My Name Is Earl
Earl Hickey (Lee) 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, under the influence of morphine, he develops a belief in the concept of karmic retribution when he hears about karma during an episode of Last Call with Carson Daly in which Daly is interviewing country music star Trace Adkins. Convinced he has to turn his life around to survive, Earl gives himself over to the power of karma. As his first step of a makeshift twelve-step program to fix his misdeeds, Earl makes a list of every bad thing and every person he has wronged and commences efforts to fix them all. After doing a first good deed, he finds the $100,000 lottery ticket that was previously 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.
After a year of doing good deeds, a major plot-twist occurs in season two. Earl's ex-wife Joy Turner (recently remarried to local "Crabman" Darnell Turner) steals a truck from a local "Bargain Bag" supermarket in retaliation for their refusing to process a return for the $3000 home-entertainment system she'd purchased (due to gum being on her receipt), and in so doing, accidentally kidnaps a Bargain Bags employee (who, unbeknownst to Joy, was in the truck's container). She is facing life in prison due to this being 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 takes the blame for the truck theft and kidnapping to protect Joy's freedom and family and is sentenced to two years in a state penitentiary. Behind bars, Earl is forced to surrender his original list, but continues to do good deeds. He also meets fellow prisoner and friend Frank's girlfriend, Billie.
In an attempt to re-capture an escaped Frank, Earl, his brother Randy, and Frank end up seeing Joy give birth.
Through Earl's captivity, the Warden grants more and more time off Earl's sentence for his good deeds. However, the Warden revokes all of this time off on what would be Earl's second-to-last day in prison, realizing that Earl was making him look good by solving so many problems in the prison. However, Earl eventually gains the upper hand and forces the Warden to honor his early release.
After leaving prison, Earl loses his faith in the list; he has spent years and all 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 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.
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.
As another plot-twist, Darnell (aka, the Crabman) 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 many cases, Earl discovers that his crimes and misdemeanors had far more repercussions than he had known, and that complete fixes in those cases would require far more effort than he had first thought when selecting his list item. Yet he would also find that repairs would have deeper and more layered results, bringing the realm of the show into the religious and spiritual as well as comedic.
The series often ended its episodes with a final scene of Earl and Randy conversing in their shared motel room bed at night about a non-important, trivial topic.
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