'Raising Hope' Premiere Episode

Raising Hope is a good-natured, occasionally funny show about ill-equipped dimwits suddenly saddled with caring for a baby. It tries a little too hard to be quirky, and many of its jokes fall flat, but it has potential for some entertaining craziness.

Greg Garcia’s My Name Is Earl was canceled last year after four seasons, so Garcia has pretty much gone and created My Name Is Earl 2.0 with Raising Hope, his new sitcom about a lovable dimwit trying to make himself a better person. Hope’s main character Jimmy isn’t a reformed criminal like Earl, and he has more of a traditional life and family support system, but he’s just as dumb and just as earnest, and he’s surrounded by characters who are just as crazy and colorful as the sprawling supporting cast that developed over time on Earl. Jimmy is a 23-year-old loser who’s never really had a purpose in life, but when he finds himself charged with raising the six-month-old daughter he just found out he had (after her convicted-murderer mom is executed), he finally discovers something he can care about. His parents, who had him when they were just teenagers, are not nearly as enthused about having a baby in their house.

Despite their foul mouths and loose morals, the characters on Raising Hope are fundamentally good-hearted, just like the ones on Earl were. Part of what made Earl so entertaining before it lost its way in its later seasons were the possibilities of the show’s structure, with a different sin for Earl to atone for in each episode. Raising Hope doesn’t have that, and so even in the first episode it meanders a bit without enough of a focus, and ends up resorting to the sort of blatant sentimentality that took over Earl as it headed downhill. Garcia clearly wants to have it both ways, to include a comedic bit about witnessing a woman get the electric chair but also tie each episode up with a warm lesson on parenting. Those two tones don’t really fit together, and their tension is part of what dragged Earl down. It’s not hard to see that happening here, too.

Then again, it’s also not hard to see Raising Hope developing into an amusing world to drop into every week, thanks in large part to the cast that includes Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton as Jimmy’s parents and Cloris Leachman in a recurring role as his addled great-grandmother. The colorful characters, well-played by regulars and guest stars alike, were Earl’s biggest strength, and Garcia has a deep well to draw from (frequent Earl guest star Gregg Binkley shows up in the pilot, which also includes an amusing in-joke about the truncated end of Garcia’s old show). The first episode of Raising Hope is more disappointment than triumph, but Garcia is worth giving the benefit of the doubt for at least a few more episodes.

Disclosure: A review screener was provided by the network. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.