History Series / MyNameIsEarl

* BackgroundMusic: Incessant. Possibly as a counterpoise to the lack of a LaughTrack.

* PinkIsErotic: Club Chubby is a strip club in Camden County that has [[MsFanservice Catalina]] under their employ as one of their best and most famous stripper. It's common to see pink lights during these scenes, even when Randy used the stripper pole (not dancing he was just feeling how hot it was and people treated him like a performing stripper).

* BerserkButton: Harming Joy's kids, emotionally or physically, causes her to turn into MamaBear.

* BadassMustache: Earl, full stop. Many flashbacks show Randy trying to grow one, with Earl telling him both of them having mustaches would be weird.

* ItsASmallNetAfterAll: In the second season the witness in Joy's case is killed in a bizarre accident. They hold a funeral for him and are saddened when nobody shows up, not even his neighbor. They later do some investigating and discover he had a strong presence on the internet. One of the people he knew online was a fellow player in an online game...the aforementioned neighbor.

* {{Jerkass}}: A number of characters

* TheAtoner: Earl Hickey becomes one in the pilot after one YankTheDogsChain too many.

* AxCrazy: Chubby Sr. is a Crazy Witch Lady with a HairTriggerTemper.

-->'''Randy:''' Network executives, they sure take the cake
-->'''Joy:''' Plus, they don't let people cuss anymore on TV until a certain time at night. [[[MediumAwareness Looks at her watch]]] Douchebags.

-->'''Gym Patron:''' How big is your bully?
-->'''Randy:''' About 'this' tall, about 'this' wide, ''[pantomimes feeling her chest]''about a 32 C.
-->'''Gym Patron:''' Wait? Your bully is a girl?
-->'''Randy:''' Yeah, but a really tough girl... ''32 C!''

* TheComicallySerious: Stuart. Also, Earl's dad.

* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: "Broke Joy's Fancy Figurine" has Joy, no longer caring about the figuring, repeatedly tell Earl to buy her a hot tub in order to cross her off the List. An example in and of itself, but then Season 4's "Joy in a Bubble" reveals that a different List item was for Earl costing Joy a hot tub several years ago.

* CrazyCulturalComparison: One episode involved an incident where [[FunnyForeigner Nescobar Aloplop]] received a lap dance from a stripper, who then got into an argument with [[SpicyLatina Catalina]], because Nescobar Aloplop is one of her regular "clients". His response:

* CrisisOfFaith: Sister Millie has one of these when she finds out it wasn't God's voice she was hearing, but Earl's.

* TheDitz: Randy was flanderized into an extreme version of this.

** Joy and Catalina.
** Don't forget Ralph, who spends an inordinate amount of time shirtless and pantless, and Darnell, who appears in various states of undress during flashbacks of InterruptedIntimacy with Joy.

* {{Flanderization}}: Camden County started as a small southern town with a few cartoonish quirks and gradually got more absurd. They had their own faction in the civil war (the Central) which lasted about half an hour and the Camdenites split off from the Amish because the latter were too accepting of new technology like the wheel and pitchforks.

* HappilyMarried: Joy and Darnell.

* AbusiveParents : Philo, the man Earl helps in "Something To Live For."
--> '''Earl:''' That's an interesting mark on the back of your neck.
--> '''Philo:''' My mom hit me with a curling iron. I spilled cereal on the carpet. [[WorseWithContext There wasn't even milk in it]].

--> '''Earl''': When you steal a lot of purses, you learn a thing or two about mace.

* BlackComedyRape / DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale : When Earl is in a coma, a truck driver captures him as her love slave. It's mostly PlayedForLaughs, but the implications are still pretty Squicky. Randy, Joy, Darnell, and Catalina rescue him, though, so it turns out all right.

-->'''Earl''': I have to tell [Darnell].\\
'''Joy''': Like H-E-double-L you do.\\
'''Earl''': I can't live like this Joy, he needs to know we....H-A-D sex together.\\
'''Joy''': That is B-U-double-L hockey!

* CousinOliver : Parodied, like many sitcom tropes, in Season 3's coma arc. Apparently ''The Hickeys'' adopted a young boy when their own kids were no longer cute.

* DownerEnding : The second season finale. Earl has tried to become an adult, but in trying to help Joy, he's lost his job, his apartment, his new girlfriend, and he's had to give up his list. Fittingly, "House of the Rising Sun" plays as he goes to prison.

* FunnyBackgroundEvent : Many examples, but Randy working the stripper pole at Little Chubby's is a standout.

* GoshDangItToHeck : In a flashback, one of the prisoners in Season 3 gets a tattoo "before he knew what swear words were." His tattoo says "Fudge the Police."

* HeelRealization : Joy has one when she realizes that Liberty, her sworn enemy, is angry at her for getting to grow up with a daddy.

-->'''Randy:''' Hey, Earl.
-->'''Earl:''' Yeah, Randy.
-->'''Randy''': Who do you think would win in a fight -- [[Series/TheMuppetShow Muppets]] or Series/SesameStreet?
-->'''Earl''': I don't really think they'd fight; they're both pretty peaceful.
-->'''Randy:''' What if they had to, like in [[Film/{{Highlander}} that head-chopping-off movie where there could be only one?]]
-->'''Earl:''' Muppets.
-->'''Randy:''' Okay. Muppets or [[Series/FraggleRock Fraggles]]?
-->'''Earl:''' Muppets.
-->'''Randy:''' Okay. What about Muppets or [[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse He-Man]]?
-->'''Earl:''' Just He-Man, or He-Man and his friends?
-->'''Randy:''' Just He-Man.
-->'''Earl:''' Muppets.
-->'''Randy:''' That's who I had.

* InelegantBlubbering : All the prisoners in Earl's cell block engage in this.

--> '''Earl''': Was that the party where Fat Steve dressed up like the Kool-Aid Man and tried to go through the wall?

--> '''Darnell''': I think I'm about to give birth to [[ToiletHumor poop-tuplets!]]
* NWordPrivileges : Discussed in "Sticks & Stones." The bearded lady and her friends can call each other "freaks," but Earl tells Randy not to call them by the name.

* {{Only a Flesh Wound}} : Earl gets stabbed, shanked, and shot in different episodes.

* PowerWalk : "The Gang" has one when they get together to scratch the hot dog cart off the list.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot : Jaime Pressly was pregnant during the second season, hence the written-in surrogate pregnancy. The flashbacks to a time when Joy was pregnant increased as well.

--> '''Joy''': "Somebody switched my cake with a pile of dog turds! Either one of you know anything about this?" \\
'''Randy''': "Actually they're cat turds. But I don't know anything about it!"

* TakeThat : Season 2's "The Birthday Party," when Earl switched pot brownies for non-pot brownies.

--> '''Earl''': "How's your English going?" \\
'''Nescobar''': "I speak better than you, bitch."

* WhenSheSmiles : Gwen from the Season One episode "B.B." Played by Miriam Shor.

* ExpansionPackPast: Patty's character has elements of this.
** Actually, ''most'' characters have this to some degree or another.

* FanService: Joy and Catalina.

%%* FatAndSkinny: The Hickey brothers.

* IKnowMortalKombat: Joy has an impressive set of martial skills... learned from watching talk shows (!).
** She proved to Darnell street smarts are real by using a trick from ''Series/{{MacGyver|1985}}'' to save their lives.

* LeftHanging:
** While the final cliffhanger is never resolved, the pilot of Greg Garcia's following show ''Series/RaisingHope'' worked in a brief nod that indicates that Earl eventually did finish his list:

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: When Earl [[spoiler:falsely confesses to Joy's crime. First of all, the fact that Joy's prints are mentioned as being also on the truck would mean she at the very least would be an accessory to the crime, the fact that she jumped bail and escaped to Mexico is also a major felony and her star witness deciding to suddenly confess at the very least would require a retrial to rule out Earl making a false confession. All-in-all, Joy ''still'' would have done some jail-time for her either being part of the crime or the felonies she committed while attempting to resist arrest.]]
** [[spoiler:Also, Ruby would have been pretty much required to not do anything about her crush on Earl, because he's the ex-husband of her client, creating a conflict of interests.]]
** Earl and Joy's marriage could have ''easily'' been annulled, because Earl was extremely drunk when it happened, too drunk to give proper consent to marriage (or anything else.) Heck, the officiant should have refused to marry them on those grounds! (And usually would.)

** All we know about Camden is somewhere in the DeepSouth and is apparently in the Central Time Zone. (Doesn't help that the series was [[CaliforniaDoubling filmed in California]].)

* AccidentalInnuendo: The Right Choice Ranch has tried a number of slogans throughout its history, but each one turned into one of these (examples include "Touching Bad Boys Since 1963" and "Bringing Bad Boys To Their Knees Since 1963". In desperation, they eventually settled on [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial "We Don't Do Anything Inappropriate To The Boys."]] [[invoked]]

* TooDumbToLive: A lot of the Camden residents fall under this, but Randy definitely takes the cake.

*** Inverted with Frank and Billie's cousin, and the Earl's FourthDateMarriage to Ralph's mother, especially when [[spoiler: she leaves him for the elderly lead singer of Phish Tahko]].

* [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield Where the Hell is Camden?]]: All we know is it's somewhere in the DeepSouth. (Doesn't help that the series was [[CaliforniaDoubling filmed in California]].)
** And while we're on the subject, Catalina's home country of "Guadelatucky" seems to have shades of Mexico (two episodes even lampshade it right in the title), but then Catalina herself says it's ''not'' Mexico, and Patty the Daytime Hooker puts it in Bolivia. (Unless she's talking about a ''different'' La Paz...)

->'''Earl:''' ''Do good things and good things happen to you. Do bad things, they'll come back to haunt you.''
->'''Randy:''' ''That's deep Earl, so why don't you stop hogging those Vicodins they gave you and we can all chat about that for a while?''

Creator/{{NBC}} sitcom starring Creator/JasonLee as Earl Hickey, a petty criminal, drunken vandal and all-round piece of obnoxious white trash who has a revelation one fateful day. He wins a hundred thousand dollars from a Scratch 'n' Win lottery ticket only to get hit by a car during his celebration dance, losing the ticket to the wind and putting him in traction. While he's high on painkillers his promiscuous wife Joy hands over divorce papers so she can run off with Earl Jr's real daddy Darnell. While watching TV, he sees Carson Daly explain the concept of karma.

It occurs to Earl that possibly the reason his life sucks is because he's been nothing but a {{Jerkass}} doing bad things to a lot of people, and that maybe he would have better luck if he [[TheAtoner made up for them]]. To that end he prepares a list of all the bad things he can remember doing, and starts finding a way to make up for them, one by one. Starting on his first item of picking up litter (because he used to litter a lot), he walks to the trash and comes across his missing lotto ticket. This is evidence to him that karma really does work, and he sets out to scratch every item off the list. [[OneHourWorkWeek The Lotto money allows him to focus all his attention on his list]].

The show falls well down the ideal side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The concepts of karma and inherent goodness are integral to the premise, and indeed, to most of the episode plots. Despite this, it does not shy away from many ideas and topics that other shows on that end do. It also adheres more strictly to the concept of karma than straight Idealism, meaning it's a little more realistic and/or cynical than the usual idealistic fare. Many bad things happen to the characters, but they almost always provide character development, and serve an ultimately good purpose.

* BeeAfraid: When Earl falls for a sexy woman named Alex and begins to ignore his list to spend time with her, the forces of karma send bees after him and, when that fails, a whole swarm after her.

* BlandNameProduct: Earl refers to a Nyquil {{Expy}} as "Generic brand, nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, best sleep you ever got with a cold" Medicine.

* OverlyLongHug: In an episode where Earl is trying to hide Joy (his ex-wife) from an ex girlfriend from even further back. Trying to hide Joy in an old camper trailer, they have to make a deal with a homeless guy for a pair of shoes and a hug "from the cute one." He ends up taking Joy's stilettos and Earl has to give him an uncomfortably long hug. After some time talking to each other, Earl and Joy manage to patch up their rocky post-marriage life and they hug each other. Joy starts to pull away, but Earl isn't quite finished yet, due to the last hug he had to give.

* HardTruthAesop: In "Very Bad Things", Earl decides to atone by taking Joy's side in everything. Which leads to him; helping Joy get away with grand theft auto, kidnapping and assault. In the end; he decides to stop taking Joy's side and decides it would just be easier to just let the victim go than to keep chasing him, However, the man did remember Joy's identity and she ended up in jail. There are now 2 lessons in this:
** Atoning for something you did wrong won't always be worth it because your victim will just use your guilt as leverage for their own crimes.
** If you are committing a crime, never settle for maybe and follow it through to the end by tying up any loose ends.

* JustFriends: Randy towards Catalina. Then after their green card wedding and its disastrous wedding night (why didn't Catalina just say no to sex?) there was an UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo that wasn't followed up on.