Raising Hope

Whilst returning home from getting bubblegum ice cream, 23-year-old Jimmy Chance (Lucas Neff) saves Lucy (Bijou Phillips) from her boyfriend, and has a one-night stand with her in his front garden. The next morning Jimmy and his parents, Virginia (Martha Plimpton) and Burt (Garret Dillahunt) realize from a news report that she is a serial killer who has murdered her previous boyfriends, and in response Virginia knocks her out with a television. Eight months later, Jimmy realizes she is pregnant with his child, and after she is sentenced to death, Jimmy has to raise his daughter. Convinced he can do it, he tries to raise her on his own, but eventually his family helps out, renaming the baby from "Princess Beyonce" to Hope.

When Jimmy realizes he needs a daycare service for Hope, he goes to Sabrina (Shannon Marie Woodward), an employee at the local grocery store and whom he has an infatuation with, for help. She directs him to her cousin, Shelly (Kate Micucci), whom Jimmy had hooked up with two years previously. Jimmy is reluctant to hurt her feelings when she still cares for him, but has a dead tooth on one of her front teeth. When he does hurt her feelings however, Shelly starts charging her services. Meanwhile, Jimmy pressures Virginia to quit smoking for Hope’s health; Virginia will only to so if Burt convinces her mentally unstable grandmother Maw Maw (Cloris Leachman) to quit also, which is no easy task. During one of her lucid episodes, Maw Maw reveals she initially quit smoking in the 1970s to live long enough to see Virginia grow up. Virginia decides to follow suit and offers Jimmy money she usually spends on cigarettes to pay for Shelly’s day care.

Jimmy teaches Hope to crawl by placing sugar cubes in a trail on the floor. Unfortunately, this means he must now baby proof the house. As he does so, he realizes Virginia is a hoarder, who is hoarding items in a garage for her life-long dream to one day win the lottery and move to a bigger house. Hope ends up crawling to the garage. After the Chances rescue her, Jimmy removes all the clutter, upsetting Virginia. He also demands they stop dreaming about winning the lottery. In the end, Jimmy decides to go easy on his parents, and tells Hope it is better to dream than to give up on them.

Sabrina visits the Chance house and discovers the history of the horrible family pictures, mostly due to Virginia wanting everything to be perfect. Every year, each picture opportunity ends in disaster. One year, Jimmy decides to take charge himself, but he failed also. The Chances did get one good picture however from a traffic camera, which took a picture of their van as they run a red light, and singing to a tune happily.

On Halloween day, Jimmy is invited to a party by Sabrina when she has a fight with her boyfriend. Jimmy also learns that his father has been scaring him since he was a little boy in order to get hugged by him. Jimmy orders his dad to stay away from Hope and enlists two of his friends to babysit her. Virginia is tasked with taking care of Maw Maw when she thinks she’s nine years old again.

Lucy leaves things for Hope after she is electrocuted in the "bye-bye chair". This includes a video of her whilst in the prison cell, and the Chances are shocked at her behavior. This leads them to consider whether to keep this a secret from Hope. There, Jimmy realizes that his parents kept secrets from him for years; they admitted Jimmy is not in fact allergic to fruit. Jimmy responds by going on a "fruit binge" until it is revealed he is actually allergic to Starfruit. Later, Jimmy wonders about his grandmother, whom Virginia eventually admits was "killed by a duck." However, Jimmy soon realizes this is another lie, and eventually tracks her down were he finds out she is alive, and simply left her family because she wanted to live a self centered life without responsibilities, like raising her daughter. Maw Maw lied to protect Virginia from an ugly truth like Virginia was lying to Jimmy. In the end, Sabrina edits Lucy’s tape to make it seem as if she was a caring and non-violent mother.

When Hope gets sick, Jimmy tries to get her to see a doctor, only to realize his family has no health insurance. Burt attempts to snag a city contract in order to be able to provide insurance benefits for his only employee, Jimmy. However, Jimmy does not think he would win, and so takes a job as a bag boy in the same grocery store Sabrina works. To his surprise, Burt says he won the contract, but Jimmy realizes later on he has been working for his rival company.

Realizing Hope is the only child in Shelly’s daycare, and is starting to act like a dog, Jimmy decides to get her in a high end daycare center that offers one poor family a scholarship. The only obstacle is that Jimmy learns Burt is a registered sex offender after he was caught having sex with Virginia (at the time he was 17 and she was 15). Burt is advised that in order to expunge this, he has to reveal the fact to his neighborhood. After it is expunged, Maw Maw is arrested for indecent exposure in the courthouse, earning her a blue dot. To expunge this, she has to do community service. Virginia takes her place, but also earns a blue dot after she is caught urinating in public. Jimmy also earns a blue dot asking a prostitute to act as Maw Maw, and is arrested for solicitation. Jimmy and the other poor families fail to earn the scholarship, but all the children are taken to Shelly’s daycare, meaning Hope is no longer the only child.

Jimmy wants his family to celebrate Thanksgiving for the first time (which the Chance family believes is "the only Thursday of the year they didn’t have to work"). Jimmy decides to invite Lucy’s parents, who are in denial of the fact that their daughter was a serial killer. When they finally do come however, the Chances are placed off guard long enough so they kidnap Hope. In revenge, Virginia knocks out Lucy’s mother and takes Hope back. They later return to the Chances only to apologize for their behavior. However, when they say grace before their dinner, Lucy’s parents kidnap Hope again, and are arrested. Guest starring Valerie Mahaffey and Greg Germann.

When Barney is looking for an attraction for Grocery Palooza (he constantly insists that Lollapalooza stole the name from them) Jimmy learns that when he was a baby, Burt gave up his dream of being a Rockstar for him. Jimmy then comes up with the idea to have Smokey Floyd (guest star Jason Lee), Burt’s Rockhero, sing at Grocery Palooza, which Barney thinks is splendid. However, even though they get him, they soon find out Smokey Floyd is not all he’s cracked up to be.

Jimmy finds out about his father’s annual Christmas scheme where he sells the most wanted toy for a lot of money, which always left Jimmy disappointed when he was a child. Virginia wants the family to be a part of the living nativity scene at their church to gain the respect of the members.

Jimmy makes friends with a fellow single dad named Justin, and they set up a play date with Hope and his own baby. Unfortunately, Virginia doesn’t like the idea because she is Justin’s housekeeper. However, Jimmy and Justin set out to have a dinner at the Chance household to make peace.

The Chance family becomes obsessed with cleanliness and moves Maw Maw to the greenhouse; old home movies reveal what has been keeping the family healthy.

Virginia’s cousin Delilah (guest star Amy Sedaris), pays a visit to the Chance family, determined to claim her share of Maw Maw’s (whom she believes died) estate. Further tension builds when Delilah admits she still has a crush on Burt.

The family decides Burt should get a vasectomy; Virginia and Sabrina stand off when they learn each other’s secrets.

Cousin Mike returns, and brings his new wife Tanya (Mary Lynn Rajskub) as well as the cult he joined with him. Burt tries to sort things out with his brother Bruce (J.K. Simmons) so he will be proud of Mike, and Virginia stops Jimmy from getting sucked into the cult as well.

Jimmy decides to choose guardians for Hope in case he dies, which leads to everyone arguing over who could take care of her best. Sabrina is taken off guard by being put in the will, and Burt feels he could take of her fine, but Virginia and Jimmy disagree. In the end, after everyone works together to be better people more fit to take care of a child, they have to hide from and stop Maw-Maw, when she believes there to be mongooses in the house.

Maw Maw falls for a man she meets at Shelly’s day care. Meanwhile, Sabrina thinks her college boyfriend Wyatt is cheating on her.

Hope’s grandparents try to sleep-train her.

Burt inspires everyone to experiment with the influence of flirting, but when they can’t get the hang of it, things don’t go quite right.

Burt and Virginia try to help a couple they overheard arguing on Hope’s baby monitor without letting the couple know they can hear everything in their house. Guest stars: Andrew (Ethan Suplee,) Donna (Jaime Pressly,) and Lamar, Howdy’s west manager (Malcolm Barrett.)

As Maw Maw and Jimmy prepare to celebrate their 86th and 24th birthdays respectively, Jimmy tells Hope about the time when he was about to turn eighteen. The flashback reveals that Jimmy used to be goth, how Maw Maw became dumb, how Shelly got her dead tooth, Sabrina used to have braces and was in love with goth Jimmy, Frank was good at his job, Barney used to be obese, and the innocent comment a boyfriend made which set Lucy down her murderous path.