He works for his father's landscaping and pool cleaning business, and later gets a second job as a bagger at Howdy's, an Old West themed grocery store, where he meets his future wife, Sabrina Collins.
In the pilot, she is shown chainsmoking, but she quits in the second episode and gives Jimmy her cigarette money to pay for Hope's daycare.
For her performance as Virginia in the first season, Martha Plimpton was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
He is a recovered gambling-addict and he runs a lawn care/pool cleaning business with Jimmy as his assistant, working shirtless to get more tips from the bored middle-aged housewives watching.
As a teenager, he wanted to be a rockstar, and he is often shown playing his guitar, performing several songs throughout the series and fulfilling a lifelong dream by playing alongside washed up rock star Smokey Floyd in the episode "Burt Rocks", later bashing Floyd over the head for verbally abusing his granddaughter (becoming a minor celebrity in the process).
Hope was conceived in Jimmy's van when he went out to get bubblegum ice cream and met a distressed Lucy Carlyle with whom he had a one-night stand.
Hope is shown to be very intelligent, which she likely gets from her mother, as she was able to figure out a shape-sorter toy when she was two (Jimmy wasn't able to do it even when he was four) and pass a GED test by randomly filling in the dots.
Sabrina Marie Chance (née Collins) played by Shannon Woodward, Jimmy's co-worker at Howdy's despite coming from a rich family.
Virginia's 84-year-old grandmother, Jimmy's great-grandmother, and Hope's great-great-grandmother, who owns the American Craftsman house at 3300 Bradley Avenue where the Chances all live.
For the first season, Leachman was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Shelley runs a daycare center for children, dogs, and senior citizens, for whom she frequently plays the ukulele and composes songs.
Appeared in: 26 episodes Frank (Todd Giebenhain) is a creepy and incompetent co-worker at the store where Jimmy and Sabrina work.
However, in the Season 1 finale, it was shown that he used to be a skilled bagger before accidentally hitting Shelley in the face with a can of fruit.
In "The Cultish Personality", Mike returns with his wife Tanya (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and "brother-husbands" Jeff (Paul F. Tompkins), Rodney (Chris Frontiero) and Chester (Kent Avenido).
Appeared in: 4 episodes Sylvia and Donovan (Tichina Arnold and Phill Lewis) are rich friends of Burt and Virginia's.
After delivering a daughter she originally names "Princess Beyoncé", Lucy is sentenced to death by electric chair.
In one of the later episodes, Jimmy, Burt, and Virginia receive the memoir Lucy left Hope, which includes a video about how to survive in prison and "how to attract a man".
In the second part, Lucy arrives at the Chance's house and says that if Jimmy and Hope don't move to Tibet with her she will fight for sole custody of their daughter.
Lucy then gets out of the car and chases after Sabrina with a knife; but before she can kill her, she is run over by a blind Carl driving Smokey Floyd's tour bus.
In Greg Garcia's original pilot script of the series, Lucy is not killed by the electric chair due to loose wires.
After the failed execution, she argues with the warden that a second attempt to kill her would be considered barbaric, comparing it to the case of Willie Francis.
She mentions that the case eventually went to the Supreme Court, and while they ruled against him five votes to four, she states that that was before female judges, lamenting that "No way Ginsburg and Sotomayor let me fry twice".
Appeared in: 12 episodes Jack (Sean Bridgers) is a ponytailed hippie who "kidnapped" Burt twenty years ago.
Appeared in: 2 episodes Wally Phipps (Lou Wagner) is an incompetent attorney who "helps" the Chances with occasional legal matters.
Appeared in: 2 episodes Jimmy Hughes (Mike O'Malley) and his wife Christine (Liza Snyder) found Virginia and Burt's sex tape years earlier and had watched it many times.