"Home At Last"
By Anita Gates
TV Guide
Oct. 14-20, 2000
This season, another unhappy New York lawyer (Thomas Cavanagh) packs up and goes home to the fictional town of Stuckeyville on NBC's Ed... "There is this fantasy of what it would it be like to start over," says Rob Burnett, Ed's creator and executive producer. "Ed, in his moment of crisis, is looking through pictures and asks, 'When was the last time I was really happy?' [Then he decides:] 'I'm going to now go re-create my past."
Ed's moment is actually one very bad day in which he's fired from a Manhattan law firm, only to come home and find his wife in bed with the mailman. No wonder his gaze falls longingly upon a photo of Carol Vessey (Julie Bowen), the girl he adored from a far in high school. So when he revisits Stuckeyville and runs into the still-beautiful Carol, he promptly buys the local bowling alley and moves home.
"What if a guy in that position suddenly got a completely clean slate?" asks Burnett, 38, who left North Caldwell, New Jersey, for New York City 15 years ago. "I think there's something very compelling about that."
On the other hand, if a person's in the market for a new life, why not move to Paris? Or Hawaii? But Stuckeyville? On TV, the lure of the familiar is irresistible. And that visceral reaction to the streets and byways of your childhood seems universal.