Review

  • I know that you are the network that has hormone-laced garbage like "Friends." You also ripped off "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" with "The Weakest Link," thereby dividing an audience and degrading the ratings of a TV show that actually challenges our intelligence. So why are you presenting a completely original, delightful, witty, and, dare I say it, intelligent show to anchor the best night on TV?

    Ed manages to actually surprise me, a veteran of too many years of watching TV. True, as I write this, it seems to have given in to a bit of cliche, that of the beautiful girl falling in love with the man who annoys her the most (Carol Vessey and the new principal), but I'm optimistic that there will be a bizarre turn of events there to look forward to.

    Comparisons to Northern Exposure are inevitable, and this show matches or surpasses the Alaskan exercise in quirkiness. Let's hope it doesn't slip into an excess of strangeness, as unfortunately happened to NE. For instance, despite what you Hollywood producers fervently believe, a gay wedding just doesn't play in the heartland.

    Perhaps Ed's most biting episode is the one where Neil Patrick Harris played an attorney who came to town and admired Ed so much that he bought his own bowling alley and hired his own eccentrics to run it. If this show's ratings continue to rise, look for CBS to do the exact same thing.

    Thanks you, David Letterman, for showing us what that idiot box is capable of doing right.