List of My Name Is Earl characters
The American sitcom television series My Name Is Earl, created by Greg Garcia for NBC, features a variety of characters, most of whom live in the fictional town of Camden and Camden County. The show centers on Earl Hickey, a small-time crook who after an epiphany involving karma, makes a list of items in which he had done wrong to others, and proceeds to make amends to the people involved. The characters listed include Earl's immediate family, friends and acquaintances, as well as general townsfolk who have appeared over multiple episodes and storylines.
Main characters
Earl Hickey
Earl Jehosephat Hickey — the titular and viewpoint character, he has a long history of petty crimes and other repugnant acts of bullying classmates and taking advantage of others. In the opening episode, he wins a lottery scratcher but is immediately hit by a car; during his recovery, he watches a Carson Daly interview where the latter talks about karma, and he realizes he has been a bad person and tries to turn his life around by making a list of all the bad things he has done and doing good deeds to cross them off the list. He discovers that when he does good things he is rewarded by karma, first by getting the lottery ticket back. But when he ignores the list, as especially demonstrated in the episode "The Professor", bad things continue to happen. One of the recurring gags regarding Earl is that he always has his eyes closed when his picture is taken. He has a mustache and tends to wear flannel shirts, although in his past, he also wears concert T-shirts from classic rock bands. He is a huge fan of southern rock and heavy metal bands such as AC/DC, Def Leppard, Motörhead, Judas Priest, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden and Metallica. He drives a 1973 red El Camino that once belonged to his friend Frank: it has a blue driver's side door, found in a tornado. Earl's father Carl intended to name him after himself, but put in an extra loop on his cursive letter "C" on the birth certificate.In season 4, it is discovered that Earl was always the biological father of Joy's oldest son Dodge. He attended a party dressed as a skeleton and slept with Joy after both were drunk at the time. The series indefinitely ended on a cliffhanger after this.
Randy Hickey
Randall Dew Hickey - Earl's younger brother. He and Earl used to commit a bunch of crimes together, but he goes along with Earl on his list. In "Monkeys in Space", when he tries to get a job, Earl finds that he is unable to fulfill his list item in time until Randy helps him. In the episode "Number One", he breaks down and questions the entire process. His character was initially described as equally nasty and tough but after Earl started working on the list, he becomes naive, childlike, and simplistic. In "Harassed a Reporter" he is upset that the reporter portrayed him as mentally retarded, but when she mentions that it could be karma, he is happy that karma noticed him and considered him important.Randy has a crush on Catalina, calling dibs on her when they first met. He dated a woman who liked cats in the episode "Larceny of a Kitty Cat", despite being allergic to them. Although he is afraid of birds, especially chickens, he is willing to forgo that for love, as shown in "South of the Border ", and in part 2, they get married at Catalina's village. In the episode "Foreign Exchange Student" he finally tells Catalina he loves her, but Catalina intentionally makes herself repulsive when they consummate the marriage later that night, after which Randy doesn't want to live with her anymore and just keeps it a green card marriage.
In season 3, after finding that he is unable to function independently, he gets a job as a guard at the same state prison so he can hang out with Earl. In the episode "Creative Writing", Earl remarks that a psychologist had called Randy "borderline artistic". In the "Inside Probe" episodes, Geraldo Rivera described him as the town simpleton, mentally disabled, and reveals that he has 77 misdemeanors like his brother.
Joy Turner
Joy Farrah Turner is Earl's ex-wife who divorces him in the first episode and then marries his friend, Darnell, during the first season of the series. She is pessimistic, cold-hearted, stubborn and vain. Joy is the mother of two boys, Dodge and Earl Jr. She drives a Subaru BRAT painted with the American flag. Her catchphrases are "Oh, snap!", "What the hell", and she frequently calls both Earl and Randy "Dummy". She is openly scornful of Earl's list, and strongly dislikes Catalina, although she ends up saving her life in the fourth season.The episodes "The Bounty Hunter" and "Guess Who's Coming Out of Joy" cover parts of Joy's past. When she was pregnant with her first child, she was kicked out of her parents' house in the neighboring town of Nathanville. She looked for a sugar daddy, dating local celebrity [|TV's Tim Stack] briefly. She and her friends get Earl drunk, after which they have a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas and move into a trailer at the Pimmit Hills Trailer Park. She would often go along with Earl, Randy, Ralph, Donny and others on their crime sprees. She has an affair with Darnell but when she becomes pregnant with her second child, she convinces Earl that he is the father. Years later, at the start of the series, she and Earl divorce, but after he signs the papers, he wins the lottery money. Joy then tries some schemes to get her share, but eventually gives up. She then marries Darnell in the episode "Joy's Wedding". Although she is quite selfish and frugal, she cares deeply for her boys.
In the second season, Joy gets in trouble with the law when she was trying to return an entertainment system cabinet and ended up stealing a truck with a store employee in it. Her charges of grand theft auto, kidnapping and assault would count as the third strike, which would put her in prison for life. She is appointed a deaf lawyer, who gets her involved with an addiction recovery group for her anger and also prescribes happy pills. Hoping to evoke sympathy from the jury, Joy agrees to be a surrogate mother for her half-sister Liberty. The trial goes well until Earl's 911 calls are presented. However, Earl then confesses to all the crimes and takes the punishment.
The third season has Joy being pregnant while taking care of Randy until the latter becomes a guard at the prison that Earl is staying. She gives birth to the baby for Liberty and Ray Ray's family. Joy believed throughout the show that Little Chubby was the father of Dodge and Darnell was the father of Earl Jr. It is revealed in "Dodge's Dad" that Earl is the biological father of Dodge, but Earl Jr.'s father is never named because of the shows cancellation.
Catalina Aruca
Catalina Rana Aruca — the beautiful housekeeper at Earl and Randy's motel. Randy has a major crush on Catalina, immediately calling dibs on her when they first met. She was the top dancer at Club Chubby for about a month, where her routine simply consisted of jumping in place to House of Pain's "Jump Around" song, until one of the patrons died, at which she vowed never to dance again. She dislikes Joy, but later returns to Club Chubby in the season 2 episode "Jump for Joy" when she sees how Earl tries hard to make things better. She also helps Earl on one of the items on his list in the episode "Mailbox". Season 2 features a story arc where Catalina is arrested for speeding and deported to her village. When Earl and Randy arrive, she gets news that Earl has agreed to marry her, but Earl lets Randy do it. In the "Foreign Exchange Student" episode, Randy and Catalina rent an apartment in order to keep up appearances, but when Randy tells her he loves her, Catalina tells Earl she only wants to be friends with Randy. She takes actions to be as physically repulsive as possible when Randy and she consummate their marriage, but afterwards regrets it as she finds that Randy is the best lover she's had. In the season 3 episode "Love Octagon", she declares that she is a new lesbian, but her attempts to woo [|Billie Cunningham] fail. However, she reconciles with her former boyfriend [|Paco] who previously tried to catch her attention in the years past but finally caught her.Catalina was born in the small town of Guadalatucky, a Latin American village stricken with violence and poverty. She was prompted by her lover Paco to come to America. She is placed in a crate and inside a car. In the season 4 flashback episode, "Earl and Joy's Anniversary", when she was trapped in the phone booth with some Africanized bees outside, she said she was from La Paz, and lost her virginity in a foursome with Darnell, Patty, and Kenny. She occasionally wires money to her family in the village. In the episode "Kept a Guy Locked in a Truck", it is revealed she lives in a shared laundry room at the motel.
In some episodes, Catalina breaks the fourth wall with her Spanish lines: In the episode "Barn Burner", she thanks the Latino audience for turning in every week; In the episode "Number One", her quipping at Joy translates to thanking the audience and hoping they will see them next fall; In the episode "Robbed a Stoner Blind", from the second season, she explains during Randy's claymation hallucination of her how the animation was originally going to be more complex but because of budget constraints they simply made her dance around.
Darnell Turner
Darnell Turner, Joy's husband, is still one of Earl's best friends despite apparently impregnating Earl's then-wife Joy. He now acts as "New Daddy" to Joy's two sons. He works in the local dive The Crab Shack. Whenever Earl greets Darnell, he calls him "Crab Man", and he has a generally friendly disposition. In the episode "Y2K", it is revealed that he used to go by the name Harry Monroe, until he was placed in a witness protection program, where he was to assume his new identity of Darnell Turner and was told to avoid liking cheese. He has a pet tortoise whom he calls Mr. Turtle.Part of the season 4 episodes go into Darnell's history where he was raised and trained by his father Thomas Monroe in a secret government agency, and had developed the skills to be a top secret agent. However, when he refused to kill a nine-year-old leader of a socialist nation, and after testifying in court against his former employers, the government had to place him in witness protection from the agency. His cover is blown when he was shown on national television restraining Joy at a game show audition, so he, Joy, and their kids had to go under protection and assume other identities and live elsewhere. He agrees to join his father on one more mission, taking along Earl and sedating him multiple times, to free himself from having to need protection.
The episode "Our 'Cops' Is On" shows that he used to live with his supposed grandmother and grew and sold marijuana in his bedroom. In "Buried Treasure", he narrates that he graduated from college at age 14, was a virtuoso cellist, and could identify 254 varieties of cheese. Darnell speaks multiple languages: In "The Frank Factor" he tells Catalina that he speaks French, Russian and Arabic. He is also seen reading a newspaper printed in another language. In "My Name Is Alias", Joy remarks that he knows seven languages, and three combat sports that ends in "do." Occasionally, Darnell's afro is shown to hide cell phones which self-destruct after use. It is mentioned in season 4 he might have had a brother, and that his sister Pam died.
It is revealed in the very last episode of the show that Earl Jr., generally believed to be his son, is not.