The Goode Family

I think animation lovers will know Mike Judge only too well from 'Beavis and Butthead' and 'King of the Hill'. Very different shows but they grew on us. King Of the Hill in it's prime was wonderful and now in auto-pilot is still amusing to watch. I love both shows and wish B & B could make a comeback minus the music videos. Mike's new show 'The Goode Family' is a little more like KOTH. In the sense that it feels like a sitcom with live actors except that it's animated. The pilot episode was amusing through out with some good dialogue and interesting characters. The title character Gerald Goode is voiced by Mike Judge doing a reprisal of the hippie teacher from B & B. The consensus on the web seems to be that the show is too risqué with it's hyper-liberal goody two shoes family at the heart of the story. Others plain don't like it. I think like Mike's other two shows, this one needs some time. Give it a season, if it's still good...

Satirically making fun of the far left. Not in anyway that's too tasteless. I'd say the characters are a bit over the top, it needed more time to lush itself out. The comedy is just far too obvious at times. Unlike King of the Hill the characters are sort of two dimensional. When you lean this far into the satirical side it just feels like a takedown. The characters just aren't very likable as a whole. The main characters feel more like they should be over the top side characters. It's almost the opposite of King of the Hill, but if King of the Hill was only Dale. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you feel like throwing some background thing on go for it.

This show did not get enough time on the air to catch everyones attention. One season does not give this show justice. I felt I was just getting to know all of the characters and now I can only imagine who they would have become. It was a unique show working with ideas I haven't seen in any animated show before. Mike Judge is always doing good work and I hope this show can get picked up on another station someday. But for now we can all catch the reruns on Comedy Central! I mean doesn't everyone remember when Family Guy was cancelled and how big of a following it received while it was off the air? It was too bad that King of the Hill ended in 2009, but then this show comes on and I felt a little better because it was still the same animation and some of the same humor.

To start off, this show is no King of the Hill. After watching the first four episodes consecutively, I am left with sadness and a feeling that the legacy and comedy of King of the Hill will not be coming back into this show. It is true that all good things must come to an end at some point, but that is not to say that The Goode Family isn't a good thing. It does have it's high points, such as poking fun at what is now considered to be the good American mentality, has characters that resemble King of the Hill characters (i.e. their neighbor who resembles Hank Hill in almost all ways except he's black), realistic animation such as that in King, as well as some plain old funny moments. But it's not laugh out loud funny. There's no crazy moments or situations that drive the episodes, and the characters are hard to get into.

I know I've compared this show to King of the Hill a lot, but quite frankly it's all I can think of. Even if I had never seen King I'd still probably say the same stuff as mentioned above. The show isn't genius. It had a wonderful idea and when I heard about the characters' personalities I thought that the show had a great chance. But it's just not that good. But at this point in the game it's a little to early to tell,

Shame on FOX for getting rid of one of the, if not the greatest animated comedy of all time.

I only discovered "The Goode Family" (TGF) this past week and have been gobbling up past episodes with abandon through YouTube. What a hoot they are.

Nobody remembers that the term "political correctness" was actually coined by the Left before it was hijacked by the GOP and the right-wing in the late '80's. Originally it was meant as a humorous check on ourselves and a term of endearment and self-mocking rather than the derisive put-down of others it mutated into. I like to think that TGF is a continuation of that gentle spirit of PC which softens the edges of political rhetoric that can cut deeply and easily alienate.

Episodes around the politics of being a "football family," public radio, One Earth food stores (a stand in for Whole Foods), eco-terrorism, graffiti tagging and cult icons of frugality and consumer waste hit many of the right spots. For someone who has spent the majority of his adult life in Madison, WI, New York City and Seattle, WA while visiting Portland/Eugene, OR and Berkeley, CA, these shows really do touch on life in these communities no less in need of skewering than people in suburbia or Texas.

While I wouldn't say that the series is yet a subcultural must-see, it bears watching and deserves getting picked up and given more time to develop. TGF reminds me of the first season of Seinfeld where they were just getting characters and themes established. While not as out-and-out shocking and stupid (in a funny way) as Beavis & Butthead, TGF is clever and there is some potential here for very good humor.