By Zack Brodell
Round Table reporter
Every family has a different story, they each have those relatives they like, they don’t like, the grandmothers who come and squeeze your cheeks and spoil you endlessly. This year a new sitcom on ABC called Raising Hope has turned out to be a huge hit.
Airing fall 2010, Raising Hope is a hilarious comedy about a crazy family who never seems to learn from their mistakes. The main character, Jimmy Chance, is the son of Virginia and Burt, who conceived him while in their teens.
Unfortunately, Jimmy didn’t learn from his parents and ends up having a child with a woman who turns out to be a serial killer. Months after Hope was conceived, Jimmy and the serial killer, Lucy, reconnect, right before she is caught and executed, and Hope is placed in Jimmy’s care. Amongst the chaos of having a small child in the house, the family’s eccentricities are further enhanced by Maw Maw’s Alzheimer’s disease.
The show started off kind of slow for me at the beginning, but as it continued into the season, it became more popular. It shows on Tuesdays after Glee at 9 pm so from one excellent show to another it goes.
In the season finale that aired May 17, it showed the family 5 years earlier when Maw Maw has not yet “lost her mind” and when Jimmy went through a “dark” phase of his life.
In the episode Jimmy is going through a “goth” phase, including makeup, dark clothes with chains and leather boots accompanied by wild hair with blue highlights. He demands to only be called Drakkar Noir. Mawmaw kicks out Virginia and Burt and they have to survive living in a van until offered living space in the basement of Virginia’s boss’ house among an Alpaca.
The overall show is based on the bringing up of Jimmy’s daughter Hope, and how they try their best to raise her with everything that she needs. In each episode they have a problem that they face and in the end of the episode it comes back to them realizing that they are a perfect family and that Hope will be just right.
Every episode causes the audience to burst out laughing. The problems faced by the Chance family are often humorous and simple, but the ways they choose to confront them are complex to a point of nonsense. It is definitely worth staying up 30 more minutes after Glee.
