Its writers think we're stupid, though.

At least half the people over thirty have watched at least a few episodes of the 1990s' television series called Early Edition. To those who haven't, it's about a guy who receives tomorrow's newspaper, and thus feels a responsibility to intervene in soon-to-happen events in order to avert catastrophes. All throughout the show, we have a recurring image of a clean-cut, middle-class-looking Gary Hobson in a constant hurry, with a paper rolled up in his backpocket, scurrying past everybody in his bar and heading to save an old woman about to be hit by a truck.

Of course, dude always arrives at the last five seconds before the truck hits... and that's part of the reason the showmakers think we're stupid.

Here's the thing. If you were told that some kid was about to get electrocuted at 3:00 pm, wouldn't you arrive there at least fifteen minutes earlier? Maybe strike a conversation with that child way before it happens in order to distract him away from all the nefarious electricity? Why wait right until the juice is about to fry him in order to pounce on him yelling, "No! Stay away!" and freak everybody out in the process? Unless you were just trying to make a show for the sake of your show.

Listen, I get it: the whole thing is fantasy. There's no possible technological way, at the moment, by which you can have tomorrow's physical newspaper, much less have the print itself change with the changing events. We just can't travel through time. Or have some cat know or "sense" that something's up in the paper and get it to meow to get Gary's attention to it. Nevertheless, it remains insulting to one's intelligence that the dude has to wait until the last seconds to arrive to a scene of impending doom every single time just to make your scene look like the cheesiest and least believable of action movies. "Fantastical" doesn't mean you have to kill all credibility. In that movie where the Martians come to Earth, the film still bothered to paint a realistic human reaction to such an world-shattering event.

Another thing that's a little less than believable about the show is the kind of events Gary intervenes on behalf of. This is a guy who lives in Chicago, Illinois, and yet, most of his interventions are some tighty-whitey type of middle-aged White woman about to drown in a swimming-pool, while the most deadly, gang-related events of his city rarely seem to make it on his tomorrow's paper.

Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't intervene on behalf of his city's Black residents and their youth/gang-related problems, but whenever he does, it's always from a White Savior Complex perspective. You know the type: he goes in and gets involved into some kid's life, tries to steer him away from that lifestyle, all while saving him from this or that killing attempt. But, overall, it's a rarity, as in, no more than 5% of the entire show.

Finally, the other thing that bugged me is the character's character itself. Keep aside the fact that virtually no one on Earth is so angelic as to never make any money off of that paper's horse racing results or the fluctuations of the stock market, if only as a modest compensation for running all the livelong day trying save the people of Chicago. Keep that implausibility aside. I'm talking about a more generic personality trait of Gary's that bugged me: his temper.

Now, to say "Gary has a temper" is a bit of an overstatement, in the sense that the guy doesn't just go into fits of rage and start getting violent with people (or the furniture). It's a couple notches below that: he's cantankerous. Like, all the time. And that became even more pronounced in Seasons 3 and 4. Somebody in a bad mood every one in a while, that's okay; but when it's most of the time, he just becomes unpleasant to be around.

Oh, and did I mention you often see the boom mic smack into the screen in a shocking display of shooting sloppiness? And did I mention Gary was never curious enough to bother asking the guy who delivers his newspaper where he got it from? And did I mention that very few of those newspaper tragedies happen before 6:30 am?

And yet, with all these "gripes" I have with the show, why have I still bothered to watch it... in its entirety?

See, some things you look forward to watching because you find them extremely enjoyable, while other things you just watch because "it's just something to watch" in your downtime. You watch it in that part of your day when you're taking a break, maybe you're eating or have just finished eating but still don't quite feel like reading or going for a walk. So, you turn on the show about the guy who receives tomorrow's newspaper while you're chilling back on the armchair, bed, or sofa having diet coke. Some episodes are outright enjoyable and funny; some are boring or lame; most are just okay. And that's good enough.

By the way, that's also why I wouldn't mind watching a sequel to that in 2020s Chicago (or another city), even starring Kyle Chandler himself. Maybe he'd read the paper on his tablet or something. It's not like the hit-by-a-bus types of news have changed one bit since then.