The main character of FX’s Baskets, Chip Baskets (Zach Galifianakis) is uncommonly dedicated to the pursuit of dreams that are, to an outsider, completely unattainable. He wants to be a professional clown (despite the fact that he’s already flunked out of a prestigious college in Paris because he couldn’t speak French) and he’s in love with a beautiful French woman named Penelope (Sabina Sciubba) who married him even though she doesn’t love him (or even like him). No, things aren’t going according to plan for Chip in season one as we find him living back in his hometown of Bakersfield, working for next-to-nothing as a rodeo clown (hey, it’s dream job adjacent).
It could be worse, though. At least Chip has people in his life — his overbearing mother, Christine (Louis Anderson), and his foppish, arrogant twin brother Dale (also played by Galifianakis) — that are quick to offer advice on how he can get his life in order even though they often do it while rolling their eyes at every mention of his career goals.
Chip does have one person fully in his corner, though: his insurance adjuster/aspiring friend Martha (Martha Kelly), but he’s a little too preoccupied with his own tangled knot of a life to fully notice. And now he’s on a train headed for who knows where. Will Chip right the ship by either fully giving up on his dreams and settling or by accomplishing the seemingly impossible?
