'Raising Hope' Season 3, Episode 18: 'Arbor Daze' Recap

‘Raising Hope’, season 3, episode 18, ‘Arbor Daze’

Virginia and Burt prepare for their Arbor Day celebrations, where kids (just Jimmy) would get visited by “Papa Woody” and given presents. Sabrina asks why they celebrate Arbor Day that way, and Virginia tells her how they celebrated all the holidays for Jimmy, President’s Day, Groundhog’s Day, etc. For all the holidays, they’d gather around and watch “90210”.

For Arbor Day, they reveal that they’d dig up baby trees, and attach gifts to them for Jimmy to find. Then, once the trees died, they’d burn them for Chinese New Year. Sabrina realizes that those baby trees were the ones she planted every year that always went missing on Arbor Day. She calls them monsters and storms out of the house.

Virginia and Burt visit the store the next day to pick up their special order of a giant tub of maple syrup (for their maple syrup soup). Sabrina continues to belittle them for murdering trees. Virginia points out that no one complains when people cut down trees at Christmas time, but Sabrina doesn’t see it her way.

Sabrina asks if they even know what Arbor Day is about. Barney tells everyone the story of Arbor Day in a very Charlie Brown-esque setting. Arbor Day is about trees and family, apparently, and Sabrina is more than willing to celebrate by eating maple syrup soup and watching “90210”, but she can’t take part in killing trees. The two sides seem split, so they turn to Jimmy, who has to choose between his wife and his parents.

He picks his wife. They celebrate Arbor Day by teaching Hope about trees.

That night, Sabrina is visited by the Ghost of Arbor Day, Luke Perry. He is there to show her visions of Arbor Day past, present, and future. He takes her to Christmas morning in the distant, and shows how all the kids at the playground got the toys they wanted for Christmas, except little Jimmy. Burt and Virginia feel awful about it, and make it up to Jimmy by celebrating all the holidays. In Sabrina’s Arbor Day past, she tries to tell her parents about how she planted trees, but they all ignored her.

He takes her to Arbor Day present to see Burt and Virginia celebrating alone, lamenting the lack of a kid. He then shows her Jimmy and Hope, who also feels bad he can’t celebrate with Hope.

Then he takes her to Hope’s Arbor Day in the future. When Sabrina made Jimmy stop celebrating all the minor holidays, he had to work twice as hard to provide Hope a good Christmas, causing him to go bald, and spend less time with Hope. She sees herself, also balding, and also ignoring Hope.

She sees Hope promising to her doll that when she grows up, her family will always have time to spend together.

She wakes up from her dream, and drive out to the park and tries to dig up saplings for Arbor Day. Burt and Virginia, wearing ski masks, watch on from a distance. Sabrina gets busted by the cops and gets arrested.

The next morning, Virginia and Burt bail her out and take her home. Jimmy asks where she was, and she tells him how she got arrested. Hope wakes up and finds an Arbor Day sapling in the living room with presents attached to it. Jimmy says it must have been Papa Woody.

They made a new Arbor Day tradition of planting saplings in the park. (Sabrina was made to, since she got community service due to being arrested.)