Creative Writing
Everybody feels trapped in their everyday lives sometimes. Joy's stuck in a trailer bringing up two unruly boys, Darnell struggles in a job incompatible with his peaceful nature, and Randy just found life hard, but when a creative writing class starts in prison it gives Earl a chance to escape from prison routine.

However, with his mind completely blank apart from being haunted by a gymnast, Earl realises his good imagination turns out to be a figment of his imagination – which doesn't seem to be a problem for anybody else.

Randy bubbles over with ideas including a story about a man on a boat chasing a white whale, before settling for a Superhero story starring himself with X-ray vision and an orang-utan sidekick. Joy uses her imagination to write a story explaining why Dodge and Earl Jnr should do their homework – mainly because God will kill them if they don't. Darnell assuages his crab-killing guilt with a beautiful ballad of respect and even Catalina, who couldn’t think of a more creative stripper name than 'Catalina', invents a telenova starring herself – Catalina: Woman of a Thousand Tears.

With the class looming and with nothing exciting to read out, Earl writes about the only stuff in his mind - the things he misses, his friends and family. Nothing interesting or cool, just regular stuff but it made him feel great, which is when Earl realised something important. Everybody can feel trapped in their everyday lives, but when you lose yours it can become your best fantasy.

Karmic Words of Wisdom
"Sumo guy with a bazooka? Too easy, it must be a trap! Look out team, puppet sniper ten o'clock! I'll use my x-ray vision to check on Earl" Randy
"You should probably stop naming them, that's what we did with the children in the village after the military took over." Catalina
"Considering Randy only uses a 17 letter alphabet, I'm surprised he could write a story better than me so I decided to try again." Earl

Previous: The Frank Factor

Next: Frank's Girl

Back to the Season Three Index