YMMV / My Name Is Earl

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was Randy just a simpleton, going along with his brother's schemes and not in full control of his actions, or is he a fully aware person, who joined in on his brother's antics, because he wanted to? It doesn't help that Depending on the Writer, Randy swings between kinda slow but competent and borderline mental retardation.
• Angst? What Angst?: Despite the fact that he was doing his wife behind his back, and she eventually left Earl for him, Earl and Darnell are best buds, once even bonding over a shared naked dance from Joy. Darnell was hiding in the closet.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Season 3. Earl goes to prison in order to save Joy from getting her third strike (which would never have happened in Real Life) and that leaves him unable to cross things off of his list. Then, once he is freed from prison ^note By getting an early release for blackmailing the warden after he shredded Earl's good behavior certificates he loses his faith in Karma and goes back to being "bad Earl", gets hit by a car (again) and is comatose, again being unable to cross things off of his list^note His friends and family do it for him as a way of bringing him back. Upon waking up from his coma, he marries Frank's ex-girlfriend Billie, who's a bigger bitch than Joy ever could be and even threatens to kill him for working on his list instead of spending time with her. Then after Billie joins the Camdenites, she divorces Earl and everything is back to normal by Season 4. In all fairness, this season was being produced right in the middle of the 2007 Writer's Strike, which likely contributed to the poor quality.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Joy. Some people think she's hilarious and has some redeeming qualities, others think she's a horrible jerkass who never really develops and stays the same selfish bitch from start to finish.
  • Darnell. He's either a funny and kind Only Sane Man who plays off the other characters well, a boringly perfect person, or lazy with his own quirks like everyone else. It's especially pronounced because Darnell suffers the most from Depending on the Writer. Then there was the secret agent plot, which was either funny in its own absurd way or just bizarre and stupid even for this show.
• Bizarro Episode: As bonus content on the season 1 DVD, there is an "alternate first episode" where Earl sees Stewie Griffin talk about revenge instead of Carson Daly talking about karma, and he decides to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Until he gets killed by his friends and wills the show to Randy. Also a nice use of Acting for Two with Jason Lee as a transvestite prostitute.
• Cult Classic: Even now, the show has a pretty impressive fan club of fans who love the show because of its fairly progressive message, catchy humor and Stealth Parody on the American south.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Didi is implied to have a couple of screws loose in her head. She is one of the single most violent and angry people on Earl's list.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans like to avoid or disregard season 3 for its unnecessary story changes.
• Fetish Retardant: Catalina tries to use this to make herself unappealing to Randy. It works, too. Unfortunately for her, it turned out that Randy was a nigh-on Sex God.
• Genius Bonus: "Pigsquatch"—the giant pig Joy tries to capture—seems like another wacky bit of legend just made up for the show. Then you find out several states in the American South have their own "Pigzilla" legends concerning gigantic swine cryptids.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Following this series' cancellation, Mike O'Malley's next recurring role is in Glee, where his main interaction is with his Camp Gay son.
  • Patty once worked for a pimp named Snookie.
  • A faith healer called "God's Little Finger" wears an outfit that will look mighty familiar to fans of a certain lil' future seer...
  • The idea of Randy and Joy in a relationship in "Pinky" becomes this given that, in Raising Hope, Ethan Suplee and Jaime Pressly play a married couple... and it plays out exactly like how Joy and Randy being married would play out.
• It Was His Sled: Darnell is a former super-spy in Witness Protection.
• Jerkass Woobie: Little Chubby. Sure, he's a psycho like his father, but, well, he's a psycho like his father. Big Chubby apparently threw his wife out of a moving vehicle. That, along with God knows what else, is enough to understand why he acts the way he does. And even though he tries to become a nicer man, twice, he ends up having a ball transplant, so he can be orrery enough to run the family business.
• Memetic Badass: Erik Estrada in his game show "Estrada or Nada".
• Memetic Mutation: This image◊ of Darnell, typically used in response to horrifying stories or images.
• Misaimed Fandom: Although the concept of karma has nothing to do with Scientology, some people liked to blame this show for propaganda of Scientology, based only on the fact that Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee were members of this church.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Ralph was already a petty thug, with a huge Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder, but he hit a new low, when an elderly woman takes him into her home and mistakes him for her dead husband. The first thing he does is ask for his ATM number, then proceedes to take full advantage of the situation.
  • Billie trying to undo all the things Earl crossed off of his list (re-tipping the Turners' trailer over, bringing a group of tourists to make fun of the carnival people, stealing Didi's leg after she finally forgave Earl, making Nescobar A-Lop-Lop listen to his own accent, burning down Pop's Hot Dog Cart) because Earl wasn't spending enough time with her. As if that wasn't bad enough, she threatened to kill Earl after the police were called on her. While she ultimately redeems herself by becoming a Camdenite and renouncing both her criminal ways and her settlement money, viewers were less willing to forgive her prior actions.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Shailene Woodley appeared as the young Gwen Waters in the episode "BB".
  • Chloë Grace Moretz as Candy, the knife throwing child Earl helps in the episode "Broke Joy's Fancy Figurine"
• The Scrappy:
  • Billie is not very well liked by the fandom. While no more flawed than any other character in the series, Earl's obsession with her and Earl's bad karma being blamed for her behavior (rather than blaming her for her behavior) left a bad taste in the mouths of many.
  • Ralph is an obnoxious thug whose primary purpose is to make life harder for Earl through either Chronic Villainy or sheer callousness, and unlike Joy he had barely any redeeming qualities and received next to no character development whatsoever; his antics were almost always more annoying than funny, and he remained a largely one-note borderline-deranged Friend Nobody Likes all the way up until he was finally dropped in Season 4.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 3 is usually regarded as the worst with Earl and Randy in prison in the first half and the second was Randy working on the list while Earl was in a coma. Though season 4 went back to formula.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Billie getting hit by a car in "Bad Earl" is obvious, very poor CGI.
  • Probably the best example of the bunch is the hilariously bad CGI-rendered tornado and resulting debris that blows through Camden in Season 4.
• Spiritual Successor: This series eventually gained one in Sprung (2022), another Greg Garcia production. Although not as explicit as Earl regarding Karma, Sprung repeatedly shows people taking advantage of the COVID-19 Pandemic having their ill-gotten gains stolen from them, while those who are trying their best to do good receive windfalls. Jack, who's responsible for targeting the bad and helping the good, eventually earns his own opportunity for a happy ending where he continues to help others by taking care of his parents and teaching at a high school so he can make sure kids don't get in trouble like he did.
• Squick:
  • Only this series can take sex with Jenna Elfman as a highly flexible cheerleader, and turn it into this.
  • Little Chubby's batting cage scene.
  • Joel's disfigured hand, which he aptly describes as a "clump of spastic meat".
  • Joy's toe infection. Also, some of Earl Jr's and Dodge's games around the trailer.
  Get Mommy's thong off your head. You just had pinkeye!
• Take That, Scrappy!: Earl punching Ralph in the face and stealing Doris from him in "Bad Earl". This is also the final episode that Ralph appears in.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The fact that Catalina longed for Randy after their night together and Randy was no longer in love with her wasn't picked up after the episode "Foreign Exchange Student." The following episode had a brief nod when Catalina smelled his hair affectionately, but it never went anywhere beyond that. It does get a brief mention in season 4 when Randy is presented with his own car and Catalina is showing it off, and assuming his gift is her, he states he already had her, and she wasn't that good.
  • Additionally, Catalina having feelings for Earl was alluded to in the pilot and when Catalina gets deported, but Earl refused to act on them due to Randy calling dibs. This was never brought up again, even after Randy was over, Catalina and her and Earl could have been together.
  • When Joy fled to Mexico, a bounty hunter was sent after her. Instead of Jessie (who still had a bone to pick with her) they used Dog.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Earl goes to prison and discovers that Ralph is his cellmate. In the very first scene of Season 3, Ralph escapes through a hole in the wall without having the smallest interaction with Earl.
• The Woobie: Most of the characters at various points (Joy when she loses her dream of fame, Randy when Earl tells him he doesn't stand a chance with Catalina, Earl and his dad when they go on a crying jag over their adulterous wives, and so on), but most often? Joy's kids.

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