NYT: My Name is Earl

Behind every hit on television there is usually a miss — or several misses. That is certainly the case with NBC's one true hit this season, "My Name Is Earl," one of the freshest new network comedies in years, which, if its charms had been recognized earlier, might be playing tonight on the Fox network.

Then again it could have been on CBS and ABC as well, or NBC could have had the show a year earlier than it did. Instead the program is on NBC on Thursday nights as the top-rated comedy on television in the important audience group of 18-to-49-year-old viewers. Its star, Jason Lee, has become an instant television favorite (and as of yesterday had recovered from a bout of chicken pox to resume shooting the series.)

As happens so often with hit shows, the story behind "Earl" is a tale of the passion of one creator, in this case, a veteran comedy writer named Greg Garcia, who simply would not stop pushing past a series of rejections to find a home for his cherished idea. As Mr. Garcia told the story, sitting in his office on the soundstage in Los Angeles that accommodates Earl's motel home and other sets, it began on a beach in the summer of 2003. Mr. Garcia, whose main previous credit was creating the successful but critically disparaged CBS comedy "Yes, Dear," was on vacation in Nags Head, N.C., with his extended family. He was determined to come up with an idea for a new show, and his thoughts ran to what he called "the trailer-park world," which had always fascinated him. "I didn't come from that world," he said, "but I had a friend, who did — he's a writer on the show now."

Mr. Garcia said he had always been drawn to the notion of karma as well, and the two separate threads came together in Earl, a career petty criminal who wins the lottery and decides to reform his life after hearing Carson Daly talk about karma on television. In television, the next step after an idea is the pitch. Because Mr. Garcia had a deal with 20th Century Fox Television, that meant working through that studio and then to the network it is affiliated with: Fox. So he pitched his "Earl" idea to the comedy executives at the Fox network. They passed. "Did not seem like a series," Mr. Garcia was told. He was angry, enough so that he told the Fox executives that when the show became a hit he would have a job for them pushing a broom on the set. Otherwise he was not discouraged. "My career has been a long string of people telling me no," Mr. Garcia said. Running his plan past the executives in charge of 20th Century Fox Television, Dana Walden and Gary Newman, Mr. Garcia decided to write a pilot script anyway.

Still working on "Yes, Dear," he got up at 4 every morning, wrote until 10 a.m., and finished in two weeks. Ms. Walden loved it, and sent it back to the Fox network. The same comedy executives who had dismissed the pitch loved the script and sent it up the chain of command to the top entertainment executives, Sandy Grushow and Gail Berman. "It came back with a pass," Ms. Walden said. "They just felt very certain that there wasn't a show there." Mr. Newman added that Fox had implied the show's setting and characters felt "too downmarket" for what the network's sales department wanted at that point. Fox was not alone. The studio sent the script everywhere and got a series of no's from each of the other networks — including NBC. Mr. Garcia went back to work on "Yes, Dear" and was also commissioned by Fox to work with some actors they had under contract, including Jenna Elfman, to develop show ideas for them. "And everybody that they would send me, I'd pitch 'Earl' to them," Mr. Garcia said. "Finally they called me and said, if you keep pitching 'Earl' we're not going to send you any more talent. I was like, whatever."

Mr. Newman said, "Greg was so passionate about this show, it was so embedded in his soul, that we couldn't really get him to focus on doing something else with Jenna Elfman or anyone else." By the next development season, NBC had a new executive in charge of entertainment, Kevin Reilly, and the network was facing a serious ratings collapse. Mr. Reilly put out word that he was wide open to any and all original ideas. The script for "Earl" arrived on his desk. He sent back word: this was a smart script that he liked very much. That did not mean NBC was committed. As Mr. Garcia interpreted it, NBC, as Fox had the year before, had concerns about the show's ambience being "outside their brand." Mr. Garcia said, "They were worried about, are we going to be able to sell BMW's in this show?" All Mr. Garcia and the studio got at that point was what is called a "cast contingent pickup." That meant find the right "Earl" and you'll get a pilot order.

Mr. Garcia wanted to "shoot for the moon," and approach real movie stars. At least he did after first trying out Trace Adkins, a country music singer, whose reading of Earl initially made Ms. Walden and the other studio executives "fall out of our seats laughing" at his audition. (Mr. Reilly agreed he was funny but was not near committing to him.). Jason Lee was the dream casting choice, but he was still pursuing a film career. Ms. Walden said the studio had tried numerous times to land Mr. Lee for television projects. "The message would come back from his agents: 'Lose our number.' " The script for "Earl" however, captivated Mr. Lee. Negotiations commenced. Mr. Garcia heard a signing was imminent. The next morning he woke to an e-mail message: "Jason is out." He said, "I've woken up to a lot of ugly things in my life, but that was the ugliest." By chance, the same day at an art show in Santa Monica, Mr. Garcia ran into Gay Ribisi, Mr. Lee's manager. She promised to talk further to the actor. The next morning she called with a new message: "Jason is in."

NBC committed to the pilot. That should have been the end of the show's tribulations, because the result was what critics called one of the outstanding pilots of recent years. But Mr. Garcia said that after NBC had the pilot he got a call from what he called "one of the powers that be" at the network, who told him, "It just isn't funny." The pilot was tested, and it scored brilliantly. Some at NBC remained unconvinced. "We found out our poor little pilot had to go through four or five tests," Ms. Walden said. "Each time it did better." She had special praise for Mr. Reilly, who stuck his then very vulnerable neck out to push an unusual show. "Kevin gets all the credit," she said. "In terms of a network executive who recognizes there was something there was very relevant, that felt fresh and funny. There were a lot of reasons to say no but the bold choice was yes."