My Name Is Earl is an American sitcom series created by Greg Garcia that aired on the NBC television network from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, in the United States. It was produced by 20th Century Fox Television and starred Jason Lee as Earl Hickey, the title character. The series also stars Ethan Suplee, Jaime Pressly, Nadine Velazquez, and Eddie Steeples.
Most episodes from the first season, then only a few from the rest, begin with Earl presenting the premise of the series:
You know the kind of guy who does nothing but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks? Well, that was me. Every time something good happened to me, something bad was always waiting around the corner: karma. That's when I realized that I had to change, so I made a list of everything bad I've ever done and one by one I'm gonna make up for all my mistakes. I'm just trying to be a better person. My name is Earl.
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Synopsis
Earl Hickey is a small-time criminal, living in the fictional rural county of Camden, whose winning $100,000 lottery ticket is lost when he is hit by a car while he celebrates his good fortune. Lying in a hospital bed, he learns about karma during an episode of the talk show Last Call with Carson Daly. Convinced he has to turn his life around to survive, Earl gives himself over to the power of karma. He makes a list of every bad thing and every person he has wronged and make efforts to fix them all. After doing a first good deed, he finds the $100,000 lottery ticket that he had lost. Seeing this as a sign of karma rewarding him for his commitment, Earl uses his newfound wealth to do more good deeds according to his list.
Having divorced from his wife Joy Darville, Earl moves into a motel and lives with his brother Randy, and they meet Catalina, the motel's beautiful maid who illegally immigrated from somewhere in Latin America. Earl works on the list which mostly involves strangers and old acquaintances he has wronged, but also contains items involving his family. Initially Joy plots to kill or extort Earl for the lottery money, but later gives up. Joy marries Darnell Turner, a mutual friend who works at a local restaurant called the Crab Shack, and with whom she had been having an affair. In the season 1 finale, Earl discovers he had bought the lotto tickets using money he stole from another person, but when he tries to return his winnings to that person, the latter is inflicted with bad karma, so he returns the money to Earl.
In season 2, Earl continues to work on his list, however, Joy gets in deep trouble when she steals a delivery truck and ends up kidnapping and assaulting the person who was inside. Joy is arrested for felonies that would put her in prison for life because it was her third strike. To soften the jury, she decides to have a surrogate baby for her half-sister Liberty Washington. When things do not go well at her trial, Earl sacrifices himself by confessing to all of Joy's crimes, and is sentenced to two years in a state penitentiary. Also during the season, Catalina was deported, so Earl and Randy visit her village in Latin America, and Randy marries Catalina in a green card marriage to bring her back.
In the third season, Earl is in the state prison, but continues to do good deeds despite not having his list. He meets Frank, with whom he had rented the trailer in which Joy and Darnell now live, while Randy gets a job as a warden to hang out with Earl. Meanwhile, Joy gives birth to Liberty and Ray Ray's child. Earl's good deeds attract the attention of the state warden Jerry, who offers Earl a reduction in prison time for helping him resolve his issues. When Earl is about to leave, Jerry revokes Earl's reductions as he would lose such a productive helper, but Earl eventually gains the upper hand and forces Jerry to honor his early release. After leaving prison, Earl loses his faith in the List; he has spent years and the last of his lottery winnings doing good things, but has nothing lasting to show for it, and is insistent that Karma should have given him some kind of lasting reward by now. He reverts to his pre-list ways, doing reckless and bad things until Frank's former girlfriend Billie hits him with her car and sends him into a coma. Billie is subsequently hit by a car herself, leaving them both lying in the street. Eventually, Earl wakes up, finds Billie, and marries her, as he believes her to be Karma's reward for his years of effort. However, Earl and Billie argue about his list, and Earl eventually chooses the list over her, sending her into a rampage where she undoes the good things that he has accomplished to that point. However, Billie converts to a "Camdenite" (a parodic sect of the Mennonites) after hiding out in their territory to avoid arrest, and divorces Earl on friendly terms, giving him the settlement money from the person who ran her down in the street because she felt Earl deserved the money, and as a Camdenite, she wouldn't be needing it. Earl uses it to continue doing good deeds on his original list.
In the fourth season, as he continues to perform good deeds, Earl's motives initially come across as shallow and selfish - that he is only doing good to improve his karma and by extension his own life. However, Earl begins to develop a genuine sense of morality and principles, refusing to participate in illegal or immoral activities - though sometimes finding himself in very awkward situations, including those involving a suicidal stunt man, a second-hand hot tub that gives his ex-wife Joy a communicable toe disease, a Korean War veteran who wants to reclaim some possessions Earl destroyed (including the ear of a fellow soldier) and a "witch woman" who proves him right in thinking she is evil when she knocks him and many others out and stores them in her basement. Darnell blows his Witness Protection cover when Joy goes crazy at an audition for a game show entitled ¿Estrada or Nada?. After Joy beats host Erik Estrada in the game show, they go through different covers, eventually stopping at an upper-class lifestyle. Soon, Darnell's father finds his son. It is then revealed that Darnell's name is actually Harry Monroe (although he is still called Darnell or Crabman). As a child, he was a spy in a top-secret espionage agency. Feeling that his job was immoral, he publicly testified against the agency, getting himself placed in the Witness Protection Program. Crabman, his father, and Earl (who must be drugged so he sees nothing) go on a final mission for the agency. After everyone survives a helicopter crash, life goes back to normal.
In the first two seasons, the episodes would typically end with Earl and Randy conversing in bed about some trivial topic that Randy has a question about.
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Cast
- Jason Lee as Earl Hickey, a small-time crook who turns his life around after winning money a lottery scratcher and making a list of wrongs that he plans to make amends for.
- Ethan Suplee as Randy Hickey, Earl's dim-witted brother.
- Jaime Pressly as Joy Turner, Earl's ex-wife who lives in a trailer park. She has two little kids.
- Nadine Velazquez as Catalina, the maid at the motel that Earl and Randy reside.
- Eddie Steeples as Darnell Turner/Harry Monroe, a worker at the local restaurant that Earl and the gang frequent. He marries Joy. Earl calls him "Crab Man"
Production
Conception
Creator and head writer Greg Garcia wrote the pilot while working on another sitcom, Yes, Dear. He initially pitched the series to Fox which passed on the series. He then approached NBC, which optioned the pilot on a cast-contingent basis, meaning they would order the pilot provided a suitable cast could be assembled. Jason Lee was approached for the lead role, but was uninterested in working in television and passed on the series twice before finally agreeing to read the pilot script. Though he liked the pilot, he was hesitant to commit to his first TV starring role until meeting with Garcia, after which he signed on to play Earl Hickey.
Locations
My Name Is Earl is set in fictional Camden County. Creator Greg Garcia says:
In the episode "BB", Earl's driver's license address is at "Pimmit Hills Trailer Park, Space C-13, Camden County", but the state is not listed. Creator Greg Garcia said that Camden County is loosely modeled on Pimmit Hills, Virginia, the neighborhood where he grew up. The actual location in Los Angeles was not a trailer park, but was built up to look like one.
Many of the locations were filmed in San Fernando Valley in California. In the season 1 episode "The Professor", Earl receives a postcard from Alex with the address "Earl Hickey, The Palms Hotel RM 231, 9005 Lincoln Blvd, Camden USA" with Earl's hand covering up most of the postmark. The Palms Motel location is a motel in North Hills, California, now named the Palm Tree Inn Motel. It was also used to film other shows and films such as Gilmore Girls, The Mentalist, and Heroes. Exterior shots of the Crab Shack and Club Chubby were also taken from locations in Van Nuys and North Hills. Houses and shops for the various characters come from locations in Van Nuys, Santa Clarita, Northridge, Moorpark, Los Angeles, and other Southern California cities. In the episode "Didn't Pay Taxes", Earl and Randy climb the landmark Artesia water tower, although they do not refer to it by name.
In the episode "Inside Probe (Part 2)", Earl hints at a general location by saying, "I guess we are in the central time zone".
Other episodes have listed states that were unlikely to have Camden County. In the episode "Our Other Cops is On", officer Stuart Daniels states that his surveillance equipment was "supposed to go to Camden, New Jersey, but came here instead". In "Earl and Joy's Anniversary", Crabman, Paddy, Catalina, and Kenny are hiding in a phone booth from bees. When the bees leave the Indian clerk wakes them up and says, "It's all okay. The bees are heading for Texas."
Cancellation and future
The series ended abruptly on May 19, 2009 after running for four seasons. Season four had ended with the caption 'To Be Continued'. The series' producer, 20th Century Fox Television, approached the Fox, TBS and TNT networks to continue the series, but they were unable to come to terms without "seriously undermining the artistic integrity of the series."
In October 2011, Jason Lee told E! Online he has been in talks with Greg Garcia to finish the list via a movie, possibly to be released online.
On October 1, 2013, creator Greg Garcia participated in an AMA on reddit.com. Fan Jerry Denton asked "Who was Earl Jr's. real father and did Earl ever finish the list?"
Garcia replied:
We never really got the chance to fully figure it out but the talk in the writers room was that Earl Jr.'s Dad was going to be someone famous. Like Dave Chappelle or Lil Jon. Someone that came to town on tour and Joy slept with. But when we got canceled we never got the chance to figure it out. I was worried about doing a cliffhanger but I asked NBC if it was safe to do one at the end of the season and they told me it was. I guess it wasn't.
I had always had an ending to Earl and I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to see it happen. You've got a show about a guy with a list so not seeing him finish it is a bummer. But the truth is, he wasn't ever going to finish the list. The basic idea of the ending was that while he was stuck on a really hard list item he was going to start to get frustrated that he was never going to finish it. Then he runs into someone who had a list of their own and Earl was on it. They needed to make up for something bad they had done to Earl. He asks them where they got the idea of making a list and they tell him that someone came to them with a list and that person got the idea from someone else. Earl eventually realizes that his list started a chain reaction of people with lists and that he's finally put more good into the world than bad. So at that point he was going to tear up his list and go live his life. Walk into the sunset a free man. With good karma.
Critical reception
The show was well received by critics and audiences alike. One reviewer speculated that Earl's forthrightness to having led a life of idiocy is what endears him to the viewer, and is what suggests there is a depth to his character beyond what is initially seen. Many of the negative and ambivalent reviews center on what is perceived to be base and bigoted humor.
Some critics claimed the series had a Scientologist bias or message, with actors Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee being Scientologists. In 2008, Alec Baldwin publicly named Earl creator Greg Garcia as being a Scientologist; Garcia quickly denied any involvement with Scientology, claiming that the Daily Mirror had incorrectly reported him to be a Scientologist.
The series was nominated twice for Best International Programme at the British Academy Television Awards in 2007 and 2008. The pilot episode won Emmy awards for Outstanding Writing and Directing in a Comedy Series for Greg Garcia and Marc Buckland respectively at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards. Jaime Pressly won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy series at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards. Other Emmy nominations include Beau Bridges and Giovanni Ribisi for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
Episodes
DVD releases
Season releases overview
Ratings
The series premiered on September 20, 2005, drew in 14.9 million viewers in the United States, earning a 6.6 rating. By the airing of the third episode it was apparent that My Name Is Earl was the highest rated of NBC's new fall offerings, and a full season (22 episodes) was ordered. In its first month, it was also the highest rated new sitcom of the season to air on any network and was the highest rated sitcom on any network in the 18-49-year-old demographic. The show was renewed for a second season (2006-07), a third (2007-08), and a fourth (2008-09).
Syndication
20th Century Fox Television has cleared My Name Is Earl in nearly 50% of the U.S., said Bob Cook, the company's president and chief operating officer. 20th had sold the off-net sitcom to the Fox, Tribune, CBS, Hearst-Argyle, and Sinclair station groups for a fall 2009 debut.
My Name Is Earl aired in off-network syndication and on TBS, Ion Television, and MyNetworkTV in the United States, and is currently available on the streaming service Netflix. Canada airs the series on Joytv. The series premiered in January 2006 on Channel 4 in the UK. The fourth and Final season was shown on E4 in January 2009. In 2013, 5* gained the repeat rights to the series.
Adaptation outside the U.S.
A Greek adaptation entitled ?? ???? ??????? (My name is Vangelis), starring Vasilis Charalampoupoulos as Vangelis, Makis Papadimitriou, Klelia Renesi, Anna Dimitrievic and Michalis Afolayan, premiered on November 14, 2011 on Mega Channel.
A Turkish drama featuring a moustached man looking like Jason Lee's character and using the "list" element in the character's search for repentance for past crimes has been airing on Turkish television and in a dubbed format in various Arab channels.
Comic book
Independent comic book publisher Oni Press had announced a comic book tie-in to the series in 2006, and season one's DVD release included ads for the comic; but none were produced. Since the cancellation of the show, Oni has abandoned the comic.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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