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 (Jason Lee), 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.

Earl Jehosephat Hickey (played by Jason Lee)  — 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 where he watches a Carson Daly interview where the latter talks about karma, 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.

Randall Dew Hickey (played by Ethan Suplee) – 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 (Part 1)", 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 Farrah Turner (née Darville, also Joy Hickey) (played by Jaime Pressly) 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 has a strong dislike for 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.