Creator Greg Garcia wrote the pilot while working on another sitcom, Yes, Dear, and initially pitched it to Fox, which passed on the project before NBC picked it up.

Jason Lee was uninterested in working in television and turned down the lead role of Earl Hickey twice before finally agreeing to read the pilot script; he only committed after meeting personally with creator Greg Garcia.

The show's fictional Camden County is loosely modeled on Pimmit Hills, Virginia, the neighborhood where creator Greg Garcia grew up, and the trailer park seen on screen was actually built for filming in Los Angeles rather than a real one.

Most filming locations were in the San Fernando Valley in California; the Palms Motel exterior used in the show is a real motel in North Hills (now the Palm Tree Inn Motel) that also appeared in Gilmore Girls, The Mentalist, and Heroes.

The show was cancelled abruptly in May 2009 despite ending season four with a 'To Be Continued' caption; according to Ethan Suplee, the cancellation stemmed from a licensing dispute where the network delayed responding to the studio's renegotiated deal for two weeks before declaring it too late.

In a 2013 Reddit AMA, creator Greg Garcia revealed the planned series ending: Earl would eventually discover his list had started a chain reaction of other people making similar lists, realize he had put more good into the world than bad, and then tear up his list to walk away at peace, though this was never filmed due to cancellation.

The series faced allegations of Scientology influence, as stars Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee were Scientologists at the time and the show featured guest appearances by prominent Scientologist actors like Michael Peña, Juliette Lewis, and Giovanni Ribisi; in 2008 Alec Baldwin publicly claimed creator Greg Garcia was also a Scientologist, which Garcia denied.

The pilot episode won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing and Directing in a Comedy Series, and Jaime Pressly won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2007.