Reviewer: Charity Bishop
         

I was barely a teenager when this show first appeared on television. My family were not big on shows in general because so many of them started out promising only to end in disappointing content issues, or askew morals. Early Edition was the one exception, and I was thrilled when the first season finally was released on DVD.

One minute Gary Hobson (Kyle Chandler) believes his life is perfect and the next he's dodging the suitcase that his wife is throwing out the window of their Chicago town house at him. In five seconds flat he has gone from bringing home flowers to commemorate their wedding anniversary to being out on the street and one step away from being handed divorce papers. With nowhere else to go, he takes a room at a local hotel and wallows in his misery at being dumped merely for wanting children. (His wife is more the workplace kind of woman.) The next morning there's a yowl at his front door, along with the thud of a newspaper that he didn't order. Gary opens the door and a tabby cat runs inside, glances through the paper without much interest, and then chucks it in the bin before going to work at the high-rise trading company that signs his paychecks every week.

Before leaving home, Gary checked the stock pages and noted a couple of things. It doesn't take him long to discover that he knew which stocks were going to go up before they actually happened. Astounded, he wonders whether he has become the recipient of a "magic newspaper" that tells the news a day in advance. His best friend Chuck (Fisher Stevens) is beyond thrilled, because this means they can use it as a cash cow to make millions in the stock market, win the lottery, etc. But Gary is not one to take things too fast, so he calmly waits for the paper the following morning, then takes it for a trial run or two. He wins a fortune betting nickels and dimes on horse races, then promptly turns around and gives all the money to the firm's receptionist, Marissa (Shanesia Davis-Williams) so she can purchase a seeing eye dog.

Then, Gary discovers that in the midst of predicting stock rises, quitting his job, and having a fun afternoon at the racetrack, he has overlooked something important -- an accident that left his friend at the newsstand in the hospital. It's then that he realizes that the paper has come to him for a reason, so he can read the headlines and attempt to prevent them from coming true. These range from suicides to handgun accidents, falling pianos, broken water mains, mob hits, and everything else fathomable, while inadvertently he also discovers that he may not be the first person to get tomorrow's news a day early. There's a mysterious man captured in a photograph in a book of history about Chicago who had the exact same cat that shows up on Gary's doorstep every morning...

It was quirky, funny, touching, and always impacting. Early Edition was one of the best shows ever to run on network television, with an enormous fan base of loyal viewers who turned in each week to watch Gary fight one man's battle to change the world, one life at a time. The appeal was not merely the storyline or the mystery surrounding the cat and the newspaper, but the character of Gary himself, who Chuck describes as the "aww, shucks all-American boy." It's true that you just don't find guys like this much anymore. Gary was one of the nicest, most compassionate men on television. He had no bad habits, never took advantage of the paper except in a good cause (the one time he does win the lottery, he leaves the winning ticket on the doorstep of a nun), respected women, and never had a one night stand or even long-term extramarital relationship.

I distinctly remember the first time I saw the episode in which he passionately wound up kissing a woman alone in his apartment. Our hearts sank, certain it would lead to a bedroom scene, and it did -- Gary blissfully asleep alone in his bed, with the journalist snuggled up with a blanket on the couch. How often does that happen in primetime? (Another episode teases you with the implication that they might have slept together, before she references sleeping on the couch.) There is extremely mild and limited content, which includes infrequent mild profanity and a handful of minor abuses of deity. Some episodes contain violence but none of it is graphic and in most instances Gary is able to prevent it. A doctor is rather amorous toward Chuck in "Baby," and implies their last night together was "amazing," but he is not interested and literally makes a run for it. In "Juror," a woman flirts openly with Gary and then sneaks into his hotel room that night to entice him into a liaison, not realizing that Chuck is in the shower instead of Gary. We hear her screams from down the hall, implying she opened the shower curtain. In order to get into the sequestered room so that he could help Gary get out of the hotel, Chuck pretends to be his effeminate gay lover (played for laughs). Chuck ogles a woman in the season finale.

There are some spiritual issues, but they are more positive than negative. Gary teams up with what he believes to be a fake psychic in "Psychic," but the psychic knows more than she's letting on, revealing true psychic abilities. Chuck believes the newspaper is "magic," but Marissa, who is a Christian, insists that God sent it to Gary so that he could make a difference. (However, Marissa also shares a story about one of her aunts, who was a "medium.") Divine intervention does indeed come into play in "The Choice," arguably the most powerful episode of the series. Gary must decide whether to save one life at the cost of many others, and learns that even the smallest act can change everything -- while mysterious forces seem "determined" to keep him away from the bigger catastrophe. There's also a touching later episode about a child in need of a heart transplant, whose faith in God is profoundly underlined and who manages to touch Gary's spirit during a short stay in the hospital.

Some of the episodes are not as deep or fabulous as that one, but are all either intense (a two parter called "The Wall" pits Gary against a terrifying headline -- that he murdered the President of the United States) or hilarious (wait until you meet Gary's father in "Dad"!). The only negative thing about Early Edition is that eventually, you come to the end of it, and then it's back to waiting for further seasons to be released. But if you want to revisit your younger years and a more innocent approach to primetime, or you just want to discover the wonderfulness of this series for the first time, it's a sure-fire investment.