The Giant Radio Lobes of Fornax A

sounds like it was hilarious...

It usually is.

My Name Is Earl is the Petticoat Junction/Beverly Hillbillies/Green Acres of the 21st Century. We no longer have much of an agrarian society to lampoon (or indulge in sheep-fucking, see badfaggot's recent post), but thank god we still have redneck poor white trash to make fun of. And the BMW-driving, latte-sipping $200K+ salaried Hollywood writers and directors do a pretty good job here. And, of course, big larfs for any sitcom that tops off their episode with jokes about homosexual panic and male-on-male prison rape!

I had the exact same thought (my sub-Mason-Dixon genes were singing to me), but thought that maybe I was just being a crank, with the year I've been having. I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking such things.

See my other comment below. The character writing on this show is one of the things that deserves respect. Here, for example, is Randy, Earl's sometimes profoundly stupid, sometimes stupidly profound brother, reflecting on the non-coolness of Death:

Yeah I'm glad she's not dead no more. Being dead is definitely worse than being alive. When you're dead you can't do all the cool stuff you can do when you're alive. You and I, we can do all kinds of cool stuff cuz we're living, we're not dead, we're alive. If we were dead we wouldn't be able to do all the cool stuff we can do, becuz we're alive. Dead people can't do cool stuff. Only people that are alive can do cool stuff, cuz they're living, and you have to be living to be able to do cool stuff. You have to be alive. Yeah, 'cept when you're alive sometimes bad stuff happens too. Like sometimes you can get into a car wreck, or you can have a headache or twist your ankle or even stub your big toe... So being alive is kinda hard too, but I think it's definitely better than being dead....

It's even better if you imagine the President saying it.

Catalina: What is a county fair?
Randy: It's like Disneyland for poor people.

I share your dislike for hillbilly-bashing humor, but I think something much smarter and more interesting is going on here. The characters may be comically exaggerated, but they are also sharply observed and recognizable (probably from the years series creator Gregory Thomas Garcia spent in the Western Maryland/West Virginia area). The show gets the details right.

And unlike the toothless satire of something like Waiting for Guffman, which congratulates its audience (and itself) for being superior to its cast of hopelessly unsophisticated small town rubes, Earl actually likes and even respects its characters, and suggests there's not a hell of a lot of distance between us as viewers and them at the bottom of the current economic food chain. Earl and his friends may be the subject of the humor but they're not the butt of the joke. What we've got here isn't a freak show, it's a funhouse mirror.

(Oh, and it also helps that the show has the funniest laugh out loud comic writing of any show on the air. And of course without a laff track.)

Here's some bonus prison humor from the show:

Quittin' smokin' is kinda like going to prison. If you can last three days, you'll be fine.

Joy: Hey, Ralph! How was prison?
Ralph: About a five...

Ralph: [having just come out of prison] It's nice to hug another man and it doesn't have to go anywhere.

If lusting for Ethan Suplee is skewed, I don't wanna be straight.

So is he Gay? Cause if he is I'm gonna marry him. I've had a boner for him since I first say him in PCU. Granted, not his best work.

Sorry, Jon Favreau is already married.

Since becoming a director, he seems to be following the Rob Reiner bearded bear-track, only much hotter.

Umm being married never stopped a guy from taking it up the hind parts. :)

I didn't say he wasn't available, just that he wasn't available for marriage.

Doh! I've so been procrastinating on stealing some "best bottom" screen shots from my TiVo. I'm glad someone did it.
(Sorry, just found your LJ. Doing a little catch up.)