My Name Is Earl - Seasons 1-2

If you just look at the commercials, My Name Is Earl can look really dumb. But that's just the intentionally trailer-trash characters. The supporting cast is really good at conveying stupidity in a really entertaining way. My favorite secondary character is Darnell, otherwise known as "Crab Man". He has a very friendly relationship with Earl, his wife Joy's ex-husband, and often seems simple, but he actually has a lot of knowledge in his head and a shady past that has yet to be explored. There's plenty of things like that in the show, it might seem outwardly like just a dumb comedy, but a lot of time is spent developing characters and relationships.

The main character is Earl, obviously, played by Jason Lee. At first, he's almost unrecognizable in the part. If you're familiar with him from his other movies, like the Kevin Smith stuff, he seems a lot different. The voice is the same, but the mannerisms and appearance is like night and day. It's really impressive how much he dives into the role. Does Earl look like a guy who used to be a pro skateboarder? Earl is one of the best main characters in years. He's funny and likable, and while he's obviously made a lot of bad decisions, you can see that he's become a new person and is really trying to make the world better. Once in a while he slips up again, but his passion for the list and making up for his mistakes are very believable and endearing.

The first season was mostly a bunch of interrelated one-shot episodes where Earl usually found someone he'd wronged before from his list, fixed a relatively simple problem, but then realized something else that was wrong or an unanticipated way his error had been worse than he expected, and figures out to make it right while learning some valuable lessons. Season two branched out a lot more. The list was less prominent than before. He still used it a lot, crossing off names and adding more, but there were a lot of side plots that weren't even related. He goes all over the place helping his friends, and the big story arc for the season is Joy's trouble with the law after an attempt to get a refund on her busted entertainment center. It resolves with Earl making a big sacrifice to help the people he loves, and I have to wonder how major the ramifications will be for the next season. Earl and his friends and family have really grown, and the show has a lot more emotional depth than you'd really expect from a cursory glance at it.