Reading is a Fundamental Case
Updated 2008-12-05 09:05:14
We open with Earl in front of a Bookmobile explaining to Darnell why the titles are Chuckleberry Flynn and Trazan : The library couldn't afford actual classics, so they bought knockoffs. You know, because the classics are so expensive. Earl sits down in a wicker chair to read Trazan to some kids, and then explains how this all came to be. In a flashback we find out that Earl and Randy got sentenced to community service in the "humiliate to rehabilitate" program. It consists of bright pink shirts that name the "crime" each person committed, as they stand by the road and pick up trash. Earl's says "Pulled my brother's pants down," Randy's says "Flasher," and assorted others say "Set police horse free," "I like hookers," and "terrorist." The "set police horse free" guy is a free-spirited Scottish (yes, I was wrong in the recaplet when I said Irish; I couldn't recognize the accent through all of that Ape Man grunting) guy named Raynard who thinks that the people at the dump have all the fun because they get to burn the trash. They start to light the trash together.
Still in a flashback, we learn that Raynard let Earl and Randy stay with him when their dad kicked them out. He's so kooky and free-spirited that he has a bathtub in his living room, outside plants (the viney kind) on the inside, and an upside-down globe. He basically is an idiot, and sees no order in the universe. And this makes Earl think. Randy too. He says, "Woah, woah, woah. A globe is the Earth?!"
Later at the Crab Shack, live music is playing. And it's a weird rock version of "Oh! Susanna." Raynard, Earl, and Randy are trying to hit on girls, and apparently Raynard is terrible at it. Earl helps, though, by pretending they're members of a rock band that opens for U2. When one of the ladies asks, "U2?" Randy says, "Yeah, me too." Earl asks who wants to party with guys who will be sharing a shower with Bono. They want to, but only if they have a tour bus. And Earl says they do, and then goes and steals the Bookmobile. The girls apparently can't read, so they believe this is a band's tour bus. They make the girls leave, and then they leave the Bookmobile so they don't get caught with it. And so it stayed where they left it in the woods until the almost present (don't question the timeline here, because there's almost no present, so it can get a little confusing), when Earl and Randy go to do number 219 on his list: "Stole a Bookmobile."
As they approach the Bookmobile, Randy wonders why he can't have a puppy. He swears he can do all of the things a responsible pet owner would do, including hitting it in the head with a shovel when it's bad. Nice. I'm sure the Humane Society and PETA would approve. They get to the Bookmobile and a long-haired Raynard comes out growling at them. Earl says, "Raynard?" and Ape Man Raynard runs back in the Bookmobile. Then present-day Earl continues reading Trazan because, get it? Raynard is Trazan. Or Tarzan. After a commercial break, Earl's still reading about this creature who looks like a man and acts like a beast.
Then we're back in the almost-present past, where Randy and Earl are trying to figure out what to do with Raynard and the Bookmobile. Randy suggests lighting the Bookmobile on fire with Raynard inside, but Earl says no. He thinks this might all be his fault. And it turns out it was. We jump back even farther into the past and Raynard shows up at Earl's, where he's with a pregnant, hormonal Joy. Earl and Raynard whisper at the door, because of Earl's crippling fear of his even-meaner-than-usual wife. But even thought they're whispering, she appears from the bedroom, wanting them to stop their "chitter chatter." She claims she's working really hard to grow a baby and all Earl's doing is standing there having a party. We then get emotional Joy (a rare and awesome sight to behold), as she cries that she could be growing something really important today, like "his brain or his weiner." And then she goes to get a glass of Chablis. Awww, what a good mom. Raynard asks if he can stay with them for awhile, because he's asked everyone else he can think of, but Earl has to say no because of Joy. (In Joy's defense, Earl actually never asks her.) Earl sort of owed Raynard this one since he let them stay at his place. Raynard leaves sadly. Then Joy yells from the bedroom that her water broke. Oh, nope, she just wet the bed. "Come clean it up."
Raynard then wanders around, according to Earl's voiceover (how does Earl's voiceover know all of this stuff anyway, since Raynard isn't speaking human yet, and Earl wasn't there when this happened?), until he comes across the new Bookmobile (actually a "Book-mo-bike") and steals it. It reminds him of the stranded Bookmobile, where he heads to live. In the almost-present, Earl tells Randy he has to add Raynard to the list, because they didn't let him stay there. Randy wants to blame Joy for being so mean when she's pregnant. And when she isn't. Earl thinks they could have tried harder, so puts him on the list. He tries to get Raynard to come out of the trailer by saying they all stole the Bookmobile together. He gets him to come out, and Raynard talks like a caveman: "No one speak me." Randy thinks it's cool he figured out how to talk using less words and tells him "Me like you talk." Only Randy would think this was an improvement. Raynard loves living out here, but Earl wonders how he eats, and Raynard runs to get them food. He comes back with "his hot wife, Charlene," a raccoon, and some berries. Earl recognizes the berries from when they used to go camping, and Joy would hallucinate, thinking the bottom of half of her was a horse. Then she hit Earl in the head with a stick, thinking he had a "Freak head!" Earl wants to take Raynard in a car to get a pizza. But Raynard then sees the same freak heads on Earl and Randy and runs away.
Earl and Randy go after Raynard, and Earl feels bad for the poor guy, living out here and "doing God knows what with a raccoon." He says they have to help him. Randy wants to know if he can keep Raynard for a pet after they get him back to civilization, and Earl says no, he's not an animal. Then he immediately calls him just like you'd call a dog: "Here, Raynard! Here, boy!" Earl tells him that he remembers Raynard used to like lime in his beer and now they make beer with lime in it. This is the selling point Earl uses to convince him. Awesome. Randy tries cell phones, purse-sized dogs, and wealth. But Raynard starts throwing pine cones at them from the tree. Earl tries to climb after him, but falls out quickly. Then Raynard jumps out of the tree and runs away. Present-day Earl reads about Trazan running away, and how the book narrator knew they couldn't catch him with their strength, but would have to use their brains.
They decide to set a trap, using bait. Bait = Catalina. And because they have turned her into the most one-note character in the history of television, they have her jump around in her stripper suit to "Jump Around." It works, though, as Raynard comes and starts sniffing her all over. She runs away, and Earl captures Raynard with a blanket. The raccoon is upset, so Earl realizes there's more to that relationship than they thought. Earl brings Raynard tied to a lawn chair in the back of his El Camino. Joy sees him driving by and wonders what in the hell "that idiot" is doing with a wild man tied in the back of his car. Darnell thinks it's endearing, though. He's all, "That Earl and his list..." Present-day Earl is reading Trazan to kids as a voiceover this whole time, about what people thought as they drove him through town: some were scared, some were confused, etc. It's really not that interesting, so I'll spare you the details.
Back at the hotel, Randy and Earl are giving Raynard a colonic to get all of the bad stuff out of his body. Catalina told them about this. Randy tells him not to worry, because he stuck a G.I. Joe up there when he was a kid, and the colonic tube is smaller. Ick. Why do we have to know? They spare us the actual colonic scene, and move on to Earl saying he hopes to never give a man a forced colonic again. But it does seem to be working, as Raynard can't believe he was married to a raccoon. Then Earl and Randy proceed to clean Raynard up, which consists of putting a match to his back to determine "Tick or mole?" Ooh! Fun (if gross) game. It's painful for Raynard, though, when the answer's "Mole."
Then Earl gets Raynard a job at Camden Foreign Foods. All he has to do is hand people food and take the money, but he gets fired for not collecting money. Apparently, he took a whole live chicken for the half-chicken they bought to eat. Which is sort of a good deal if you think about it, but Señor Lo-Mein is not having any of it. So then Earl gets him a job at the hotel, but he puts soap on the pillows and kids end up with foamy mouths when they think it's candy. Not really Raynard's fault that the kids are this stupid, but he loses that job too. Then he gets a job as an exterminator, and he's exterminating at Joy's. She's mad at him because he won't spray poison into the hole. He wants the rats to choose to come out of the hole of their own free will, but Joy doesn't give a rat's ass about a rat's ass and wants him to do it anyway. He won't. She tries to take her hose, and he ends up spraying rat poison in her face. Joy yells, "Darnell! Call the police! Exterminator sprayed me in the face with rat poison again!" Sort of like kicks in the face at the Crab Shack .
Earl goes to bail Raynard out of jail and call it even, but he finds out Raynard's in a psych ward, not in jail. They're talking to the red-faced doctor with the bushy white beard. He's wearing a white shirt and red suspenders. He tells them his diagnosis is that Raynard's anti-social. Randy's like, "Oh!" And Earl whispers, "Randy, enough! Santa Claus would not be working at a mental institution." Dr. Santa shows them a video of Raynard being crazy. Santa stops it by saying, "Ho, ho, ho. That was a good one." Randy's face registers actual shock. And then he tells them that luckily there's a place for people like Raynard. Randy asks if they make toys there. And then Santa calls his assistant by ringing a bell, and a little person comes in dressed in red and green. Earl admits this is a little weird.
The Christmas elf leads them into the room with all of the mental patients, and Earl walks toward Raynard. Randy's stopped at the door by a big guy with a long ponytail who asks, "Do you have any candy?" Randy says, "No, do you?" The guy, "No, do you?" Randy, "No, do you?" You can see where this is going. Earl gets to Raynard and asks how he's feeling and Raynard spits all of his pills out into Earl's hand. He's only pretending to be drugged. Raynard wants to get out and go back into the woods. He promises he won't eat any more crazy berries and will just be friends with the next raccoon he sees. Earl realizes Raynard's right, and he has to figure out how to break him out. He finds an orderly and asks if he'll help him do a magic trick to entertain folks. He pretends to pull Kit Kats out of both of the guy's ears, and then says he's full of candy. Obviously the big candy-wanting guy attacks. Earl, Raynard, and Randy sneak out, using the orderly's keys.
In the woods, Earl and Randy drop off Raynard with a tent, since they're taking the Bookmobile back. Raynard has no problem with them taking the Bookmobile since it's too restrictive, and he's already read or eaten most of the books. He's happy to be home, to the sound of nothing except the chirping of a raccoon in heat. He says that's going to be an awkward conversation with Charlene. Randy offers to run him over with the car on their way out. Then we're back in the present as Earl's finishing off the story by saying they came to admire what they once feared: Raynard's/Trazan's courage to live freely and think freely. Earl voiceovers that he was glad to bring the Bookmobile back, so the books could help kids see the world in a whole new way like Raynard did to him. A kid asks where Trazan lived, and Earl points on a map to Africa and says it's "down here." Then he says another way to look at it is "up here," as he flips the map upside down. Randy's like, "Wait! So a map is also the Earth?" Come on, Randy! Even you aren't that dumb, are you? Although the big guy in the mental institution did seem like a strange mirror for a big friendly oaf, so I guess he actually might be that bad. What would he ever do without Earl? I'm thinking (read: hoping) we won't ever get a spinoff and have to find out.
DeAnn is a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon. You can contact her at twopmodmars@gmail.com .