Song Title	Artist
1	"Right Place, Wrong Time"	Dr. John
2	"Bad Boys"	Inner Circle
3	"Wishing Well"	Terence Trent D'Arby
4	"Afternoon Delight"	Starland Vocal Band

"Right Place, Wrong Time" was replaced with generic background music in the DVD.

Trivia

• Aside from a frame story, this episode is presented as if it were an actual COPS episode.
• The question of how Willie the One-Eyed Mailman lost his eye is finally answered in this episode - he was hit by a glass shard when Joy used a bowling ball to smash Earl's Def Leppard wall mirror.
• Willie also speaks for the first time in this episode.
• Tim Stack mentions having 62 items on his IMDB profile which actually had 63 when the episode aired, though since the episode took place in 2003 he should have used a number between 38 and 42.
• Nescobar-A-Lop-Lop is seen speaking fluent English during his fight with the "Electrolarynx Man", though he was later seen learning English in the episode "Teacher Earl".
• The homeless man from the My Name Is Earl episode "Bounty Hunter" that was in Earl's "hideout trailer" (Episode No. 21), appears in the dumpster where Joy was hiding nude.
• Kenny is shown driving the same Renault Le Car he owned in the pilot episode.
• The scene in which police use a tranquilizer gun and a trampoline to get Randy down from a tree is an homage to the "trampoline bear" clip regularly featured on Pardon the Interruption.
• This is the only episode of the series to date in which Earl does not perform any of the items on his list.
• This marks the second COPS crossover with a fictional television series, after the Season 7 X-Files episode "X-COPS."
• Earl uses quotes from films Jerry Maguire ("You had me at 'Balls'", although the original was "You had me at 'Hello'") and Platoon ("I'm too scared to look. Please tell if it's bad, is it bad?")
• The dumpster in which Joy hides nude has a "Chubby's Waste Removal" logo on it. This is a reference to the character Richard Chubby (played by Burt Reynolds) in the episode "Jump For Joy" being said to have "owned everything".
• The woman that Joy pulled over while driving the stolen police car was actually Natalie Duckworth (played by Beth Riesgraf) from the episode "Faked My Own Death". She is Jason Lee's real-life wife.
• When Earl was running away from the policewoman played by Kathy Kinney, he turns for a moment to yell "Later, pig!" at her. This is a reference to The Drew Carey Show, where Kinney's character Mimi frequently calls Drew "Pig". Pig is also slang for a police officer.
• While Randy is skipping through the TV channels, just before COPS is shown you can feintly hear the theme of My Name Is Earl from the TV.
• Officer Stuart Daniels seems to know the Hickey brothers well in this episode, though he later does not seem to recognize them in the episode Stole a Badge.

External links

• Our "Cops" is On at TV.com