Raising Hope

- Season 1

(2010)

When well-meaning 23-year-old Jimmy Chance has a one-night stand with a wanted felon, he ends up being a dad to a bouncing baby girl. Inspired to do the right thing by his daughter, he has to convince his less-than-enthusiastic parents and great-grandmother to help him raise her.

When Jimmy returns to work, he hires Sabrina's cousin Shelley - a/k/a "Dead Tooth" - to babysit Hope. Meanwhile, Burt tries to get Virginia to quit smoking.

When Jimmy "teaches" Hope to crawl, the family must baby-proof the house and find new places to store their belongings. It's soon revealed that Virginia is a hoarder and has been saving junk in the storage shed, which becomes Hope's favorite new hiding place. This leads Virginia to realize that she may have to change her ways. Meanwhile, Jimmy makes frequent unnecessary trips to the grocery store to see Sabrina.

Jimmy is delighted when Sabrina accepts to pay him a visit. None of his family wants to help make a good impression, but she seems charmed by all their dysfunctional family quirks. Mother insists on explaining all the stressed misery caused by the annual Chance family pictures, as it's time for another with baby Hope, but accepts to let Jimmy take her place as organizer.

Sabrina's boyfriend can't make it to the deli guy's Halloween party, so Jimmy offers to put on his costume and go in his place. Virginia takes Maw Maw, who is dressed as a cat, trick-or-treating while Burt plots ways to play tricks on Jimmy.

Jimmy receives a box with videotapes of Hope's mother from prison but he is not sure if Hope should see them. Virginia thinks children do not always have to know the truth.

When the doctor refuses to comment on Hope's symptoms, probably just a cold, without insurance data, Jimmy is shocked to learn his family never got some. An embarrassing episode, trying to buy potentially addictive cough-syrup at the supermarket, inspires Jimmy to seek employment there, as it comes with insurance. Burt however may not know, as he claims he can get the whole family insured by winning a city contract biding against his former employer, Green Thumb, which even Virginia won't believe. meanwhile maw maw in quarantined, or at least that's attempted, for a ...

After it becomes painfully clear that Hope starts imitating her canine companions in the day care center, Jimmy decides it's his duty to get her into a prestigious kindergarten, which is way beyond the Chances' means, so their only hope is the single scholarship for the underprivileged, for which competition is murderous. It's utterly impossible as long as the 'blue dot' on their home isn't taken off the sex offenders website. It refers to Burt's teenage arrest for clumsy sex with willing but underage Virginia. They appeal to crazy TV lawyer Wally Phipps. Alas, ...

Jimmy wants Hope's first Thanksgiving to be an all-American traditional family dinner, not the Chances' mere pizza. Jimmy even insists to invites the maternal grandparents, Dr. Dale and his wife Margine, who went crazy out of grief over their daughter's crime and execution. Jimmy painstakingly makes his family accommodate Dale's weird 'therapy' for Margine, only to be rewarded by Hope being kidnapped, gets her back and still extends a second invitation. Meanwhile lonely Barney from the supermarket offers to come cook a traditional feast for the all, instead of having ...

Every year, supermarket manager Barney must chose an act for the 'Grocery-Palooza', a free show for the customers. Jimmy learns that one of the many, lame options is washed-up one-hit 'rock star' Smokey, Burt's teenager musical hero. The gang moves heaven and earth to see to it that Smokey is hired and Burt as his guitarist, only the life-long dream comes with matching stage-fright.

Jimmy refuses to let Burt sell the last of the stock of hottest toy he arranges each Christmas, demanding it for Hope, remembering how hard it was to sit by the pile himself. Burt's promise is as worthless as ever, and when he finally agrees, the only childless client, supermarket executive Barney, proves a hard nut. Jimmy ultimately allows Virginia to sign up Hope, and thus all the Chances, for the annual live church nativity crib, despite his trauma having been dragged to every performance just so she could get on stage, as a way to fight the stigma of serial ...

Jimmy is delighted when he finally meets fellow single father in the supermarket, so he agrees with Justin their kids should get play dates, despite lack of support on the Chase home front. It turns out Justin's far less dysfunctional family is also snobbish, end employs Virginia as cleaner. A last chance dinner backfires.

Jimmy lets hygiene-obsessed Sabrina and her detection use of the store's black-light to identify counterfeit banknotes convince him germs are an omnipresent health treat. Faced with bright blue proof all over the house, the Chances start cleaning like mad, only to find mad Maw Maw undoes it all in no time. Residential care being out of budgetary reach, they move her into the greenhouse, which goes quite well. However comparing family histories with Sabrina after watching family movies changes views.

The Chances get caught in Virginia's web of lies when her cousin Delilah, whom she told Maw-Maw was dead, turns up to claim her share of the estate, her business being wiped out by the crisis. Their rivalry started when Delilah, who was spoiled and better at everything else, lost most desirable teenager Burt to jealous Virginia, so she proposes an alternative mode of payment: in 'bedroom' kind. Jimmy was to mind the 'deceased' inconspicuously, but she escapes and crashes back in.

When Virginia and Sabrina discover secrets about each other, Sabrina blackmails Virginia into keeping her mouth shut. Meanwhile, Jimmy takes Burt to get a vasectomy after a family vote.

The Chances prepare to host once more Burt's cousin Mike, a hopeless loser even by their standards. Yet they find him a changed man, as neat member of a loony sect, one of Tanya's four 'brother-husbands'. Jimmy is inadvertently attracted by their neat, apparently harmonious 'fraternity'. Alas, Mike is 'divorced' and moves in whining and desperate, worse then ever. Burt has another confrontation with his brother Bruce, who wants help to get his son Mike back and gets it after explaining why he threw the boy out years ago.

Realizing the three adult Chances are klutzes and a danger to themselves, Jimmy worries whether Hope will be taken care of after an accident. After an attempt to have them teach each other 'survival tricks' collapses in bickering, Jimmy drags his parents to dodgy lawyer Wally Phipps, who inspires including a fourth potential guardian, Sabrina. Actually she's afraid of the responsibility, and Burt is offended that she ranks higher. Their survival skills are tested frightfully realistically when an armed Maw Maw mistakes them all for 'dangerous mongooses'.

Jimmy hopes gullible Sabrina's boyfriend Wyatt may be cheating on her in college, so he insists to go with her to Wyatt's frat's wild costume party, but conclusive evidence is perilously hard to find. In order to have contact with generation peers, Maw Maw goes to Dead Tooth's daycare. She falls for a man who also lives in the past, but that includes an affair with another crone, supposedly from his Korean War days.

When Burt is introduced to a book on sleep-training, he and Virginia decide to try it on baby Hope. Meanwhile, Jimmy's wild new girlfriend introduces him to a special beverage that takes him on a scary trip.

To flirt or not to flirt, that is the question.

Barney tells the team he loses each year's annual commercial competition for the store, so now he wants to recruit his employees to compete for this year's submission; unfortunately, flattery and considerations like fair-play, and team spirit, get in the way. As Hope's baby-monitor accidentally tunes into a neighbors house, eavesdropping Burt discovers Andrew is being abused by his tyrannical, impossible-to-please wife, Donna, and wants to help. Virginia is reluctant, not wanting to be seen as a nosy neighbor, but agrees to help (which proves harder then expected).

Jimmy doesn't mind at 23 sharing his birthday with Maw Maw, although it was hell as a kid, when she had lots of friends and he none. When he turned 18, in his impertinent Goth period (alias 'Drakkar Noir'), she 'finally' felt able to throw the Chances trio out of her home, so they had to grow up suddenly, seeking real job incomes supplemented by devious ways to skin the supermarket. Five years ago however, her mind went, so they got the house back with her as senile resident hazard.