My Name Is Earl Cast Reunites, 15 Years After NBC Cancellation — See Photos
Fifteen years after NBC pulled the rug out from under My Name Is Earl fans, series vets Jason Lee, Ethan Suplee and Jaime Pressly are back together again.
The stars of the mid-aughts comedy reunited at MEGACON Orlando over the weekend, and Pressly documented their reunion for those who couldn’t be there in person.
“Had the best time ever being back with my boys this weekend!” she wrote on Instagram. See photos below:
For the uninitiated: My Name Is Earl premiered on NBC in 2005, and ran for a total of four seasons. The single-camera sitcom hailed from Greg Garcia, and centered on Lee’s Earl Hickey, a small-time thief who learned to embrace the power of karma and spent his days trying to make amends for everything — and everyone — he’d ever done wrong.
Rounding out the cast were Suplee as Earl’s dimwitted brother Randy; Pressly, who earned an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her turn as Earl’s ex-wife Joy; Eddie Steeples as Joy’s new husband Darnell; and Nadine Velazquez as hotel maid Catalina.
The Season 4 finale, which was never intended to serve as a series finale, revealed that 1) Earl was Dodge’s biological father and 2) Darnell was not Earl Jr.’s father, as previously assumed. Alas, Earl Jr.’s real dad was not disclosed. The words “to be continued…” appeared at the bottom of the screen — and five days later, Earl was cancelled.
One year later, Garcia addressed the series’ abrupt cancellation on his next series, Fox’s Raising Hope. In the pilot episode, a TV news reporter could be heard saying that “a small-time crook with a long list of wrongs he was making amends for has finally finished, and you’ll never guess how it ended!” (In another episode, Garret Dillahunt’s character Burt Chance kicked an NBC executive in the crotch and proclaimed, “That’s for cancelling My Name Is Earl!“)
All four seasons of My Name Is Earl are streaming on Hulu. Peep the reunion photos above, then hit the comments and tell us if you’re still upset about its cancellation, all these years later.
TVLine should have sent a correspondent down to MEGACON. It’s proving to be a goldmine of TV news!
For all those who don’t know, here’s how things would have been resolved, according to creator Greg Garcia:
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1) Earl Jr.’s father would have been a Black celebrity who slept with Joy while passing through Camden County. The celebrity was never cast.
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2) In the final episode, Earl would be struggling with an item on his list. At the same time, Earl was helped by someone else. When Earl asked why, he was told that his helper had a list of people he’d wronged in the past, Earl was on it, and he was trying to make it right. He told Earl he got the idea for the list from someone who help him, who got it from someone who helped her, an so on. Realizing he’d put so much good into the world, Earl went to live his life, knowing his karma was now good.
Are Jason and Ethan even allowed to associate with each other, given Jason is an ex-member of Scientology and Ethan is still currently a member! The scandal this will cause them. “Jokes” aside, It is nice to see them all together again, always wished they had gotten that final season.
You read my mind!
It is rare, but sometimes people can put aside differences and just be friends.
The audience got burned with Earl’s cancelation. It was a great show.
Wish we got that movie that Greg Garcia wanted to do back in 2011.
Can we have a 6 episode Hulu wrap up? Please?
I love the program and I wish it never ended Jason Ethan and Jamie were fantastic in it and so was the girl who played Catalina I forget what her name is it was a funny series and shouldn’t have been canceled
Also, anybody remember the episode of “Raising Hope” where many of the cast members of “My Name is Earl” were guests… and at one point were saying what their characters were on the latter show?
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(Plus, both “Earl” and “Raising Hope” were done dirty.)
I LOVE this show and wanted to see it continue!! AND I still want to know who Earl Jr’s father is!
Love MNIE…alot of time has past, will be interesting to see how that gap gets filled..anyway…..will Def be tuning in to catch up with karma..
Quite possibly my favorite sitcom ever
anyone know what happened to eddie steeples? the actor who played darnell
bring it back I watched all the shows I miss it
I have hoped and prayed they would do a movie or a streaming service would do a limited episode arch to finish it up. I still hope they would
One of the strangest, indeed weird, shows ever on traditional tv.