The Goode, the Bad and the New York Times
by Eric Golub
A new television animation show will be debuting tonight on ABC, and it has the potential to be really “Goode.”
“The Goode Family” is the story of a politically correct family of environmental zealots and there are two reasons I will give this show a chance. First of all, it is created by Mike Judge. While I did not take part in the “Beavis and Butthead” craze, I was an avid fan of “King of the Hill.”
I’m still disappointed that Hank Hill and his friends are leaving after 13 seasons. In the history of television, there will never be a character as cool and incomprehensible as Boomhauer. Grandpa Cotton was also a feisty one.
“King of the Hill” was about a group of Texans, but did not make fun of Southerners. It made fun of those who misunderstood them. When a Massachusetts client insisted on calling Hank “J.R.,” and asking him to wear a ten gallon hat, Hank coolly replied that “Texas has changed a lot in the last 150 years.” When a touchy-feely liberal wanted Hank to “bond with him,” and “meld their positive energies,” Hank responded for all of Middle America when he said to the do-gooder, “How ’bout I just kick your @ss?”
Hank was just a regular guy who believed in Jesus, the Dallas Cowboys, and propane over charcoal. He was at his best lamenting about his son, saying, “Well I want to hang out with Bobby, but the problem is the boy’s not really good at anything.”
All good things come to an end. Out of “King of the Hill” comes “The Goode Family.”
And here’s reason number two I’ll give “Goode” a chance: It’s hated by the bad and the ugly — that being the Jayson Blair Times. The Jayson Blair Times has become a despicable entity specifically because it treats anybody right of center as either being evil, or a complete imbecile. The examples are endless, but the bad and the ugly coming out of the JBT can be found most recently in their article knocking the Goode.
…the show feels aggressively off-zeitgeist, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s when it was still possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed.
Oh, those off-zeitgeist people. Don’t you just hate them?
Being a skeptic is soooo 1990s. Only an unreasonable and ill-informed person could possibly question anything that Al Gore says. After all, he won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize. He has to be right. Here’s some more pompous drivel from the JBT.
But who really thinks of wind power — an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show — as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?
Apparently Ted Kennedy does. He refused to allow a wind farm in front of his home because it blocked the view off of his Nantucket paradise.
Mr. Judge, who remains obsessed with the insanities of political correctness, still has his head very much in the Clinton years, and it is possible to watch ‘The Goode Family’ feeling so thoroughly transported back to another time that you wonder where all the Monica Lewinsky jokes went. Sometimes you’ve just got to move on.
Move on? This coming from the newspaper that thinks that FDR is in his 20th term? This from the paper that wants to throw President Bush and all of his advisers in jail? This from the paper that still gets page one stories wrong and issues mealy-mouthed retractions on page 37?
This leftist paper not only wants to declare global warming skepticism passe, but political correctness as well.
While it is a shame that Hank Hill will no longer be fighting the good fight, Mike Judge still will be. I expect the show to succeed because Mike Judge understands that while the social message is important, the main goal is to be funny. “King of the Hill” did have mild political overtones, but it lasted 13 seasons because it was likable and funny.
Long live the Goode family. May they triumph over their bad, ugly critics.
eric aka the Tygrrrr Express – blacktygrrrr@earthlink.net
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43 Comments
If the New York Times doesn't like it, it must be good.
I look forward to this show. Us PC-types need to be taken down a notch, snootiness-wise.
King of the Hill is classic. Bobby is hilarious.
I watched the clip earlier. They had me at WWAGD – What would Al Gore Do?
Already set to record on the DVR.
So far all the right people have daemonized it and hate it. I'll watch it just to make ratings better.
Okay, okay, y'all convinced me. I'm setting the DVR. Happy?
Gerald Goode = Mr. Van Dreesen.
Some believe basing a whole show around one of the peripheral characters of "Beavis and Butt-head" will be a massive failure but I'd remind those people that Hank Hill = Old Man Anderson… and that show lasted thirteen years.
Now we can only hope that Mike Judge will make a Buzzcut series starring R. Lee Ermey.
What is so classic about the New York Times being critical of "The Goode Family" is that NYT is absolutely proving Mike Judge's entire point about the show! My goodness, he could add Jayson Blair to the show just for added effect. The left can't help but to consistently step in steaming piles of poo and turn themselves into caricatures of their own jokes. BTW, isn't Blair the one who was supposedly fired for fabricating news articles? Or am I thinking of someone else?
"Us PC-types need to be taken down a notch, snootiness-wise. '
Sometimes even a lib has a sense of humor, +1 for you!
When King of the Hill first came out, I paid particular attention to the credits. I was sure someone from my adolescence wrote the show. It so perfectly reflected my childhood growing up in Texas that I was sure one of our neighbors wrote the damn thing!
Based solely on that, I will give "The Goode Family" a chance…once I saw Mike Judge's name on the show, I was willing to spend some DVR credit on it.
Today's NYT's comments about it just make me wanna watch it more…
You beat me to it. I just might go out and buy a Prius.
You're thinking of the right person. I mean, how can you trust someone who can't even spell "Jason" right?
i love me some mike judge, and will follow where he animates. and i miss cotton. say what you will libbies, but the world was a better place when cotton was still kickin' with his shinless legs..
Wait til the takedown tomorrow morning. The long knives are out in the clammy hands of the little minds.
To the ramparts boys ! Get more stuff financed and create more shows. Someone needs to see whether the South Park geniuses need some more dough or help of any kind.
They should be getting royalties for all the times we are going to see the Kim Jong Il caricature…
Check out this related Onion-style parody entitled "Cap-and-Trade Bill Expanded to Develop Markets in Household Radical Environmentalists":
http://www.optoons.blogspot.com
I'm very off-timeghost, but anything that tics off the Times gives me great harmjoy (Why can't we make words like that in English?).
I've got it set to record. I didn't watch King of the Hill regularly, but I liked it, and I'll stand up for B&B. It was brilliant and unfairly dismissed. I still use phrases from it to this day, probably to my detriment. Same with Idiocracy.
"DId anyone else sniff today's garbage? And I thought yesterdays' garbage smelled good"
-Bobby Hill
The three Leftist reviews I've seen (NYT, LAT, NPR) all read like parodies of the characters the show is sending up. For example, the NYT calls the show "agressively off-zeitgeist" You know what else is "off-zeitgeist"? Using the word zeitgeist. Of course what she means is that the show fails to promote Obama in some way.
I hope it doesn't suck. And I hope ABC doesn't screw it up either. I'm not sure they're capable of understanding a show like this. Something tells me they're idea of comedy is "Funniest Home Videos". Wacka Wacka.
Considering the way that the usual suspects insist on bashing this show, I think it's something that we should all set our Tivos or Hulu to watch.
"Taste the food, not the fuel."
You are missed Hank.
awesome. that's what I'm talking about. just. cracks. me. up.
what does it mean to "daemonized" something? Is that like, you take something, and render it as an autonomous server entity?
I'm kidding by the way. personally, I have terrible spelling.
Mike Judge is about to get a hard lesson in Hollywood reality. Thou shalt not make fun of the liberal elites.
as an unrepentant leftist, I kinda chaif at your wanton generalization. There are those types, the types that this show aims at. And you are right – it sounds like the NYT is doing a good job of proving Judge's point.
but then there are the other types of leftists who are less serious. I would venture to say that there are those that appreciate this show are the same type of liberals who can handle the often self deprecating comedy of Jon Stewart.
Hmmmm.. I was NOT going to watch the show before now I will for sure!! Thanks for the info!
That’s true. If the NYT doesn’t like it then it is probably good (and vice-versa). They liked Stalin and Mussolini. Go figure.
I wonder if the open minded, we're all equal left can take it as well as they dish it out?
You have to love the Times. They will set the standard for arrogance, even as they go to their well deserved grave.
I understand your points until your last five words self deprecating comedy of Jon Stewart? What he makes a few remarks aimed at the libs, that hardly equates to the battle wounds of the conservatives, so of course the left can handle Stewarts comedy they are only being beat up once a year like a woman who only gets knocked around during the super-bowl and treated like a queen every other day of the year..so I miss your point about Jon Stewart.
I myself will be giving it a chance as well… My husband and I watch King of the Hill (even though we are both Texans) and found it hilarious…. I actually knew someone that spoke like Boomhauer…
Hey now ! Funniest Home Videos sure does beat some of the scripted shows that they pass off as comedy, but the reviews from the mentioned news organizations sure can't hurt the shows launch..so I say bring it on lefty media..
Well I am going to be an optimist hard to do in the climate of Obama but hey I think it is going to be Hollywood that gets the hard lesson in reality!
I do believe this is CD's first positive rating at BH. Somebody call Ripley's!
Why, Jim? Nobody has shut up Trey Parker and Matt Stone for making fun of LIbs. Guess what- if the show gets the ratings and makes money for ABC it will stay.
I just saw it and i say…………meh.
Goode Lord, what's got into you Cgntv?
I missed it! It's not available on Hulu or Abc.com. Is there anywhere I can (legally) see it?
Or the lesson could be, "They'll take the lumps if there's profit to be had." With all the "spread the wealth" and "moderation is good" garbage Hollywood crams down our throats on a daily basis the higher-ups sure keep good notes on what makes a buck and what doesn't.
You there.. wide body.. what's your name ..?
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