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100One of this season's most tasty and twisted TV treats.
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100The fall's funniest sitcom.
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100Brimming with cockeyed echoes of everything from "Raising Arizona" to "King of the Hill," NBC's best new comedy since "Seinfeld" is that rare chucklehead treat: it's both wildly irreverent and blessed with a cheerful, endearingly upbeat nature.
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100Jason Lee excels as scruffy Earl -- he's a Jed Clampett for the new millennium.
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100My Name Is Earl rampages like a bull in a politically correct china shop.
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100One of the best comedies in years.
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90Watching "My Name Is Earl" unfold is like taking a hydrofoil ride and flying so fast above the ordinary surface of television life that when the show ends you feel dazed and amazed for hours afterward.
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90The NBC sitcom is so unpretentious and original, it will probably win you over on its own sweet merits.
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90The buzz is that "My Name Is Earl" is good, and the truth is that it's better than the buzz.
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88The casting is for awesome, flat-out too-good-for-TV acting.
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88Earl shares the look and heavily narrated sound of Arrested Development, but it has its own scruffy comic tone.
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83Lee may be a tad too smart to embody this reformed dimwit, but his smooth charm makes Earl go down as easy as a tallboy. [23 Sep 2005, p.82]
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80What's so wonderful about My Name Is Earl is that it's a comedy with its heart in the right place and everything else gleefully in the gutter.
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The premise is gimmicky, but based on the promising first two episodes, Lee's infinite list of wrongdoings should provide many seasons' worth of amiable comedy.
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80Offbeat and utterly charming.
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80Cute and smart, "Earl's" pilot pulled a coup unheard of in recent network comedy memory, juggling un-P.C. humor with a winning sweetness.
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80Earl is unashamedly crude, at times downright stupid in its lowlife caricatures, yet it's all so cheerfully endearing that you can't help but be won over by its lowbrow high jinks.
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80"My Name Is Earl" isn't the best comedy around, but it's pretty darn good.
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80"My Name Is Earl" is a good show that doesn't quite have the feel of being the next "Seinfeld" or "Cheers." But like Lee's Earl, Garcia's feel-good concept is strangely effective. If not brilliant, it is ambitious, and it is definitely funny.
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80Manages to be crude and sweet, smart and splendidly stupid, all at the same time.
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75Bad taste meets good writing.
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70We have to put up with characters whose brainpower compares unfavorably with a fire hydrant, but Lee is funny even in a gay bar.
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70"My Name Is Earl" is cheeky, inventive and often bewitching.
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70Watching "My Name Is Earl," you feel like you're in a movie, or at least a movie trailer. In ways more good than bad, it's immediately comprehensible.
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70Congenial.
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70Though the characters are quite different, "Earl" somehow brings to mind NBC's "Ed," perhaps because both shows feature a cast of oddballs and are ultimately uplifting, heartwarming portraits of people trying to do good by making a fresh start.
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60My Name Is Earl is not a stupid sitcom - that is what makes its sexist and homophobic jokes so maddening.
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38Lee may lack the essential sweetness, or pathos, to make Earl ever seem like more than a cute variation on those lovable, loquacious losers who tumble, beer can spurting, through Coen brothers movies. [3 Oct 2005, p.39]
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20The show is charmless and patronizing, and as refreshing as dust.
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10Amounts to a character study of a character not worth studying.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 89 out of 104
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Mixed: 3 out of 104
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Negative: 12 out of 104
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Mr.Furley10Very funny show. Love all the guest stars and zany plots. Incomparable. Ralph is one of my favorite characters.
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7Very original idea and great plots and jokes makes this a great show.