Isolation Watchlist - Day 2

So, you’ve been at home a couple of days now. Sitting on your throne made of hundreds of toilet paper rolls, body glistening with hand sanitizer. Time to read our second recommendation for what to watch while you’re indoors and hiding from the coronavirus (let’s be honest, you would have been inside watching TV either way).

I’ll try to bring you a good recommendation for a bingeable show to watch each day. Maybe we can get through this with a minimum of sanity loss. If you’ve seen the recommendation or don’t like it, it’s ok, a new show will be administered to your streaming IV the next day, so hang in there!

Raising Hope - Day 2


If you’re looking for a good show to binge, give the Chances a chance. Raising Hope is a quirky, zany sitcom about a family poor in resources or common sense, but rich in love and fun. Jimmy Chance (Lucas Neff) finds himself a young single father after a chance encounter with a randy serial killer on the run. Lucky for him, his parents Burt (Garret Dillahunt) and Virginia (Martha Plimpton) have experience being young parents, they had Jimmy when they were in high school. Filling out the Chance clam is Barbara June (Cloris Leachman), or Maw Maw, Jimmy great-grandma, who’s few lucid moments are interspersed between episodes or dementia and memory loss that lead her into all sorts of situations.


One night while on his way home from getting some ice cream for Maw Maw, Jimmy picks up a beautiful drifter who needs help on the run. After a passionate encounter in the back of his decrepit van, he brings her home, only to find out she is a serial killer. Fast forward nine months, and Jimmy gets sole custody of his baby daughter Hope (Baylie and Rylie Cregut), just before Hope’s mother is executed by the state.

Helping the Chances maneuver the hazards of raising Hope is Jimmy’s crush at the grocery store he works at, Sabrina (Shannon Woodward), a free-spirited young woman with plenty of eccentricities of her own. In addition to Sabrina, the cast includes Jimmy’s off-putting coworker Frank (Todd Giebenhain) and manager of the Howdy’s supermarket, Barney (Gregg Binkley).

I find Martha Plimpton’s Virginia and Garret Dillahunt’s Burt to be particularly strong performances. They bring plenty of zaniness to their roles, while also maintaining an emotional core of two very young parents who did their best with very little, both in resources and knowledge. Virginia works for a housecleaning service while Burt works as a landscaper (along with Jimmy at the start of the series). Cloris Leachman is hilarious as Maw Maw. Some of her antics completely steal the show from the other characters. With the help of his family and friends, Jimmy might just succeed in Raising Hope.


If you’re looking for something sweet, yet funny, Raising Hope will have you covered. The earnestness of the Chances, combined with the vicissitudes of their lives, make for entertaining viewing.

Raising Hope ran from 2010 to 2014, with 88 episodes split into four seasons. I watch in on Hulu, but it can also be found on Amazon Prime and other streaming services.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Lightforged Draenei

The Vulpera

Isolation Watchlist - Day 1