My Name Is Earl

Posted by Ryan Earl is still in a coma, and his mind is still playing out The Hickeys sitcom. In it, Earl mistakes Billie’s gynecologist for a gigolo, and Billie gives birth to Earl’s child — who, this time, is actually his own color and looks like him. The Hickeys will hopefully be canceled very soon. So while Earl is comatose, Randy is going to cross off some list items so Earl stays in karma’s favor. Using Earl’s drool, he selects “Stole a Motorcycle.” A while ago, while out on a “crime walk,” Earl and Randy found a motorcycle with […]

Posted by Ryan After a brief reintroduction from NBC President and CEO Jeff Zucker, we get back to Earl. (Go here if you need a refresher of the previous episode that aired way back when.) When Earl was young and wanted to escape family turmoil, he used to get lost in a world of TV sitcoms. Now, unconscious on the street, he’s doing it again, dreaming that he’s married to Billie in The Hickeys idyllic sitcom land. The sitcom isn’t particularly interesting (and hardly funny), though things that happen in reality cause things to happen in the sitcom, like the […]

Nothing stirs up the spirit of the Yule like watching a Christmas-related episode two weeks after Christmas. “Bad Earl” was originally scheduled for Dec. 13, but NBC pushed it way back, probably thinking it was best to not burn a new episode when the ratings probably weren’t going to be good. Earl is out of prison (prison’s not quite out of him), but he’s finding it hard to celebrate during his release party at the Crab Shack. He has his list back, but he’s doubting the existence of karma. All of his good deeds have brought him nothing but misfortune. […]

I’m the cable repairman. I’m here to turn on your box. Earl thinks he’s getting out of jail today, but he doesn’t know that the warden shredded Earl’s early release certificates so he’d have to stay in prison and help bail the warden out from his incompetence. When Earl’s about to walk out of the prison a free man, the guard tells Earl that he’s not on the day’s release list. Earl confronts the warden about reneging on their agreement, and the meeting ends with the warden punched in the gut and Earl in solitary confinement. Earl passes the time […]

Honk if you know someone on death row. Earl has only six months and 10 days left on his prison sentence after helping the warden out of several jams. But the warden finds himself in another mess after a press conference embarrassment, and now the warden has to institute an inmate reconciliation program to replace the previous “two men enter, one man leaves” reconciliation program. So again the warden enlists Earl’s help and offers Earl six months off his sentence if he can get an inmate to reconcile with the victims of his crime. Earl finds a good candidate in […]

With Frank on the loose, Randy and Earl have to recapture him without getting the police involved and creating a public scene. They ask Frank’s friend Paco where he thinks Frank might be headed, and Paco reveals that they stashed some cash in the trailer where Joy and Darnell now live, and that’s probably where they’ll find Frank. Randy gets a prison K-9 search dog and he and Earl head to the trailer park. Meanwhile, very pregnant Joy is at the clinic demanding to be induced by a doctor, pronto. (But Dr. Pronto is unavailable.) Joy is admitted to a […]

Better late than never with the Earl recap, I guess. With this week’s lackluster episode, maybe never was the better idea. “Randy In Charge (…Of Our Days And Our Nights)” finds Earl called to the warden’s office to assist him with the Scared Straight program. Earl will get five weeks knocked off his sentence if he organizes a group of prisoners to attend a school and scare kids. Randy, as we know, is not the best prison guard, and Earl is constantly bailing Randy out of trouble. Earl decides that Randy should be the guard for their Scared Straight visit, […]

“Our Other COPS Is On” opens with the prison inmates watching TV until their time is up and Randy has to turn the TV off. But the inmates stole the knob off the TV, so it stays on. Turns out that COPS is on. And it happens to be the other episode of COPS that was filmed in Camden County on July 4, 2002, the first July 4 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. There’s lots of jingoism and paranoia at the celebration on the fairgrounds. The Camden County cops were shipped a bunch of anti-terrorist equipment by mistake and […]

It’s Conjugal Day at the prison! Frank (Michael Rapaport) is in the hot box for biting someone’s earlobe off, so he won’t be able to meet his girlfriend Billie (Alyssa Milano) for Conjugal Day. Frank shows Earl a nude photo of Billie, who has a tattoo of angel wings, uh, down there. Billie shows up for Conjugal Day, but Earl has to tell her that Frank won’t be coming. Billie’s upset that Frank got tossed in the hot box, but then becomes even more upset when Earl reveals that he saw her nude photo. Billie breaks up with Frank, and […]

Please respect the meat, my friends. Please respect the meat. “Creative Writing” starts with Earl taking a creative writing class with some other inmates. He wants to come up with an imaginative story, but all that ever pops into his head is a male gymnast. Randy takes up a creative writing project of his own, imagining a story in which he, H.R. Pufnstuf and a chimp battle a puppet sniper, a sumo guy with a bazooka and a bunch of ninjas. But all Earl can think of is the gymnast. Joy has a story idea, too. (See where this is […]