My Name is Earl

Earl (Jason Lee, "Almost Famous," "Chasing Amy") has taken one too many wrong turns on the highway of life. However, a twist of fate turns his life into a tailspin of life-renewing events. Earl won a small lottery, and, after an epiphany, he is determined to transform his good fortune into a life-changing event as he sets out to right all the wrongs from his past.

To date, the comedy has received the People's Choice Award, two Television Critics Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series and Emmy Awards for writing, directing, casting and editing. Once again, this season, "Earl" will anchor the Thursday-night lineup.

Joining Earl on his quest to cleanse his karma are a few dim-witted friends including hapless brother Randy (Ethan Suplee, "Cold Mountain") and the very sexy Catalina (Nadine Velazquez, "The Bold and the Beautiful"). Even Darnell (Eddie Steeples, "Torque"), an employee of the Crab Shack where Earl drinks beer, offers his support. But it's Earl's ex-wife Joy (Jaime Pressly, "Not Another Teen Movie") who won't lift a finger to help unless there's something in it for her.

Despite his seemingly limited intelligence, Earl is oddly effective -- and the third-year series, like its namesake, has a voice and style all its own. Created and written by Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia ("Yes, Dear"), "My Name Is Earl" is executive-produced by Garcia, and Bobby Bowman ("Yes, Dear"). The series is produced by Amigos de Garcia and Twentieth Century Fox Television.

Cast:
Earl J. Hickey (Jason Lee) — Born April 25, 1970 The protagonist and narrator of the show. In flashbacks, we see Earl before he began reforming himself: a jobless ne'er-do-well with no respect for authority or just about anyone. Self-described as the guy who would've stolen anything that wasn't nailed down, Earl now stands by the principle of karma. He explains karma by saying, "do good things and good things happen, do bad things, they come back to haunt you." He was supposed to be named after his father, Carl, but an extra loop on a cursive "C" was Earl's first step into a life of misfortune. Earl has never had a photograph taken without blinking at the wrong moment, something regularly demonstrated throughout the show. Earl knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with a moustache when he first drank chocolate milk, and in episode 3.01 he implies that it is one of his two favorite things.

Randy Hickey (Ethan Suplee) — Earl's dim-witted, but well meaning, brother who assists Earl with righting his wrongs. He initially assumed he and Earl would resume stealing once Earl completed his list. Despite his poor intellect (a doctor supposedly once told Randy that he was borderline autistic), he often says profound things and has proven to be extremely helpful to Earl in his missions, though he is sometimes resentful when Earl's list forces him to make sacrifices. He has a boyishly innocent nature. He has a schoolboy crush on Catalina. It is also revealed that he has an extreme fear of birds; he is afraid of the pope's mitre because he thinks there might be a chicken under it. He mistakenly believes that ET is not an alien, but a monkey. Squeaky noises make his toes hurt. He hates cats and is allergic to them. (There is a continuity error here, because in Season 1, is revealed they had a pet cat as children. Also during one of Randy and Earls bed talks, Randy asks what animal earl would be, and Earl says dogs, because he is allergic to cats, and wouldn't want to make himself sneeze all the time. However, in 'Larceny of a kitty cat', it is Randy that is allergic, and Earl is completely fine around them.) He holds the Camden County record for staring at the sun. He often trims Earl's toenails at night while Earl is asleep.

Joy Turner (née Darville, previously Hickey) (Jaime Pressly) — Earl's ex-wife, Darnell's current wife, and mother of Dodge and Earl Jr., neither of whom are Earl's biological children. She operates a nail parlor in her home. Though she puts on a front of self-centeredness, she fully appreciates the people around her, even Earl, and has been found to be a dedicated, loving mom. She is also a very good fighter, a fact she puts down to "watchin' a lot of Springer" — when she was pregnant with Dodge, Joy knocked Earl's girlfriend Jessie (and her front teeth) out. Joy was arrested and almost convicted for stealing a cargo van from a local department store and kidnapping a store employee who was trapped inside.

Catalina Aruca (Nadine Velazquez) — A maid at the motel where Earl and Randy currently reside. She is an illegal immigrant who entered the United States in 1999. She learned English a year before meeting Earl and Randy. She worked for a month as a pole dancer at Club Chubby and was very successful at it because instead of dancing, she jumped. She has a fear of snakes and rape. Her mother is dead but Catalina tells others not to feel sad, as "It's OK, it was either her or me." She also says her brother killed her father, her father was shot down and her cousins were slain execution style in the Festival of Redemption. She and Joy have a mutual hatred stemming back from when they first met. (The first thing Joy ever said to Catalina was "who's the whore?"). During Season 2, Catalina went back to stripping in order to help Earl, although she had to help Joy along the way. She seems to be very fond of Earl, even hitting on him when they first met. Earl appreciated but rejected the pass because Randy called "dibs." Her last name, Aruca, was first revealed in a newspaper article in Bad Karma. It wasn't mentioned on the show itself until the third-season episode "Creative Writing," in the voiceover of the soap opera she imagined herself starring in. She recently married Randy to get back to America after being deported. While she originally found Randy to be unattractive, she later became infatuated with him after they had fantastic sex, and, in somewhat of a role-reversal, Randy now refers to them being together as just "a greencard marriage".

Darnell "Crabman" Turner (Eddie Steeples) — Joy's new husband and father of Earl Jr. Despite this, he and Earl are good friends (although they rarely do anything together, they greet each other every episode with the famous lines: "Hey, Earl!" ... "Hey, Crabman!"). Darnell works as a cook at the local Crab Shack (hence his nickname). It was revealed that his real name is Harry Monroe," (a reference to Richard Pryor's character in Stir Crazy who is also named Harry Munroe) but he was forced to change it through the Witness Protection Program. Although generally calm and soft-spoken, Darnell is implied to be very intelligent (graduated from college at age 14, speaks several languages) and occasionally makes highly intellectual observations, which the others usually ignore or brush off. He has a fondness for cheese and a pet box turtle named Mr. Turtle. Before marrying Joy and moving to the trailer park, he lived in Camden with his grandmother, where he grew a large amount of marijuana in his bedroom; his grandmother didn't know what the plants were and simply thought he enjoyed gardening. (However, in Episode 1, Joy tells Earl that 'Darnell is moving in because his parents kicked him out for growing weed in his closet'.)

Source: http://www.nbc.com/My_Name_Is_Earl and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_name_is_earl

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