Joy is hardly the most complex character to come about in the
NBC/
FOX turnover series,
My Name Is Earlwriteup needed!, but her straightforward aggressive
self-centeredness makes her definitely one of the funniest creatures in
comedy ever to arise. Full name: Joy Farrah Darville Hickey Turner (having been previously wed to main character Earl Hickey, and presently to Darell "
Crab-Man" Turner"). Her comedy chops are not at all hurt by her portrayal by wryly scrumptious
Jaime Pressly.
Over the course of the series, she has hilariously committed various degrees of
theft,
assault, and
adultery, and her scheming/planning nature is often overtaken by her
impulsiveness. She sometimes figures into the
list of
wrongs from Earl's past that Earl is trying to right, that being the central
gimmick of the show. Other times, Earl gets dragged into Joy's own
absurdist tangential
subplots, such as the time she stole a truck from a
big box store (complete with an unwitting
kidnapping victim in the back) because they would not accept return of a piece of furniture that got ruined in the rain because it was too big to fit through the door of her
trailer.
She has borne three
children, but who can ever be certain who the
fathers were? Her first
pregnancy prompted her to trick Earl into marrying her (although it ultimately turned out, to everyone's surprise, that the child, Dodge Hickey, really was his); her second occurred during their
marriage and was to yet another man, supposedly Darnell (who she later cheated on with Earl, married anyway, and who is eventually hinted not to be the true father of the second child). The second child is clearly not Earls, as it is black -- prompting Joy to comment that she has two children, one white and one black, but she doesn't see race, and so can't tell which is which. The third was as a
surrogate mother for her half-sister.
Despite her
wicked ways, she occasionally displays a soft streak, such as when Darnell's beloved
turtle dies. But mostly she's an outright, cussin', fussin', hollerin', "Oh Snap"-in'
queen bitch. And delightfully so.