'My Name is Earl': Joy profiteers off non-profits

There is a saying, at least I think there is, that goes something along the lines of "charity begins at home." I've never quite been able to figure out what it means (I'm not much of a do-gooder), but I'm pretty convinced that whatever it might mean it certainly isn't anything along the lines of the scam Joy was working tonight on My Name is Earl.

It strikes me that Earl has destroyed many a person's life. The stuff he did to people before My Name is Earl started and he learned about karma caused a lot of pain and suffering. Tonight though, I'm pretty sure that Earl hadn't really caused the main problem he was attempting to fix.

This week was something of a circular episode on My Name is Earl, and not just because it involved a whole bunch of tornadoes, although they did help. People found missions, lost missions, started fights, ended fights, and in the end, everyone pretty much ended up back where they started (except in a church basement).

Sometimes watching My Name is Earl I get the feeling that the writers started with one idea for an episode only to decide that the episode was actually about something else entirely later. I had that feeling tonight, the episode started off being about a dent in the bar at the Crab Shack, but ended up being about Joy and Earl's marriage.

No matter what anyone believes about evolution, I think we can all agree that Joy is probably not the right person to either prove or disprove the theory. However, tonight's episode of My Name is Earl featured Joy tackling just that issue. It wasn't the main thrust of tonight's episode, but it definitely made for some laughs.

I've always liked Halloween episodes of television shows. I don't know why, but there's something about themed holiday episodes in general that works for me. Tonight's My Name is Earl wasn't the best Halloween show I've ever seen, but it had some good moments.

The longer My Name is Earl runs, the more we get to see that when Earl was a bad guy, the people he treated the worst were in his own family. Earl is pretty lucky that Randy isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, because someone moderately smarter than Randy might have dropped his brother a long time ago.

I like it when Randy unveils any sort of hidden talent or desire (and the two do not always go hand-in-hand) on My Name is Earl. There's definitely more to the big lug than we get to see on a weekly basis. I'm not sure there's much more, but there's more. Tonight, we got another little glimpse into the wonderful world of Randy, but it didn't look like the episode was headed in that direction initially.

After watching tonight's episode, I'm officially convinced - My Name is Earl is having a good season. I know that it's still early to say that, but I've been pretty happy thus far and tonight's episode in particular was funny. From playing on the themes of some good movies to Joy being Joy, it was an episode that had a little bit of everything (except Catalina, which it only had a tiny bit of).

Watching back-to-back episodes of My Name is Earl and following it with a Vice-Presidential debate is kind of like spending two-and-a-half hours with the best and brightest of Camden County. Thank goodness it's only my responsibility to recap Earl, because there the funny is intentional, the other kind of makes me cry.