My Name Is Earl/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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.
  • Author's Saving Throw: The pilot episode glossed over the circumstances of Joy's infidelity with Darnell and Earl's reaction to seeing "his" child turn out black, which mostly played it for laughs. "Look What's Coming Out Of Joy" showed that Joy did regret cheating on him and genuinely hoped the baby was Earl's, Darnell wasn't entirely an absent father and still sought to be in his kid's life secretly, and Earl was devastated when he finally realized the truth and would have left Joy if his father didn't encourage him to stay just for the kid's sake.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Lots. But for this troper, "Moombataaaaaaaaaaaaa! New day for Central Africa!" stands out.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: A vast majority of the episodes have these for when it shows the aftermath of how Earl suceeded in his goal of the episode. This troper's personal favorite would be when Earl's father sees him in the hospital during the coma episodes and he says he never thought of him as a failure of a son and he loved him after the episode's main plot showed Earl stealing some pot and his Dad and Randy had to go get replacement pot for the guy Earl stole it from.
    • That episode also doubled as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Earl's Dad.
    • Then there's the "Burn Victim" episode, where Earl writing " freedom" (for actually good reason) will almost come off as gut-wrenching. But Wait! There's More! - if you consider the prom night, and how the inmate (after forcing Earl to be more direct) finally manages to stop being a Jerkass, and especially if you don't count the ending.
    • The birthday party episode after Earl feels like he is still considered a jerk and a crook, but at the end of the episode it's revealed that his friends, family, and new friends do greatly appreciate the new Earl very much and cross off something personal from his list as a gift. The look on Earl's face at the end tells us that every ordeal of the show was worth it, if only for this moment alone.
    • The episode with the 'freaks' that Earl apologizes to, at the end the freaks and Earl jump off the diving board at the town pool to get over their fear of being in public and looking like, well freaks. Then voiceover at the end also adds to this as Earl goes on to say that the freaks go on to live the lives they always wanted.
    • "Orphan Earl", Earl finds out that Joy and the other mothers in the trailer park has been scamming a kind old man over the years by pretending to be an improvise country and having him send money. The heartwarming part comes in when after helping the old man get his money back by scamming Joy and the others, Earl takes him to the trailer park to gloat but finds that the trailer parks are even worst then before. The old man then decides to give them money anyway even though they scammed him. Seeing one of the mother hug him out of joy and seeing some others being charitable to a street Santa secure the heartwarming factor.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: If you like classic rock, you'll like this show.
  • 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 Memetic Sex God.
  • Flanderization: Camden County, the town itself, qualifies. It was basically a small southern town with a few cartoonish quirks and gradually got more absurd: Camden had its 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.
    • One episode actually addresses how this trope can come into play in reality. After his mistreatment of a "witch lady" (played by Betty White) because of her appearance, she became a vindictive witch. Earl realized that it was just too easy for people to accept how others view them and start playing up to the role. By the episodes end, Joy resolved to be nicer and less of a bitch, Randy got a Word-A-Day calendar and Earl decided to not be so obsessed with his list, being known as the "karma freak."
  • Fridge Logic: Given all the legal trouble Dog the Bounty Hunter got into last time he tracked down someone in Mexico, why risk going after Joy?
  • 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. It was very amusing to some tropers when he first appeared.
    • Patty once worked for a pimp named Snookie
  • Memetic Badass: Erik Estrada in his game show "Estrada or Nada"
  • Nightmare Fuel: 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. Even though things get better for Earl, it's hard not to wince imagining a baseball fired straight into your testicles at high speed, and Little Chubby's sadistic attitude by drawing it out didn't make things better.
  • 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 generally not being called out on the bad stuff she does has resulted in this since even Joy who takes assholery to a whole new level always gets her commupence.
  • Squick (See Nightmare Fuel)
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Natalie from "Faked My Own Death", which is part of the reason why guys never want to stay in relationships with her.
  • Tear Jerker: Randy crying over Earl's comatose body wondering if he will get into heaven.
    • Earl's reaction to seeing Earl Jr. in "Guess Who's Coming Out of Joy" counts, even more so since up to that point, he was incredibly excited about having his own son.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The fact that Catalina longed for Randy after their night together and Randy not 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.
  • Too Good to Last: The show was quirky, hilarious, and taught a lot of pretty good lessons on top of that. Unfortunately, it ended just not on it's fourth season, but on a cliffhanger too!
  • Unfortunate Implications: The Right Choice Ranch had a tendency to come up with slogans that invoked this. By the current timeline, they finally settled on "We Don't Do Anything Inappropriate to the Boys", though that also comes off as unfortunate in it's own way to some people. But of course, it's all played up for laughs.
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