For months now I’ve been hearing from critics about how funny My Name Is Earl is. “The truth is that it’s better than the buzz,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s Barry Garron in 2005. In actuality, the truth is that Earl is proof that buzz is not necessarily an indicator of quality.

The show revolves around Earl Hickey (Jason Lee, who you might remember from Almost Famous), a lunkhead thief who realizes that all the bad deeds he’s done are coming back to haunt him in the form of karma. With his gang of fellow lunkheads and bimbos, he goes around trying to fix everything he’s done wrong.

Strangely – and thankfully – absent from this NBC sitcom is a laugh track, putting it closer to Arrested Development than Hope and Faith. However, the show’s over-reliance on the yokel status of its characters can get frustrating. Earl is the only one with any sense of depth; the rest are generally just dumb crooks you might find on the list of Darwin Award recipients. The only exception is Eddie Steeples’ Darnell. Darnell’s stupidity is a bit more subtle than the others and a little less grating, but Steeples regrettably gets little screen time. The other actors try to out-act each other, creating a Vaudeville feel.

It’s not that the show is completely unfunny; there were a few laugh-out-loud moments in the episodes I saw. One involved a copy machine, a bottle of urine and a plan to steal $10,000 in office supplies. Another involved surfing on top of a giant hotdog. For the most part, though, the show spawns a few chortles.

Lee manages to pull off Earl’s occasionally hokey internal monologue and lets us see both the scoundrel and the struggling do-gooder within, but it’s just not enough. It’s difficult – if not impossible – for one character to a show; fleshing out the other characters would add depth to the slightly anemic laughs. While it’s good background for doing your sociology homework, those searching for an Arrested Development replacement will just have to keep looking.

Earl airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on NBC.