After rummaging through Earl’s motel room for the umpteenth time, Joy wonders when she will get some of the money that she is owed. When is she going to get her hot tub?  Earl should have known it was inevitable.  Even after all the grief and illegitimate children Joy gave him, he would eventually have to give her something in return.  Which brings us to #153 on his list:  Broke Joy’s fancy figurine.

Adamant that the winnings were only to be used to for his karma list, Earl agrees to remedy something that he ruined of Joy’s.  He wants to replace the fancy figurine that he and Randy blew up with a firecracker.  Unfortunately, completing that task would not be such a piece of cake.  That particular figurine could only be obtained by the first place prizewinner of the Prettiest Pretty Princess Pageant.  Joy received her last figurine back in 1981 when she and mother won.  Seems Earl destroyed a very important piece of Joy’s childhood because that was the last figurine she ever received.  Once the Stoker family entered the competition, the pageant title never changed hands again.

Determined to win this year’s figurine for Joy, Earl decides to approach the reigning Pageant Queen herself.  He agrees to help Shelly Stoker and her daughter, Candy, in the talent portion of the competition in exchange for the prize. Unfortunately, Joy would rather get a hot tub than a princess-riding-a-lawn-mower figurine, so she is determined to thwart Earl’s pageant victory.  WRENCH IN PLAN:  She doesn’t have a mother or daughter worthy of entering the mother/daughter competition.  But the chain-smoking beauty miraculously comes up with a plan.  Joy will enter her supposedly dead mother into the pageant!

Loaded with beauty but scarcely a talent, Joy makes her mark with the bikini portion of the competition.  Unfortunately, a dance routine on her mother’s (a.k.a. cigarette) ashes would surely pale in comparison to the knife-throwing portion of the Stoker routine.  Knife-wielding was a Stoker talent handed down from generation to generation.  It always assured them a victory.  WRENCH IN PLAN #2:  Unfortunately, Candy Stoker did not share her mother’s desire to win the competition.  She’d rather spend time learning about medicine than about baton twirling.

Seeing the pain in Candy’s face, Earl decided that making her wish come true was far more important than saving a boatload of money on a hot tub.  So in order to assure the Stokers’ loss, Earl encourages Candy to throw a knife at his leg.  Being stabbed was more painful than he had remembered, but it was worth the price.  Earl managed to help two girls that night:  Candy, the future doctor and little Joy, the former beauty queen.

Although Joy would never admit it, Earl knew that Joy’s win that night was far more important to her than the hot tub.  And even though he would still have to fork over the money, he knew he could wipe his conscious clean of #153.