The Hope Bum

It’s funny that there are so many more networks and television series that it's even harder to find a new show that breaks the mold. Then I found Raising Hope. Every episode is as surprising and funny as the last one. It is one of the best sitcoms on T.V. that no one is watching.


Raising Hope is about a dysfunctional family that revels in their abnormality. The story on founded on Jimmy and his baby daughter Hope that he is forced to raise as a single dad after his one night stand baby mama was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. (Trust me, it sounds sad, but it’s funny). Lucas Neff plays Jimmy with a wonderful naivety, but it’s his supporting cast that carries the show.

Helping Jimmy is his mom and dad Virginia and Burt. Martha Plimpton plays Virginia and still looks exactly like same as she did when she was younger in some classics like The Goonies and Parenthood. She carries a certain class to their lower middle class lifestyle with the confidence of a woman with all the money in the world. Garret Dillahunt is her husband Burt, and he is the perfect idiot. Amazing comic timing, and dialogue that comes out of left field that catches you astonishingly off guard even when you know its coming. He is the man child that you love to love.
Despite all that, it is the iconic Cloris Leachman that is the heart and soul of the show as Jimmy’s great grandma, Maw Maw. Maw Maw is very old and lives in her own head. There are moments of lucidity in which she can do anything like fix a car or be a genius at Jenga when Istabul (Not Canstonople) is playing, but for most of the time she’s lovingly delusional. It’s funny every time, it doesn’t matter if she thinks the other men in her house are her dead husband, or when she gets caught trying to breast feed Hope, or even when Maw Maw gets in the candy again.

You can’t help feel weirdly comfortable watching this family go through the problems off everyday life with a skewed sense of reality. They do it with such a sense of self you can’t help but smile when you watch Maw Maw ask a guy if she wants to see her ass or when Burt says stuff like “I put a condom on a banana when we had sex, and she still got pregnant. And it made the banana taste terrible.”

Take the time to go back and watch this season of Raising Hope. By the time you stop laughing you will realize your family is definitely not as dysfunctional as this one but can’t help but enjoy watching the love they have for life and each other.