Goodbye to All That

Season 2, Episode 1, Aired
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Episode Summary

Joel receives a "Dear John" letter from Elaine, who has decided to marry an older judge, and a concerned Ed enlists Maggie to help him deal with it. Holling regrets buying a satellite dish for Shelly, who soon develops into an international television junkie. '
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  • A mediocre episode that manages to include three of my all-time favorite scenes of this series.

    8.0
    "Great"
    By pynchon82, May 28, 2010 Report Abuse
    The episode is mediocre. Seriously.

    Nothing really happens in the episode to push the plot forward (save the break-up of Elaine and Joel). Nothing really happens in this episode to help us gain new insight into the characters. Nothing, in fact, really happens that might draw a new audience in, which is a risky proposition for a season two opener, especially for a program that was a mid-season replacement to begin with. The B-plot of Shelly's TV addiction is silly at best and most of the A-plot is consumed by quirky dream sequences that have been known to hurt the show (I love them myself, but I know many people who will not watch this show because it's "too quirky").

    But with all of that said, there's some magical stuff here for fans of the show. As I said in my classification, three of my favorite scenes in this series ever are in this episode. It's been so long since I've seen them that I had forgotten they were so close together!

    Those scenes are: 1) Joel has a conversation in the movie theatre with a filmed version of an ex-girlfriend and then another with a younger version of himself.

    2) Shelly's confession that she watches too much television to Chris, the closest thing to clergy in Cicely, Alaska. The dialogue in this sequence is sharp and funny, and the pauses in their speeches add to the acting. It's an absurd moment and it's heartwarming that the characters realize this.

    3) Ed's attempt to bring "closure" to Joel's relationship by having Maggie pose as Elaine. It's a funny scene. Both actors pull it off with much aplomb. And Joel's speech about how "sex should be wild" is one of the best speeches ever written for network television. This comes from a television writer, by the way. That speech is sublime.

    It's hard to say what the producers of this show were intending. I'm thinking perhaps that the show wasn't intended to last much longer since there's only seven episodes in the second season. So the producers and writers decided to please the small audience that there was. No sense bringing in new people when the show is about to be cancelled, right? At any rate, there's some great stuff in this episode. It's not a great episode, but there's been worse. In my opinion, this series' "bad episodes" are miles better than most series' good. I'm willing to grant this series a few clunkers every now and again. Especially when their clunkers still manage to pack in such good material.moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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  • Notes

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    • Music: - "R.B. Blues" by Ruth Brown - "Down Hearted Blues" by Mildred Bailey - "Guitars, Cadillacs" by Dwight Yoakam - "One Foot Draggin'" by The Coasters - "It's Just a Girl Thang" by Icey J - "Let's Dance" by Benny Goodman - "Magnum PI" Theme - "Blue Moon" by Billie Holiday Edit

  • Quotes

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    • Shelly: Which would you rather watch: sword-swallowers and snake charmers from New Delhi… or MacGyver? Edit
    • Chris: It's "Love is Pain" day on KBHR. Music to soothe the shattered heart. Dedicated to you, Dr. Joel. Edit
    • Joel: 17 years old? When we didn't get into Harvard? We didn't handle that one very well, did we? No, we didn't. Edit

  • Allusions

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    • The title of the episode is taken from the book "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves. In fact there are several allusions to this author in other episodes, especially by Chris Stevens. Robert Graves is an English writer famous for his researches about Roman and Greek mythology. Edit

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