Raising Hope

I've never written about TV on the blog before, but an important, though almost completely ignored, event occurred a few weeks ago, and I felt obliged to comment on it: Fox cancelled Raising Hope. What's Raising Hope, you ask? That's exactly one of the problems. The show, even though it didn’t garner any awards or draw in any significant number of viewers, was one of the sweetest, oddest, and most unique programs on television. I’m only in the second season of the show, which is on Netflix, and only found out about it a few months before its cancellation, but here are some of my impressions so far: 

The Chances don’t have much. As they put it, they belong to the “lower lower lower middle class,” but on occasional moments of honesty, they come out and say outright that they’re poor, and unlike what some of their scheming relatives believe, there’s nothing wrong with that. Their lack of material goods, exciting jobs, and extravagant adventures don’t exactly make for traditionally attractive television. Instead, it forces the writers to tell small scale stories focusing on the dynamics of the family and the town around them, which seems to consist of the Chances' house a few neighbors, a daycare center and the local grocery store. It’s refreshingly low scale, the sort of program where you don’t fear the death of any of the main character by way of  serial killer — one TV’s favorite tropes — except for a few minutes in the pilot, that is. 

The series opens as Jimmy, the youngest member of the Chance family -- consisting of his two parents and his great grandmother -- loses out on a game to his parents, who make him go out in the middle of the night to fetch some ice cream. On his way there, Jimmy nearly runs over a woman on the street. Jimmy's parents were apparently too busy mocking him during his first 24 years, forgetting to tell him to fear strangers, and not let them in  his car. The result of this misguided bit parenting: Hope. 

You see, Lucy, the woman whom Jimmy rescued from an unknown situation and consequently had sex with in the back of his van, was a psychopathic serial killer on there run. Her crimes? She murdered her boyfriends. Thankfully, once Jimmy brings her home, Virginia, his mom, recognizes Lucy from the news, and upon whacking her over the head with a television, turns her into the police. Around nine months later, Lucy  hands Jimmy Hope, their baby daughter, right before her execution. 

On the surface, the Chances seem like the last people you would think of to take care of a baby. They all work full-time, yet none of them finished high-school which means they don’t earn much. They don’t even have their own house, instead living in their great grandmother's, or“maw-maw” as they call her, house. They’re all a little selfish, and kinda dumb. Burt, Jimmy’s father, has a penchant for procrastination and childish practical jokes like building plastic cup fortresses and pushing Jimmy into the bushes on their day job as gardeners. Virginia is an expert in only two things, malapropisms, which really have to be heard to be believed, and cheating the system in any way possible to, say, get cheaper food by stamping day-old labels to fresh bread. Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton are wonderfully comic actors, giving two characters worthy of existing in Arrested Development’s universe alongside George and Lucille Bluth, their incredibly wealthy doppelgängers. 

Jimmy, meanwhile, is the least well defined character, at least at the beginning of the show. His life had no purpose, which means that Hope was the perfect thing for him at the perfect moment to give his life meaning. Every one of Jimmy’s action from the second half of the pilot onwards is geared towards making a better future for Hope.The series squeezes every little laugh it can out of the Chances’ inadequacy and the ridiculousness of their situation, from the über-quirky, in pointing out the dangers in their kid-seat-free car with a hole in the floor, to the more traditional gags, like showing their inability to change a single diaper.

But behind this seemingly desperate situation is a group of people doing their best to be a good family, something Hope brings to the forefront. Greg Garcia, who created the show and specializes in white lower class character based shows, may take mischievous pride in all the borderline-humiliating tough spots he puts his characters in, but he clearly loves this maladjusted bunch. Take a look at the effort Virginia, Burt and Jimmy make to give Hope a better home. These include getting their  GED, to be able to teach the unusually bright kid something; quitting smoking, whose benefits takes a little more explaining to the Chances than you think; and finding Hope a new mother, who Jimmy hopes will be the lovely Sabrina, his coworker at the supermarket. 

At the end of nearly every episode, everyone chips in, putting aside their quirks and personal preferences for the benefit of Hope. And really, who wouldn’t? Someone made an golden casting choice. The show would fall apart without an interesting baby (which can be surprisingly hard to find, as "Friday Night Lights” fans should know). Thankfully, baby Hope is a delight and her reactions to the whacky quirks of her family are among the funniest things the show does.

Even when the humor’s not fully working, as is mostly the case with the crazy great grandmother Maw-maw, it’s this bighearted quality that keeps me coming back to this refreshingly “low-key” and thoroughly enjoyable show. 

Raising Hope, RIP. 

Verdict- 3.5/4 if it even makes sense to rate a TV show, with episodes ranging all over the place from the lowest to the highest marks. 

Raising Hope (2010-2014) 22min. each episode. PG. 

Random Thoughts

-The show has some surprisingly great guest stars including Patton Oswalt and J.K Simmons. 

- The opening titles are presented in the form of a storybook, as if it were Jimmy telling Hope her story which fits the show since Jimmy is usually the narrator of each episode.