Raising Hope (2010)
TV PG
Starring Lucas Neff, Martha Plimpton, Garrett Dillahunt, Shannon Woodward, Cloris Leachman, Baylie & Rylie Cregut, Gregg Binkley, Todd Gibenhain, Kate Micucci, Bijou Phillips
Created by Gregory Thomas Garcia
The Story:
Jimmy Chance (Neff) lives at home with his parents Burt & Virginia (Dillahunt & Plimpton) who are living at home with Maw Maw (Leachman). He has a one-night stand with Lucy (Phillips) who turns out to be a serial killer. Thankfully, they turn her over to be executed. One minor wrinkle, she's pregnant with Jimmy's baby, and he gets custody of Hope (Cregut) after her execution.
This is their story about Raising Hope.
From the mind who brought you My Name Is Earl, and who takes any chance he gets to remind people what a crime it was that show was cancelled, Fox brought Raising Hope to airwaves in 2010.
It ran for 4 seasons, and is now streaming on Netflix.
My wife stumbled upon an episode by chance (no pun intended) and we gave it a shot.
Much like any show, the pilot is good, but not great.
However, they ironed out the kinks, and from the 2nd episode on, the show is comedy gold on a consistent basis.
Funny, touching, a tad crude and sometimes downright hysterical, this is a show about a working class family who may not be the brightest, or the richest, but they sure love each other and at the end of the day will do anything for family.
The cast is amazing from the leads to the bit players. Fully fleshed out and all kinds of eccentricities abound in the show.
In the history of child actors, there have been a lot of adorable kids, but Hope is such a cutie from baby through toddler, she's a total sweetheart and it's totally believable that a family would do whatever they could to take care of her.
There are too many good things about the show to possibly squeeze in, but I would be remiss to not mention the dynamic duo of Plimpton and Dillahunt. Their chemistry and timing is impeccable, and Burt quickly became my favorite character on the show.
There are a few moments where the show would seemingly jump the shark, but even they began to acknowledge those mistakes, and they quickly recovered and went full-steam ahead.
I would have loved to watch a few more seasons, but they probably wrapped it at the right time as Hope was getting older and would soon be heading for school.
Thankfully we can just loop back around and watch them again any time we want to.
Final Grade: A-
