New Animated Comedy (ABC prime time)'The Goode Family' (Mike Judge)

[underpants]

New Animated Comedy 'The Goode Family' Pokes Fun at Political Correctness

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522403,00.html

Translation: What Would Al Gore Do?

The politically correct couple lead a carbon-footprint-free family in the new animated comedy "The Goode Family," premiering Wednesday night on ABC, which pokes fun at all things holier-than-thou.

Produced by the extremely un-PC "Beavis and Buthead" creator Mike Judge, and his "King of the Hill" partners John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, "The Goode Family" could succeed as an antidote to the raft of PC-leaning network comedies, says one media expert.

“It is good counter-programming. TV networks are understandably under enormous pressure to create buzz and bring back a young audience,” Michael Levine, Director of Levine Communications, told Foxnews.com. “It is always hard to know which match will start a fire, but the idea of creating controversy is a good strategy.”

The show's first episode could generate some heat. In it, mom Helen is unhappy when their daughter, Bliss joins an abstinence group to get her mom to stop talking to her "girlfriend-to-girlfriend" about sex, then asks her horrified hippie-dippy father to accompany her to the group's purity ball.

But that's not all. Their dog, Che, has been raised a vegan, so he now craves meat to such an extent, he is eating every squirrel, bird, and pet cat that dares stray into the Goodes' yard.

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. One thing I've noticed from the commercials

Just as the character of Hank Hill from King of the Hill was loosely based on Beavis & Butthead's Tom Anderson, it seems that the lead in this new show is based on the hippie teacher Mr. VanDriessen from B&B.

So when does the drill sergeant gym teacher Mr. Buzzcut get his own show? They could make him a Repuke radio talk show host or something....

[villager]

2. doesn't South Park already do this?

Look, I grew up in Berkeley in the 60's & 70's, and was there stuff you could lampoon in the cultural ground zero of the American left?

Sure -- but why do the current "parodies" of things lefty & liberal seem so stuck in the 60's themselves?

And, uh, where was a similar ABC show about a rightwing Fundie family -- and their hilarious foibles!-- during the Bush years....?

Oh, right...

[omega minimo]

3. Dirty Sexy Money?

:shrug:

[villager]

4. Was it? I never watched it...

I'm willing to stand corrected, but mostly they were just greedy, yes?

I wonder if Fundies were ever taken on directly...?

[fishwax]

5. what are the "PC-leaning network comedies"?

whatever fox news means by that :eyes:

At any rate, I've seen a few ads for the show, and I'm not sure how good it will be, but I'll probably tune in if I remember it's on.

[Stephanie]

6. Family Ties?

[ColbertWatcher]

7. Meh.

This is the easy way out. I'd like to see the Goode family's neighbors, the militant, right-wing fundamentalists, the Palins, get their own series.

That would be "must-see-TV."

It's too easy making fun of hippies, plus you don't beat the losers when they've marginalized themselves.

[worthlesscitizen]

8. I dunno--I kinda liked it.

Overall, this is a show I really want to like. I was excited about it as soon as I heard about it earlier this month, being a big fan of King of the Hill. King of the Hill pokes fun at a suburban Texan middle-class family (as a representative of the unsophisticated Christian conservative mainstream), but, with roughly equal time, it treats the Hills as protagonists in the midst of countless American cultural extremes. While the show mocks Hank's narrow cultural comfort zone (e.g. he's constantly freaked out by anything his son Bobby does that seems effeminate or homosexual), it skewers pretty much everyone and everything else in American culture, too (from carbon offsets to church-sponsored "Hell Houses" and right-wing bunker builders. The show makes the Hills fallible--very fallible--but ultimately gets around to showing us that everyone else is, too, and in a way, that makes it easier for us to all get along.

Enter The Goode Family, which sends up a family of environmentalist, vegan, non-flag-pin-wearing, hybrid-driving, bumper-sticker-toting, African-child-adopting, er, liberals. The wife, Helen Goode, wears a meat-is-murder T-shirt and tries way too hard to discuss sex with her daughter. Gerald Goode, her husband, a pencil-necked community college administrator, appears to be the reincarnation of the hippie high-school teacher from Beavis and Butt-Head.

What's funny about the show isn't so much that the people are extremely environment-conscious (much like King of the Hill doesn't merely laugh at the Hills). The humor is driven by the difficulty of living with a liberal's conscience. The daughter wants to go to an "abstinence dance" as a way to avoid the pressures of adolescent sexuality, and Gerald and Helen are divided on whether to support her. (The ensuing dance scene, by the way, is a hilarious sendup of contemporary Christian megachurch "hipness.") And Helen's preening liberal friends constantly outdo her in green living and motherhood.

As much as I loved the idea of the The Goode Family--and still do, actually--it wasn't terribly funny, and I have the feeling that much of this has to do with the fact that only one episode has aired. Once the characters develop and the writers begin to flesh out more of the basic idea of the show, it'll probably start to take off.

That said, I liked Nowhere Man on UPN back in the nineties, and that sure didn't keep it on TV.

So my point is this: I like Mike Judge's shows, loved his cultural critique in King of the Hill, and expect to love it in upcoming episodes of The Goode Family, too. Did any of you end up watching the episode? Is it hitting too close to home?