Product Description

Karma is a funny thing. Just ask Earl (Jason Lee), who's learning the hard way that when you do something bad, it has a way of coming back and biting you in the ass! Hoping to turn his life around, Earl's got a lengthy list of detestable deeds to make up for. Also starring Jamie Pressly, Ethan Suplee, Eddie Steeples and Nadine Velazquez, My Name Is Earl is wildly offbeat and hilariously irreverent—the #1 new comedy of the season!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3212 in DVD
• Brand: Fox
• Released on: 2006-09-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dimensions: .40 pounds
• Running time: 526 minutes

Amazon.com
The most original comedy since Arrested Development, My Name is Earl marked the launch of a lovable new loser. Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) sleeps all day and drinks all night. The pattern ends when he buys a "scratcher"--and wins $100,000. Seconds later, he's hit by a car and loses the ticket. While in the hospital, wife Joy (Emmy nominee Jaime Pressly) leaves him for Darnell the Crab Man (Eddie Steeples). Doped up on morphine, he's watching TV when Carson Daly says something about karma. Earl decides that's his problem: bad karma. He resolves to spend the rest of his life making up for all the harm he's ever done. In the pilot, Earl and brother Randy (Ethan Suplee) start by picking up litter around their motel (Joy got the trailer). While they're at it, Earl finds the lost ticket and collects his bounty. The plan is working! Along with comely maid Catalina (Nadine Velazquez), they set off to right more wrongs. Created by Greg Garcia and teamed with The Office, My Name is Earl put NBC back on the must-see comedy map. Unlike most sitcoms, it drops the studio audience in favor of flashbacks, freeze frames, first-person narration, and extensive So-Cal location work. A soundtrack heavy on blue collar favorites, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, completes the picture.

Throughout the season, Earl gives an old girlfriend self-respect ("Faked My Own Death"), plans his ex-wife's big day ("Joy's Wedding"), and makes up for the birthday he ruined ("Monkeys in Space"). First year guests include Brett Butler ("White Lie Christmas"), Juliette Lewis ("The Bounty Hunter"), and Emmy nominee Jon Favreau ("O Karma, Where Art Thou?"). Giovanni Ribisi and Beau Bridges also stop by as, respectively, Earl's pal Ralph and father Carl. Speaking of originality, "Dad's Car," which takes place during Mother's Day, features commentary from the mothers of Lee, Suplee, Garcia, and director Marc Buckland. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from the First Season of My Name Is Earl (click for larger image)

Customer Reviews

My Name Is Earl breaks into your home
And they say that creative, bizarre shows don't make it on TV anymore...Meet Earl(Jason Lee). Earl is a petty criminal who one day won $100,000 on a scratch-off ticket. Celebrating his unexpected win, Earl is hit by a car, loses the ticket, and ends up in the hospital where he decides that he needs to balance out all the bad things he has done in his life. Finding the ticket and getting his money, Earl is convinced that karma has put him on this mission, much to the dismay of his brother Randy (Ethan Suplee), his ex-wife Joy(Jaime Pressley), and her new boyfriend Darnell the Crab Man(Eddie Steeples).

Since the airing of the pilot, both critics and audiences have been blown away by My Name is Earl. Besides a extremely talented cast whose comedic chops are perfectly timed, Earl has a solid cast of writers who create 22-minutes of laugh out loud comedy every week. Earl's guest stars in Season 1 rival only Scrubs, including Giovanni Ribisi, Johnny Galecki, Beau Bridges, Jon Favreau, Adam Goldberg, Christine Taylor, and Juliette Lewis.

Season 1 of My Name is Earl offered 24 solid episodes, including the pilot, and received the Director's Guild Award and the People's Choice Award for Best New Comedy, and was nominated for a half dozen other awards including 2 Golden Globes. This would be a 5-star show but it remains to be seen if the writers and producers can keep this level of energy up for several more seasons. As First Seasons go though, this is one of the best to come along since Scrubs.

The DVD set just released and it is jam packed with extras include 8 episode commentaries, a 15-minute mini-episode that incorporates the Family Guy into the show, deleted scenes from 6 episodes, some outtake reels that highlight the improvisational nature of Jason Lee, Jamie Pressly, and Ethan Supplee, and a Behind The Scenes look at the show. This is a solid and fun show, and it deserves a place in your collection. Highly Recommended.

A.G. Corwin
St.Louis, MO

The most spiritual show on TV
If you've read the last 14 reviews, you already know the premise and story of the show. Here's what you won't read from anyone else: Under this show's veneer of blue collar humor lies a deeply spiritual and optimistic journey. The show is comedy in the classical sense--characters in a low place are raised up in the end by a series of events--but it is mainly about repentence, restitution and redemption. Earl decides to change his life for the better and stops doing the bad things he did before (repentence), he goes about seeking forgiveness from the people he has wronged and tries to restore what he has taken from them (restitution) and in the end he and the wronged people are better off for it (redemption). I believe the writers chose well in using the concept of instant karma as the vehicle--the driving force Earl has faith in--because that is a universal concept that all religions can identify and respect. Also, I love how intelligently subtle the change in Earl is portrayed. In every episode you will see a flashback of the "before" Earl along with "new" Earl; notice that there is no difference in clothing or hairstyle from before and after. The change is in his heart and behavior only, where it matters. TV writers usually smack you over the head with visual cues.

Anyone who has strived for spiritual improvement can readily identify with Earl. There are some aspects of that path that are easy and immediately rewarding, but that's not always true. Sometimes you have to suffer the misunderstanding, mocking or rejection of your friends and/or relatives or difficult, unforgiving souls. Later epsiodes have their difficult moments and Earl has to hold tight to his faith to get through it. The most significant of such situations is in the episode "Number One", when Earl gives all his money to the man who was supposed to win it. He ends up losing everything except his faith, hungry and homeless, but is finally restored. Lynard Skynard's "Simple Man" was the perfect music for that scene.

I am very happy to see this show put on DVD because NBC edited bits and pieces out when they reran the episodes to make more time for commercials. Some of those bits are important to comedic timing and storyline flow. I highly recommend you get this collection and try to view the episodes through its spiritual prism.

Very funny, original series
I didn't watch this show until I found it on DVD, but I was hooked from the first episode. I watched all episodes from Season 1 in a few day; this is a pretty good show. The show has a pretty clever concept--a small time crook named Earl (Jason Lee) is almost killed after he wins $100,000 from an instant lottery ticket. He believes that Karma is punishing him for all the bad things he's done. Therefore, he makes a list of all the people he has wronged in his life and tries to make it up to them one-by-one (or one episode at a time).

The show has great writing and a very good ensemble cast--highlighted by Jaime Pressly's dead-on performance as Earl's ex-wife. What makes the show really great is that it doesn't make fun of it characters. My Name is Earl could get many easy jokes out of the subject matter--lower class, uneducated rural folk--but instead it develops the characters. And the actors play it straight--they never wink at the camera; therefore, they form well-founded characters and not just chariactures.

The show features several recognizable faces in cameos including Dax Shepard, Giovanni Ribisi (hilarious in 2 episodes), Missi Pyle, Timothy Stack, Johnny Galecki, Beau Bridges, Jon Favreau, Adam Goldberg, Samm Levine, Christine Taylor, Malcolm David Kelley, Juliette Lewis, Clint Howard, Mike O'Malley, Max Perlich, and Lin Shaye. The DVD also includes delete scenes, which are better than the deleted scenes you usually find on a DVD.