Ed (TV Series) - Premise

Premise

The show revolved around Cavanagh's Ed Stevens, a hotshot New York lawyer who on the same day is fired from his job (for drafting a contract with a misplaced comma that ended up costing his firm $1.6 million) and comes home to discover his wife sleeping with a mailman (the wife makes the point that it is not their mailman in particular, but another mailman).

Deciding to spend some time in his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio, he is reunited with friends that he has missed, as well as Carol Vessey, a woman he had a crush on in high school. Determined to win Carol's heart, he decides to stay, buying a rundown bowling alley and setting up a new law firm in the process, being nicknamed the "Bowling-Alley Lawyer" ("I am a lawyer, I own a bowling alley. Two separate things").

Ed also had a number of running gags, such as bowling alley employee Phil (Michael Ian Black) hatching ludicrous schemes usually to gain fame and/or fortune, ten-dollar bets between Ed and Mike that would require one of them to do something extremely embarrassing, mentions of Arbor Day as a big holiday, and various characters named "Godfrey" appearing in many episodes. The series also dealt with issues of social popularity and self esteem both through Ed—who was unpopular in high school and yet had a crush on stereotypically popular blond cheerleader Carol Vessey—and through Molly, Carol's coworker and friend who was similarly unpopular in high school and continues to have self esteem issues due to her being overweight.