Original airdate: October 9, 2008
Joy’s stopped at a stop sign when a man gets in the passenger seat of her car and tells her she’s being carjacked. Indignant, she gets out of the car, but she ends up with her fingers stuck in the door. As the car drives by Randy and Earl, Joy finally breaks free and tumbles into the street. This sight triggers Earl’s latest list-based memory (and, really, I’m glad they’ve gotten back to the list, but the memory-triggering device is getting a little repetitive): Apparently all of Camden used to be enamored of local stuntman Sweet Johnny (guest star David Arquette), but Earl was a little more enamored of Johnny’s girlfriend Sheila. So Earl would encourage Johnny to attempt ever-more-dangerous stunts, which resulted in Johnny being frequently laid up with injuries, and Earl free to get laid with Sheila.
Earl tracks down Sweet Johnny, who is busy in his yard preparing a new stunt. At first Johnny’s happy to see Earl, but once Earl tells Johnny about his affair with Sheila, Johnny gets very angry and starts shooting Earl with a staple gun. At this point, Earl invokes a physical-harm clause in the list and runs away. Meanwhile, Joy gets a gun of her own -- a real one -- to deal with any potential future carjackers, and Darnell is not pleased.
Earl returns the next day to see if Sweet Johnny has cooled down, but it turns out that Sweet Johnny doesn’t even remember that Earl was there the day before, and Earl has to explain the whole situation again only to get pelted with staples a second time. He seeks out Sheila to find out what’s going on with Johnny, and Sheila is now a meter maid whose once-enticing behind has grown to unfortunate proportions. She tells Earl that a particularly bad head injury gave Johnny a brain injury that makes him unable to form new memories (i.e., he has the same plot-device disease that Drew Barrymore did in 50 First Dates). So every day Johnny’s woken up for the last 10 years, he’s believed it’s the day before his new big stunt.
Earl decides that he has to make everything up to Johnny in one day, then, before Johnny forgets. Thus follows a montage in which Earl repeatedly confesses to Johnny only to get pelted with staples or otherwise assaulted. Eventually he convinces Johnny to go see Sheila, whose substantially larger hindquarters convince Johnny that 10 years have indeed passed. The next step is to get Johnny to pull off his new stunt -- rising through the air in a chair attached to helium balloons, then parachuting back to the ground -- before he loses his memory again.
A smaller but still enthusiastic crowd gathers for Sweet Johnny’s final stunt, but as Johnny is starting to rise in the air, Earl notices that he’s neglected to bring his parachute. Earl grabs the parachute and brings it to Johnny, but Johnny says he just wants to kill himself after learning about the brain damage and Sheila’s infidelity. Johnny throws the parachute to the ground, and Earl grabs on to the chair as it rises in the air. Everyone is worried that the two won’t be able to get down, but Joy takes out her new gun (after Darnell traded the last one in to the police in exchange for a ham) and shoots out two of the balloons, sending the chair crashing safely to the ground.
The next day, Earl returns to Sweet Johnny’s house, and of course Johnny’s forgotten the whole thing. He thinks some kids showed up in the night and wrecked his stunt chair, and asks Earl to help him fix it. Earl agrees, and realizes that thanks to Johnny’s brain condition, Earl will never be able to cross him off the list, and will just have to continue helping him out indefinitely. Man, that could get annoying.
