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Raising Hope Season 2 Episode 5

Killer Hope

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8.3

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AIRED: 11/1/11

The Chances are forced to camp out on the front lawn while their house is being tented for termites, but the sudden change of living arrangements is the least of their worries when they find out that Hope hit a boy at the day care, worrying everyone that she might just be following in the footsteps of her mother.

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Fan Episode Reviews (2)

Raising Hope returns after its midseason break with one of the best episodes to date.

9.0

By Adhoc69, Oct 10, 2012

Killer Hope's premise was hilarious. The references to the slasher genre - especially the nightmare sequence - were fancy and very well done and would make this episode count as a halloween special in my book.Overall I'd say that the build up and conclusion - along with its life-affirming message - were as well executed as always, but this time the writing was so elaborate, it even made the more shallow gags look good (fridge-magnets & athlete-Sabrina).

Killer Hope is up there with the Pilot and Don't Vote For This Episode and it is definitely my favorite episode of the second season so far.moreless
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Killer Hope

8.0

By colten97, Nov 07, 2011

This was Raising Hope's first episode back after a couple of weeks away due to the World Series, and it felt as if the show were trying to regain the identity it developed over the course of its first season, like someone trying to wriggle back inside the skinny jeans after a brief, losing struggle with chocolatis. The show hasn't just been splayed out in a ditch, but it has felt uneven and a little unsure of itself, as if the confident vulgarity of the first season had been watered down. Unless I'm mistaken, this was the first episode of the season to include the full version of the opening credits, which was enough to give it a certain "starting over" quality.

The biggest indicator that the show was trying to get back to its roots was in Cloris Leachman's Maw Maw. Throughout the first season, Maw Maw was mostly lost in space, though some of Leachman's funniest moments came in those rare, brief moments when she achieved lucidity. In the early episodes of this season, Maw Maw seemed mostly lucid, or at least no worse than dotty, only drifting past the bounds of sanity when it was absolutely necessary to have a crazy person in play in order to keep the plot moving. It was as if someone had circulated a memo to the effect that senile dementia isn't funny. Apparently somebody shredded that memo while everyone in the front office was watching baseball, and tonight Maw Maw was fully consigned to the fog, eating refrigerator magnets and being affectionately compared to a goat.

Maw Maw was being encouraged to indulge herself because the family needed to clear out the refrigerator before moving out onto the lawn so the house could be sprayed for termites--the "poor little wood-eating bastards," as they were called by Garret Dillahunt, a man blessed with empathy for all God's creatures. With the family trying to make the best of being shut out of their home without a backup destination, there was a fair amount of humor about where to have sex or go to the bathroom when you don't have a house. The situation also pointed up what's scary about the Chances' position on the socioeconomic ladder, where they wouldn't need to descend more than a few rungs to achieve homelessness. It didn't get far beyond Burt saying something to the effect that living out doors sure did make him glad they weren't poor, which gave Jimmy the chance to irritably point out that they are poor. Burt, or maybe the writers, couldn't even think of a comeback to that, so they just dropped the subject. Probably they felt that they'd gone come dangerously close to bringing in a subject that would just be a downer. But watching a show that's reduced to having the characters complain about having to take a dump in the good bucket can be a downer, too.

This was all just grist for the main subject, which was Burt and Virginia's concern that Hope, who had taken to hitting people at daycare, might be showing signs of becoming a serial killer, just like her mommy. Jimmy's assurances that Hope is still just a baby got him nowhere; as Virginia pointed out, so were Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, once upon a time. "And remember Son of Sam? At one point, Sam was going around saying, 'This is my brand new baby!'" I thought that was pretty funny, though it may have been the way Martha Plimpton sold it. On the other hand, when she met Jimmy halfway by agreeing that Hope wouldn't be much of a danger to them in her current state even if she did turn on them, because the soft spot on the top of her head was like "an emergency off switch"--well, let's just say that there are limits to even Martha Plimpton's salesmanship. It's probably a good thing to be reminded of that from time to time, but maybe not with a bad line that hits you between the eyes with such impact that it leaves a welt.

His parents' concerns did move Jimmy enough that he got to worrying about the effect that all the bitching and arguing going on around his daughter might be building up and feeding the killer inside her. Cue the montage of bitching and arguing, which did include at least one great, unexpected grounds for family discord: Virgina, behind the wheel of her car, turning to Burt and saying, "My battery's dead again. Have you been using my headlights to practice your stupid shadow puppets?" Jimmy got so bent out of shape that he had a Trainspotting-influenced nightmare about Hope's eventual murder spree, complete with Burt lying on the couch with a crank sticking out of the side of his face and a jack-in-the-box popping out of his mouth. It must be said that Garret Dillahunt, a veteran of such films as The Road and the Last House on the Left remake, looked very much at home with this material.

Greg Germann put in a guest appearance as Hope's maternal grandfather, now in prison and reduced to picking up litter on the side of the road, decked out in a hairstyle designed to indicate that he's the Tobias Beecher of his cell block. Germann's scenes kind of summed up the place Raising Hope finds itself in when it doesn't get it just right: he's a welcome presence, but though he worked hard to find a way to make his character's plight funny, he couldn't quite pull it off, and his scenes just left you feeling uncomfortable. But at least they were trying for something. Far more ominous was the moment when Dillahunt ran into the house to get something, even though it was full of toxic fumes: "I'll hold my nose and close my eyes," he said, "like when I eat Indian fumes."

This might just be the hackiest line I've ever heard on Raising Hope, and it was that much stranger, and that much less funny, because of the bewildering presence of the dog-walking neighborhood weirdo who wore a purple turban and exploded with a mystifying, broadly played laugh, when he wasn't taking pictures of Virginia on the toilet. At least the geeky Chinese guy who talks funny on 2 Broke Girls is a familiar, worn-out stereotype; you can't figure out what the hell he's doing on a network show broadcast in the year of our lord, 2011. but he's too worn-out a joke to seem worth getting upset over. Raising Hope almost seemed to be trying to create a brand new ethnic stereotype with its hyena-laughing Indian. I would propose that the show's writers have better things to do with their talents.moreless
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Cast & Crew: STARS

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Lucas Neff	Jimmy Chance
Martha Plimpton	Virginia Chance
Garret Dillahunt	Burt Chance
Shannon Woodward	Sabrina Collins
Gregg Binkley	Barney Hughes
Cloris Leachman	Maw Maw

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Cast & Crew: RECURRING AND GUESTS

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Greg Germann	Dale Carlyle	Guest Star
Nikki Hester	Sabrina Stunt Double	Guest Star
Tommy Primeau	Dale Stunt Double	Guest Star
Baylie Cregut	Hope Chance	Recurring Role
Rylie Cregut	Hope Chance	Recurring Role
Kate Micucci	Shelley	Recurring Role

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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TRIVIA (0)
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QUOTES (3)
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- Jimmy: You know what babies are like: one day they're crawling, the next day they're walking; one day they can't even use the spoon, the next day they're stabbing you.
  Burt: He's right. She can walk now, she can pick stuff up - those are the two most important things you need to know how to do to kill somebody.
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- Barney: Nurture is everything: My parents were lesbians, but I'm not a lesbian. I do like women though. Ah, tricky math on this one.
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- Virginia: Jimmy, you know how those Kargashian girls all have real big butts - and then you look at their mother and she's got a big butt too - Hope's mother was a serial killer!
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NOTES (3)
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- "Under Pressure" by Queen plays when Jimmy flashes back to the current living state of his family.
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- Gregg Binkley is added to the opening credits, promoted from his recurring status last season.
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- Original International Air Dates:
  Canada: November 1, 2011 on Citytv
  Czech Republic: March 6, 2012 on HBO
  United Kingdom: August 12, 2012 on Sky1/Sky1 HD
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