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A former soap star goes to live with her sister’s family in suburbia and disrupts their lives with hilarity.

In Hope and Faith: Season One, Faith Fairfield (Kelly Ripa) comes to live with her sister Hope’s (Faith Ford)  family after being fired from a daytime soap. Her brother-in-law Charlie (Ted McGinley )can’t get rid of her fast enough and her eldest niece, Syndey (Nicole Paggi) idolizes her. The two sisters get involved with capers that involved Faith’s soap career as well as a host of other funny bits.

In most of the episodes, Hope and Faith take on Lucy and Ethel slapstick roles having to stop a newspaper press after Faith accidentally hands in a topless Xeroxed copy of Faith’s breasts instead of her actual newspaper headshot and, somehow no one notices, as the paper goes to press.  Or when Faith takes the rap for her nephew Justin ruining his dad’s prized autographed baseball and the two sisters sneak into the locker room. They end up hiding from security in hot and cold tubs which the baseball players slip into not noticing a second body in the tiny tubs.

Faith gets Hope involved in one caper after another where they have to pretend to be waitresses or country club servers and everything always goes hopelessly wrong. In one scene, where the two are pretending to be foreign temp servers at a country club, Faith pretends to be pregnant and asks Hope for her ring which she loses in the rum balls she’s preparing for the guests. She winds up eating many of the rum balls in attempt to find the ring getting herself quite drunk in the process. The two cause a scene when they find the ring and end up smashing into a buffet table.

The show has a lot of big name guest stars from Ripa’s co-host Regis Philbin, to Robert Wagner who plays the girls’ dad, Lynda Carter, Jenny McCarthy, Susan Lucci, and Tom Arnold. This series might have provided Arnold with his best performance yet as Faith’s crass husband whom she thought she had divorced, but hasn’t quite gotten over. Arnold comes across as both loveable and crude as he re-enters Faith’s life in a rusty motor home and plays a game called, “What did I have for lunch?” that consists of him burping in her face. His apology of how he sabotaged their relationship before she could leave him was both touching and funny.

The show also nods to Ripa’s real life soap career as two of the season’s final episodes involve her being tricked back into her old soap job. Ripa’s own All My Children castmates (as well as actors from The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful) appear on the show as well. Susan Lucci plays Faith’s “frenemy” who sets her up. The soap themed episodes are not to be missed for soap fans and include a song and dance number where Ripa absolutely shines. She is brilliant in that number.

This is Ted McGinley’s finest role. He’s usually cast as a jock, pretty boy, etc., but here he shows off his excellent comedic timing. He’s believable as the frustrated brother-in-law, the naïve dad, the “trying to be cool dad”, and as both the straight man and the funny man—no easy feat. McGinley shines in this role. Macey Cruthird is also excellent as youngest daughter Hayley. Cruthird shows her range as a sensitive, eco-conscious and intelligent little girl who gets disgusted by her sister and aunt’s superficiality, but remains a loyal sister and niece. Paulie Litt plays Justin, the youngest who has the wit of a comedian many times older. In this season, the eldest daughter, Sydney, is played by Nicole Paggi who is great as the older, slightly manipulative daughter who takes after her more trendsetting aunt, but still has a mind of her own. Paggi also resembles Ford, which adds to the family dynamic.

This is a fun series which has Ripa and Ford reminding us of a modern day Lucy and Ethel. The acting is quite good and I was pleasantly surprised at how good the child actors were since so often they’re seen and not heard in sitcoms. Cruthird in particular is a treat and her scenes with Ripa and Ford are endearing. Hope and Faith: Season One is a great addition to any DVD collection.

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