Actor Martha Plimpton from TV show Raising Hope. Picture: Channel 10 Source: Supplied
I WAS slightly concerned when Cloris Leachman failed to appear in this episode of Raising Hope.
She's 84, and I guess at that age the first thing you do every morning when you wake up is check that you're still alive.
I knew she hadn't actually died for real, but I wasn't entirely sure if she hadn't been killed off in the show.
They'd be mad to get rid of her, but this is television, you never know. Anyway, she's not dead. She's just not in this episode.
And I've since decided this is a good thing. Somebody like Cloris Leachman, you don't want to flog her. Better for her, better for the show.
Plus there's a big guest star tonight. Or biggish: Jason Lee. My Name is Earl Jason Lee.
The connection, of course, being Greg Garcia was behind both shows.
Raising Hope is a superior product. Not as broad as Earl, for a start. And Earl always felt so 12-steppy. But Raising Hope also has Martha Plimpton, Garret Dillahunt and Cloris Leachman in the cast, and nothing could compete with that.
The writing is also a cut above. A cut above My Name Is Earl, I mean. It's not really a cut above that much else. It's all right though.
But what about this episode. The supermarket where that girl Jimmy likes works - and where Jimmy himself appears to now have a job as well - is putting on Grocery Palooza.
Yes, almost exactly like the massive rock festival Lollapalooza, only this will take place in the fruit and veg section of a grocery store.
Headlining Grocery Palooza is Smokey Floyd, a washed-up has-been who Jimmy's father Burt encountered 20 years earlier when he came through town on his Smoke Gets In Your Everything Tour.
Jason Lee plays Smokey, and he is funnier in 10 minutes on air here than he was in any episode I ever saw of My Name is Earl. His hair is also very funny.
Raising Hope
Channel 10, Tuesday 7.30pm
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