I did! I'm an Earl-o-holic, or Amigo de Earl, or Amigo de Garcia, or whatever, too! Very a propos point, Katherine!
Thanks, Jeff! You and I have discussed Earl before, so I thought you might have seen it, too.
BTW, it was an uncomfortable moment that evening, with the whole family gathered around the TV. I was just waiting for my kids to start teasing me about my own semi-surreptitious online life (they find my online activity questionable, at best
). But, amazingly, they passed up the opportunity. From which I can only conclude that online friendships are becoming normalized and accepted, even among skeptics like my sons.
And I thought that
Earl episode treated it quite respectfully, when they might as easily have portrayed message-board participants as weird losers who can't make friends in real life. The dead guy was articulate and attractive and knowledgable online (seen in flashbacks), and the friends who came to his funeral seemed like nice, normal, caring friends.
BTW, now that the subject is up,
Earl is far LESS progressive in its portrayal of gay characters. That's probably the thing I find most annoying about the show. What do you think, Jeff?