The method is essentially the same, but you do it in two different places for Standard and Theater Views (they're configured separately).
Standard Views: On the view that you want to change (the one where your TV Shows appear), right click and choose Customize View. In the Customize View dialog that appears, click the Set rules for file display button. Then, in the resulting dialog, in the Modify Results section, add a Sort by rule (using the left-hand combo box) and then on the right you can add as many different file tags as you want, in any order that you want. You can add them Ascending or Descending and pick from any of the tags that MC supports.
When you import a TV Show episode with a filename like the one you described (Raising hope/season1/raising hope s01e01.mp4), MC knows how to read the "s01e01" part of it. It sets [Season] to 01, and [Episode] to 01 in that example. That's how it knows what the Episode Title is in the first place, it looks up Season 1, Episode 1 of Raising Hope on theTVDB.com. So those tags will be automatically pre-filled for any show you import that has a naming scheme similar to that one (the common ones).
A good "order" for your goal would be something like:
[Series]
[Season]
[Episode]
[Date]
[Name]
That way, it'll first sort the different series' together (if you happen to be in a part of the view where you can see all of them at once). Then, Season, then Episode. Only if two files have matching (or blank) information for all three of those things above would it end up using the Date or the Name sorting. In other words, it uses these in order.
If Options -> Tree & View -> Sorting -> Save changes on list header clicks is enabled, you can accomplish the same thing by simply clicking on the different "headers" of the Details Style view in the reverse order of how you want them to sort (so Name first, then Date, then Episode, and so on and so forth so that [Series] ends up being listed as #1).
Theater View: Basically the same idea. You go to Tools -> Options -> Theater View. Select the view you want to change in the Items To Show part of the dialog, and then on the right, click the Set rules for file display button. The rest is the same as above.
For Theater View, you probably don't need to bother with [Series] and [Season] in the sort order because you won't see them all on the screen at the same time. But, it also won't hurt to do it, so whatever way works for you.
PS. You're not an idiot. Just new. No worries.
