3.
“My Name is Earl.”
—oh2bewacki
“At least Greg Garcia gave the viewers a bit of closure, describing how he wanted the show to end:
‘We never really got the chance to fully figure it out, but the talk in the writers’ room was that Earl Jr’s Dad was going to be someone famous. Like, Dave Chappelle or Lil John. Someone who came to town on tour, and Joy slept with. But when we got canceled, we never got the chance to figure it out. I was worried about doing a cliffhanger, but I asked NBC if it was safe to do one at the end of the season, and they told me it was. I guess it wasn’t.
I had always had an ending to Earl, and I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to see it happen. You’ve got a show about a guy with a list, so not seeing him finish it is a bummer. But the truth is, he wasn’t ever going to finish the list. The basic idea of the ending was that while he was stuck on a really hard list item, he was going to start to get frustrated that he was never going to finish it. Then he runs into someone who had a list of their own, and Earl was on it. They needed to make up for something bad they had done to Earl. He asks them where they got the idea of making a list, and they tell him that someone came to them with a list and that person got the idea from someone else. Earl eventually realizes that his list started a chain reaction of people with lists and that he’s finally put more good into the world than bad. So, at that point, he was going to tear up his list and live his life and walk into the sunset a free man. With good karma.'”