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Early Edition - General Discussion


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I really enjoyed this show when I was younger.  It's interesting to think about it now, in an era when print media is less pervasive.  This may be one show that could never be remade.

Kyle Chandler has always been a good everyman, at least as far back as this show.  He was great as Gary.  I loved the friendship between Gary and Marissa.  And of course the cat was my favorite character.

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I was able to catch a lot of the newly scheduled Tuesday mini-marathons on the METV network. 

This show has so much heart and appeal. It's a great antidote to a host of ills.

Within the first season, episodes 14 and 15, "The Wall (Part 1)" and "The Wall (Part 2)," are not only a great story, but an excellent example of how to reveal some of the origin story for a supernatural show that neither boxes the future writers in too tightly nor annoys the viewers with too many unknowns.

The following episode, 1.16, "Bat Masterson," is also strong, with a great set up and resolution, excellent guest cast, and heart warming without too much emotional manipulation.

 

 

9 hours ago, MisterGlass said:

It's interesting to think about it now, in an era when print media is less pervasive.  This may be one show that could never be remade.

I think it could be updated to someone receiving tomorrow's tweets today, but then how would a cat or other animal tie in? And getting a cast with that much charisma is always more happenstance than anything.

Edited by shapeshifter
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Detective Crumb is a great template for the adversary who becomes a helpful ally.

This show made great use of a lot of mature guest stars, like Gary's parents—always love to see William Devane.

 

ETA: I just noticed that a like-minded Wikipedia editor has prominently listed the guest stars for each episode on one page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Early_Edition_episodes

Edited by shapeshifter
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Particularly memorable parts of episodes: 

1. Gary reads about his own upcoming death (in a collapsing building) and is drawn inside to save others.  Ending @ 41:50-46:00 

 


2. Also enjoyable is the episode that shows how young Gary's life was saved, how he received the future responsibility of the paper, and then he designates his successor @  35:00-42:00

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Currently rewatching this on Tuesdays(WMLW) & JAG on Wednesdays.  Hard to believe how old they are, which means how old I am. And they both hold up so well. I think it would be hard for Gary to get away with a lot of what he did, in today's world, cell phones=images.  

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On 6/8/2018 at 6:12 PM, MisterGlass said:

I really enjoyed this show when I was younger.  It's interesting to think about it now, in an era when print media is less pervasive.  This may be one show that could never be remade.

 

The new show "God Friended Me" looks to be very "Early Edition", but with facebook & tweets instead of a newspaper :)

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4 hours ago, Charlesman said:

The new show "God Friended Me" looks to be very "Early Edition", but with facebook & tweets instead of a newspaper :)

Yeah, after watching the extended trailer, I see what you mean. But it also looks like they might be going for the gratutious weeping like This Is Us, which I refuse to watch. So I'm not sure. Plus, the lead seems more like a Chuck Fishman personality than a Gary HobbsHobson.

Edited by shapeshifter
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Gary Hobson, I believe.

The new shows almost seems like a variation on "Person of Interest" as much as "Early Edition."  I suppose in some ways "Person of Interest" is a more technology driven and less event specific riff on "Early Edition."  They know who something may happen to, but have no idea what will happen.

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On 6/9/2018 at 3:02 AM, shapeshifter said:

This show has so much heart and appeal. It's a great antidote to a host of ills.

They had a lot of shows on TV at that time that offered a "good message".

Some of them specifically mentioned "you-know-who"  (Touched By An Angel, Promised Land. Joan of Arcadia)  and some didn't (Quantum Leap, Early Edition, Wonderfalls).

We sincerely need some more shows like that now (and less reality crap).

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I love this show!  YouTube has full episodes.  Kyle Chandler is one of those annoying people who gets more attractive as he ages (if it's even possible for Kyle Chandler to get better looking).

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I loved this show. Probably the very best I've ever seen at capturing all of Chicago's locations, not just the glitzy ones. And especially in the later seasons, each episode was its own little morality play. I've wept watching it more than once.

I'm very happy to see a forum for it.

Some of the shows used to be on YouTube. I'm not sure if they're still there.

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Season 3 has been airing today on H&I, including the episode in which Gary is quarantined after being bitten by a monkey. A reasearch doctor observes Gary via video camera in his quarantine cell, and she comes to the conclusion that he has a pathological obsession with the newspaper, heh (no surprise). 
This made me see Gary's constant need to see the headlines on his paper as prescient of so many of us today obsessively consulting our cell phones.
And how natural it would be to reboot this show with someone who gets tomorrow's tweets today. Maybe they and the show could be called "Pre-Tweets."

 

Editing to fix another !%#€{¥!! stupid autocorrect. Seriously, 9-year-old iPad Mini? You think I meant "tenets" instead of "tweets"?!?

Edited by shapeshifter
Corrected autocorrect—which could be a feature in the rebooted show
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my dog ate my Roku remote this weekend, so I'm without my cable streaming for a couple of weeks until I can get it replace. I had forgotten how good this show was. A couple of episodes really touched me, a couple were not so interesting. I'll watch again next week because I'll still be without the Roku remote. The real test will come after I get the new remote.

And a young friend suggested I download a remote app and use my phone. That's not happening, I have a stupid phone and no internet on it and no intention of getting internet on my phone. I'll just do it the old fashioned way, waiting until I can replace.

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Got my remote, but went back to watch the last few episodes of the series today on H&I. I really enjoyed them, hadn't seen them. But on IMDB, the last few episodes listed are in a different order than H&I ran them. I rather liked the way they ran them, it made sense and it wrapped the series very nicely. Next week I guess they start them over, I may watch those too.

But H&I screwed up one of the shows today, I know these are on video, not film, but they showed the rescue and the crisis before they showed how it happened. I wasn't paying a lot of attention and just assumed I had missed the part about how the kid got in the warehouse, but after the commercial, they showed the part that led up to it. 

Then I missed a lot of another episode because of a big storm that moved through, tv cut out several times.

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12 hours ago, friendperidot said:

w these are on video, not film, but they showed the rescue and the crisis before they showed how it happened. I wasn't paying a lot of attention and just assumed I had missed the part about how the kid got in the warehouse, but after the commercial, they showed the part that led up to it. 

What's the episode's title?

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Blind Faith was the episode where scenes were reversed. Show opened, Gary was blinded by teenagers being fools, he was in hospital, met a young boy who's mother was going to have surgery, he couldn't read the paper because he was blinded, he got the new employee at McGinty's to help him read, read that the young boy was going to die in a warehouse fire, they raced to the hospital, where the boy had decided his mom needed flowers but the gift shop was too expensive. Next scene Gary and boy were in warehouse, and fire was blazing, Gary figured out how to get kid out, he ran into the same teenagers who were also harassing him for his lunch money, but one of them developed a conscious, went into the building, helped Gary to the roof, they jumped to go to another roof, landed on stuff, maybe put there by the firefighters and were safe. Next scene, Gary and helper were frantically trying to find young boy at hospital, gift shop employee told them where he had sent the boy. Boy encountered the teens who were trying to take his flower money, he ran into warehouse and hid, one of the teens threw a cigarette down in some rags, fire started. Gary was looking for boy who was shouting out window for help, he made his way to the boy, and helped him get out a window. Next scene, Mom was recovering from surgery, teen came in and gave her the flowers from her son, invited boy to play video games. Somewhere in there Gary recovered his sight while hugging Marissa. Scenes were reversed somehow. The big storm we had had not moved through when this happened. 

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Starz has been running 3 hours of Early Edition every morning between 2 and 5 a.m.    I really like the episodes with Gary's parents.  Don't like the episodes with the single mother and Henry.  I read an interview with the Producer and he said they were getting complaints that there was no chemistry between Gary and the mother so they wrote her out of the show after a season.   I can understand why.    I also don't like the young bartender they brought in.  Producer said he was written out after a year because they were having trouble finding ways to bring him into the stories and he was being paid too much to sit around and say a few lines every episode.  Love Kyle Chandler.

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Glad to know EE has a forum because I'm rewatching this show on DVD.  I loved it back in the day and have adored Kyle since Homefront.  The way this show is filmed irritates me though.  Why are so many scenes shot in shadowy darkness?  I suppose this wasn't as noticeable on small standard def TVs of the late 90s, but they do it so much you'd think they had an ugly guy in the lead and didn't want us to see him! 

Edited by Magnumfangirl
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Watching the Decades channel binge now. Season 1 may be the best.

++++++++++++++++

Watching 1.21 "Faith" in which, "Gary has to decide whether to help a young girl who needs a heart transplant or a troubled teen-aged boy who is due to be killed in a botched robbery."

12-year-old Emily Ann Lloyd plays 11-year-old Rachel Greenberg, the scene-stealing character in need of a heart transplant. 
Emily Ann Lloyd was really excellent and, after this episode, was in 37 episodes of a sitcom, but then, after one more role, never acted again. 
 

Edited by shapeshifter
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On 7/18/2020 at 1:05 PM, shapeshifter said:

Watching the Decades channel binge now. Season 1 may be the best.

++++++++++++++++

Watching 1.21 "Faith" in which, "Gary has to decide whether to help a young girl who needs a heart transplant or a troubled teen-aged boy who is due to be killed in a botched robbery."

Phantom at the Opera, Faith, and Dad were a trifecta of excellent episodes.  I'm watching season 2 now and I had forgotten how cool Gary's loft apartment above the restaurant was.  It's gotta be one of the best TV apartments ever.

Edited by Magnumfangirl
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I finished watching season 3 for the first time since it originally aired a couple of days ago. I can't figure out why this season got so much hate from fans at the time. I really liked it and wish they had kept Erica around for season 4, but the writers seemed intent on keeping Gary heartbroken forever.  😞

Edited by Magnumfangirl
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Season 4's Weather Girl may have the funniest line of the entire series.  When weather girl  Rebecca is telling Gary she is moving to Dallas to become a traffic girl, Gary says "I always wanted to go to Texas."  The show really did know the future!  He went and he stayed!  😄

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1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

Oh gosh, I loved this show! I fell in love with Gary at first sight and the cat was so darn cute!

Yes. But I was also always distracted by trying to figure out whether or not he was wearing eyeliner to emphasize his role as the tragically magical hero. 

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I finished up season 4 by watching Time as the finale.  It's a really good episode, but I wonder when they knew it would be the last one?  And why was it aired out of order?  The way Gary looks at a young couple and a young family in the last scene made me think they were setting up season 5 for Gary to find love.  It's too bad TV became obsessed with reality and game shows in 1999/2000 so we never got to see that happen.  I kind of think Laura Leighton's character from Everybody Goes to Rick's should have been "the girl."  We never find out anything about her in the present, but in the time travel scenes she tells him she wants to marry him and raise his children.  None of the other women ever said that to him!  How many anvils does a man need?  LOL!  Plus, in the flashback scenes her name was Ginger!  They were obviously throwing Homefront (still my favorite of Kyle's roles) fans a bone.

I had only seen a handful of episodes in the last 20 years until this past summer.  Overall, the show is better than I remembered it and it holds up well.  Since everything else from the 90s is being rebooted or sequeled, we should revisit Gary and McGinty's in the 2020s.  In the era of never ending "news", just how does he get tomorrow's news today?  Come on Kyle, you know you wanna do it!  😘  LOL!

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15 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I guess on his phone. 🙂

Yes, I suppose so; but the newspaper websites/apps are constantly updated.  There's never any final edition and everything is constantly evolving.  I think it would make it much more difficult for Gary to make choices about what he could do.

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On 10/1/2020 at 11:57 PM, Magnumfangirl said:

...  Since everything else from the 90s is being rebooted or sequeled, we should revisit Gary and McGinty's in the 2020s.  In the era of never ending "news", just how does he get tomorrow's news today?  Come on Kyle, you know you wanna do it!  😘  LOL!

It had been mentioned upthread a while ago, but the recently cancelled show, God Friended Me, had a similar premise, but the lead and his team of do-gooders found people to help through Facebook. It's a shame it didn't last longer (two seasons), it really filled the void of a comforting, feel-good show.

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‘Early Edition’ Gender-Swapped Reboot From Melissa Glenn & DeVon Franklin Gets CBS Pilot Order

Quote

The reboot with a female lead comes from Citadel exec producer Melissa Glenn, DeVon Franklin and Bob Brush, who developed the original.

It follows an ambitious but uncompromising journalist who starts receiving tomorrow’s newspaper today and finds herself in the complicated business of changing the news instead of reporting it.

As discussed above, I'm not sure how they'll update this considering the way we get our news now but I'll definitely give the show a try to find out.

 

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It follows an ambitious but uncompromising journalist who starts receiving tomorrow’s newspaper today and finds herself in the complicated business of changing the news instead of reporting it.

So basically, she's just like all the other "journalists".  🙄

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On 2/11/2022 at 7:41 PM, shapeshifter said:

Maybe she gets it in her email?

I would almost prefer the anachronism of the paper arriving.  Maybe even a paper copy of an online only newspaper.  Or a paper version of a website news feed, to go all the way into the fantasy aspect.  The show wouldn't be the show without the cat bringing the news.

In the original series Gary was destined to hand the paper off to a young girl he met, like Mr. Snow was destined to hand it off to him.  It could be interesting if this turns out to be her.  While it could mean Gary is no longer in this world, it could be a way of exploring what came next for him in flashbacks.

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32 minutes ago, BetterButter said:

So it's really happening?
Cool.
I guess?

  • " . . . The Early Edition reboot is being headed up by Melissa Glenn, whose last big credit was a writing/producing role on CBS’s Zoo . . . " 

Ah, Zoo, that crazy show I/we loved to hate watch.
 

  • " . . . the logline mentions a news mentor who pushes her to consider the human element of her stories—or, more importantly, what kind of cat will be chosen to deliver the paper to her every day."

Wait. Wahhht? Do viewers get to vote live on a name for the cat, or . . . ?

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Been liking this series in how it plays with the idea of tomorrow's paper today and the lively personality surrounding all that.

Also interesting trying to figure out the "rules" of the paper. For example, if the current holder is "out of commission", then it seems to go to a living relative by default, like when the paper went to Gary's parents when he was stuck inside a building.

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