The way Greg Garcia writes class

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Re-watching Sprung, which would work nicely as a trilogy of Greg Garcia comedies about lower-class characters along with My Name is Earl and Raising Hope, and he really is very good at this.

Laughing at the situations - like the Chance family having only hand me down stuff in their home and everything being broken or Joy squeezing individual ketchup packets into a larger ketchup bottle - but never sneering or treating the characters as subhuman. The characters are never written as punchlines themselves and there's a great amount of warmth there.

Anyway, Sprung sorta went under the radar on Freevee, but I liked it a lot. Check it out if you like Earl and Hope.

[BritishHobo]

I really need to rewatch Raising Hope, as I never finished it. Every time My Name is Earl comes up on here, I whack on an episode and remember just how absolutely lovely it was. As you say, just full of affection and empathy for his characters, no matter what. Joy is the perfect example; even though she starts out as (sort-of) a villain, you never ever get the sense that the show thinks of her as a joke, or somebody to look down on. Other shows would get so much mileage out of laughing at those characters for living in a trailer park, but at no point does Garcia treat that living situation as one that of itself deserves mockery.

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I really need to rewatch Raising Hope, as I never finished it.

I find Hope starts to come a bit unstuck by season three or so, but even when its quality dips, it's still empathetic, sweet and funny. Just goes from a 8/10 to a 6/10. Still, overall worth a watch.