The Baskets Family
Chip Baskets
Played By: Zach Galifianakis
A struggling artist who dreams of becoming a famous and respected clown, after flunking out of clown college in Paris, Chip heads home to Bakersfield to try and keep his dream alive by taking a job as a rodeo clown.
- Amusing Injuries: Is prone to slapstick and falls, both in and out of costume.
- Character Development: His hitting rock-bottom in season 2 including seeing his friend Morpheus die, softens his disposition, making him much more grounded and serious and less snippy and cruel.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Dogged Nice Guy: Is madly in love with his wife Penelope, but she only went out with him to make her father angry and only married him for the green card. Chip is aware of this, but still hopes to win her back some day. Their conversations in season 2 and 3 imply she may actually be falling in love with him again.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to Dale's responsible. At least initially.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Has his hair long and in a ponytail in season 1, and then curly from season 2 onward, as well as a grey streak through his beard.
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Jerkass Woobie: Chip is bitter, sarcastic and pretentious but considering what he's gone through it's a miracle he can keep going. - Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Underneath his bitterness and cruelty he cares deeply about his friends and family, he's also great with kids and actually pretty emotionally intelligent.
- Manchild: Lives with his mother and takes being a clown very seriously.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Compared to Dale he's sensitive, creative and withdrawn, but also pretentious, bitter and sarcastic.
- Sad Clown: A very literal example. Chip began clowning to try and cope with his father's death. His initial clown character "Renoir" is even a stereotypical sad French clown.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: A heavy smoker, but it's treated as a vice and a sign of his faux-European pretentiousness rather than cool.
- Starving Artist: Struggles to make ends meet or gain respect with his clowning.
Christine Baskets
Played By: Louie Anderson
Chip's over-bearing but loving mother.
- Alcoholic Parent: Her father, on top of being emotionally abusive, was a raging alcoholic.
- Deuteragonist: The show begins to follow her and her life along with Chip's as the series develops.
- Mama Bear: Is fiercely protective of her sons, when she finds out Penelope was manipulating Chip she contacted her father to cut off her funds and force her back to Paris.
- My Beloved Smother: Treats her boys as if they were still children and meddles in their lives.
- Parents as People: A major part of her Character Development is finding a life for herself outside of her kids.
- Parental Favoritism: Loves all her kids, but openly heaps praise on and brags about Cody and Logan compared to how she tolerates and dismisses Chip and Dale's careers and accomplishments.
- Shipper on Deck: Would love for Chip and Martha to get together and seems to think the two are already dating, despite the two never being more than Just Friends.
Dale Baskets
Played By: Zach Galifianakis
Chip's more successful and competitive twin brother. Married with two daughters and the owner of "Baskets Career College", a trade school in Bakersfield.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: If he's onscreen with his daughters it's a safe bet he's humiliating them.
- Break the Haughty: Over the course of season 1 and 2 he gets divorced by his wife, loses the house and custody in the process, loses his business, gets kicked out of his mom's house and eventually ends up living in a trailer park with a bunch of far right-wing weirdos. Dale being Dale, he still acts like a pompous jerk regardless.
- Competition Freak: Dale is painfully over-competitive and always trying to win.Christine: It's not a competition Dale!Dale: Yes it is! Everything is!
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The responsible to Chip's foolish. At least initially.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Wears his hair medium length and straight, and his beard is solid brown.
- Jerkass: Is cruel, petty and completely disregards others' feelings.
- It's All About Me: He frequently thinks only of himself, and makes himself the center of attention in whatever he does.
- Manchild: Is petty, childish and entitled.
- Never My Fault: When his life starts to unravel in the second season due to his own reckless choices, he's quick to place the blame on everyone except for himself.
- Papa Wolf: Pulls a gun on a kid when he starts getting handsy with Sarah.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Compared to Chip he's bombastic, charismatic and optimistic, but also petty, cruel, overly-competitive and childish.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Isn't shy about waving a revolver around, and it's gone off by accident at least once.
- Sibling Rivalry: With all three of his brothers, he's constantly trying to win his mom's attention over them. It's one-sided from all sides.
Cody and Logan
Played By: Jason and Garry Clemmons
Chip and Dale's much more successful adopted younger brothers. The two are constantly on tour as DJ's.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: The fact that they stop doing this for a time is a major tip that there's something bad going on.
- Identical Twin Mistake: No one besides their mother can tell them apart. Even their older brothers get them confused.
- Out of Focus: Rarely show up, as they're constantly on tour.
- Single-Minded Twins: Especially compared to their older brothers.
- Skewed Priorities: Have a habit of putting their social lives and problems ahead of anything else. They ditch a family dinner to go do E with The Chemical Brothers and Cody is so wrapped up in his and Logan's problems he doesn't even register it when Chip mentions he was homeless for a few months.
Other Characters
Martha Brooks
Played By: Martha Kelly
An utterly deadpan insurance agent and friend of the family.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: Is in her own words "a bit of a snitch"
- Cloud Cuckoolander: A low-key example, but her thinking is pretty bizarre. At one point mistakes a coyote in her yard for a lost dog, brings it inside, and doesn't realize the error until Chip points it out.
- Deadpan Snarker: It's actually hard to tell when she's snarking and when she's just being weird.
- Emotionless Girl: Played for laughs, Martha is always completely and utterly deadpan.
- Extreme Doormat: Completely incapable of asserting herself, and all of her friends know it.
- The Mistress: Has multiple affairs, sleeping with Dale when he's still married (although in her defense that was mostly at Dale's insistence), and having two boyfriends at once for a while, one of whom was also married.
Penelope Hebert
Played By: Sabina Sciubba
Chip's unloving French wife. She married him for the Green Card and constantly let's him know it.
- Character Development: Although it happens almost entirely off screen her growth mirrors Chip's, becoming much more mature and kind and repairing her relationship with her father in the same way Chip does with his mother.
- Citizenship Marriage: Agreed to marry Chip just to get her Green Card and head to America.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Started going out with Chip to embarrass her father.
- Hidden Depths: It turns out she does in fact care for Chip and tried to talk him out of the marriage. It's implied that her cruelty to him was her way of dealing with the guilt. And later seasons even imply she misses and is interested in him again.
- French Jerk: Is cruel and manipulative to Chip, and also French.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Is trying to get out of the shadow of her famous musician father. She actually first became interested in Chip when he told her he had no clue who her father was and just wanted to know her.
- Pet the Dog: Her relationship with Chip wasn't completely one sided, and she would occasionally get him gifts, hang out with him to cheer him up, and even let him kiss her to impress his cowboy coworkers.
- The most notable instance would probably be the night Chip proposed, where even after telling him to his face that she doesn't love him and plans on leaving him, she still insists on buying him something to eat and the two have a picnic under the stars in Paris.
Eddie
Played By: Ernest Adams
The owner and manager of the rodeo Chip works at. An aged, drunken cowboy.
Ken Daniels
Played By: Alex Morris
Christine's boyfriend from Denver. He own's a carpet business.
