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70Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt as the dumb dad's parents really make this one impossible to ignore completely. And even though we've already got "Oh no the ugly chick likes me" jokes and "You're right, the baby's limbs could get amputated this way" jokes and other material that might make you smile but never laugh, there's also a slightly disturbed tone here that's hard to match on sitcoms about yuppies having bad hair days.
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30The tacked-on attempt to give the show some heart ("See, they're just crazy, mixed-up regular folks with good intentions!") was so disappointingly cynical and contrived. It was a transparent attempt to give depth to something that had so vociferously lacked it.
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100Raising Hope already has a little place in my heart. There's something about the downwardly mobile family unit (see: "Malcolm in the Middle," "The Middle," "Raising Arizona") that's just funnier and sweeter than anything else on TV.
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75Raising Hope works on two levels, the absurdist gags about dysfunctional families and lower-class values that populated "Earl," and the never-too-saccharine sweetness that Jimmy brings to the world. If Garcia can keep up this mix, Fox may have itself a non-animated comedy hit.
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40Fox's best comedies are always off-center. Raising Hope forgets to stay there.
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90The original title, "Keep Hope Alive," is funnier, but Raising Hope better suits a very funny sitcom that leavens its satire with sympathy.
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90There may be a smaller number of top-notch newbies this season, but Raising Hope, a celebration of parenthood and childhood, of small joys and big struggles, is certainly one of them.
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80As it walks a line between between mockery and compassion, Raising Hope most obviously evokes a comparison with creator Gregory Thomas Garcia's last series, My Name is Earl. In the new show, however, the players are more believable and less caricatured.
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80Raising Hope is funny, sweet, occasionally provocative, and occasionally over-the-top in a regrettable way.
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80It's a bit of a kitchen-sink approach, frankly, but there are laughs to be found here, along with genuine familial affection--even if the family members don't always have the words to express it.
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80The pervasive "what about the children" atmosphere we live in might be exactly what makes Greg Garcia's new Fox sitcom "Raising Hope" so wryly, delightfully, honestly hilarious.
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80Overall, Hope feels like a very new take on an old, old story.
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70Raising Hope is low in concept, lower in class and lowest of all in shame--but relatively high in laughs, so long as you keep your living room curtains closed so no one can see you watching.
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70You can probably tell this is not your average sitcom. What you probably can't sense is a surprising tenderness and gentle humor (along with the crass) in this family, living on the socio-economic fringes in the house of Jimmy's grandma, so dotty she rarely wears enough clothes.
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70The show's astringent tone, its excursions into low comedy--scenes like the one where everybody trying to diaper the baby ends up throwing up on her, and similarly stomach-churning fun--all work to counter the sentimentality of themes like this one. They work only in part here, and in this case that's all to the good. The show is meant to be a comedy, and it is--a smart and witty one--but there's no missing, either, under all that grotesquerie, its hard-core sweetness.
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60I'm slightly more taken with Fox's sweeter absurdedy, Raising Hope, though I still mourn the original title: "Keep Hope Alive."
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70Raising Hope is not for the easily offended and humorless but the pilot is consistently entertaining for viewers willing to embrace Garcia's universe of downtrodden characters.
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75Hope, however, has more going for it than a good heart and some good lines. It has a very good cast, with Neff and Dillahunt sure to be welcome weekly presences.
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91Garcia's single-camera editing amplifies the comedy inherent, rather than being a crutch to create it. And the casting here is as good as "Earl," which is saying something--even if Leachman goes a bit off the rails as wacked-out "mamaw."
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91A serial killer, a state execution, slapstick involving a baby--Fox's new Raising Hope is deliciously demented and easily the funniest new show of fall.
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80I'm already sold. Plimpton is sensational as Jimmy's tough-as-nails mom, who'd just as soon drop the baby at the fire station, but we soon learn she has a way with a lullaby. Leachman is a riot, Garret Dillahunt scores as Jimmy's proudly immature dad, and special props go to the stunt babies.
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60There are at least the slivers of promise that the show could get better. Neff is amiably charming, Dillahunt and Plimpton give their characters a realism that belies the pilot's often-contemptuous jokes, and maybe 20% of the first episode shows a sweet-heartedness that rises above the easy white-trash humor.
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100Fall's best new sitcom has the manic zip of Malcolm in the Middle and the diabolical humor of raising Arizona. [27 Sep 2010, p.55]