Tonight: ‘The Goode Family’ Gets a New Life

“The Goode Family” didn’t stand a chance on ABC. The animated sitcom, that oh, so rare product that openly mocks liberals, got little promotional oomph from its own network and ended up with few viewers. That’s the same network that refused to re-broadcast a popular miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” that cast the Clinton administration in an unflattering light and now won’t permit it to be released on DVD.

It‘s a bit of a miracle “The Goode Family“ made it on air in the first place. But the Goodes are back courtesy of Comedy Central.

The cable channel will start rebroadcasting the entire season of “The Goode Family,” co-created by Mike Judge, on Monday nights starting tonight at 10 p.m. EST. It’s a longshot the show will be reborn thanks to its new platform, but such a renewal isn’t without precedent.

“The Family Guy” roared back to life after the show did blockbuster business on both DVD and Cartoon Network reruns. And “Futurama” still cranks out new installments years after its cancellation. (more…)

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Tags: abc, Comedy Central, Goode Family, Mike Judge
Posted Jan 4th 2010 at 10:44 am in Culture, Reviews, Television | 28735879 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2010/01/04/tonight-the-goode-family-gets-a-new-life/Tonight%3A+%27The+Goode+Family%27+Gets+a+New+Life2010-01-04+18%3A44%3A16Christian+Toto

Adios Hank: The Conservative World of ‘King of the Hill’

The most annoying creature in the pantheon of Hollywood cliches is the “free spirit,” the heedless, hedonistic waif whose responsibility-free lifestyle shows us uptight squares just how empty and soulless our lives of meeting obligations and delaying gratification truly are.  But there’s nothing free about free spirits in real life – they flit along like eternal infants while other people get to pick up the figurative and literal bill – people like you, and me and TV’s most amusing everyman Hank Hill.

Tonight Fox will run the series finale of King of the Hill, the saga of Hank and his gang of associates living in their exurb paradise of Arlen, Texas.  King has a helluva a pedigree.  It was created by fellow UC San Diego grad Mike Judge, who also developed the criminally under-appreciated Beavis and Butt-Head.  The co-creator was Greg Daniels, who previously worked on The Simpsons  and wrote the classic Lisa’s Wedding episode.  Together, they made King the most subversive comedy on television. (more…)

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Tags: "Extract", "The Goode Family", Beavis and Butt-Head, Greg Daniels, King of the Hill
Posted Sep 13th 2009 at 6:44 am in Culture, Entertainment, Politics | 219118102 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/09/13/adios-hank-the-conservative-world-of-king-of-the-hill/Adios+Hank%3A+The+Conservative+World+of+%27King+of+the+Hill%272009-09-13+13%3A44%3A56Kurt+Schlichter

‘Extract’ Review: Good Performances Aren’t Enough

Writer/director Mike Judge’s “Extract” is being promoted as: “The creator of OFFICE SPACE heads back to work,” but this isn’t exactly true in the purest “Office Space” sense. Our protagonist Joel (Jason Bateman) does spend time at the company he owns, a flavor extract plant, but for the most part those goings on are a subplot to what is essentially a relationship comedy — and only a mildly amusing one at that.

Joel’s problem is that he can never get home from work before his wife Susie (Kristen Wiig) puts on the sweatpants at the strike of 8pm … and once the sweatpants are on there will be no sex for the Extract King. What makes him late is the personnel and personality nonsense at the office; what slows him down is Nathan (a terrific David Koecher), one of those boorish nightmares of a neighbor whose lack of self-awareness eventually forces you to be rude to them. So Joel is frustrated — very frustrated, and taking advice from the exact wrong person: His buddy Dean (Ben Affleck), a long-haired bartender who has only one answer to every imaginable problem: Narcotics. (more…)

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Tags: ben affleck, Clifton Collins Jr., David Koecher, Dustin Milligan, Gene Simmons
Posted Sep 4th 2009 at 10:21 am in Reviews | 21793820 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/04/extract-review-good-performances-arent-enough/%27Extract%27+Review%3A+Good+Performances+Aren%27t+Enough2009-09-04+17%3A21%3A32John+Nolte

Review: ‘Extract’-ing Laughs is Easy

Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with his bored, put-upon wife. 

But just as he seems prepared to make a deal with food giant General Mills to sell the plant for good, a freak accident occurs inside his plant that lops off one of a long-time employee’s testicles. The other is hanging by a thread, a metaphor that is apt for Joel’s life as it suddenly spirals out of control via a surreal round-robin of relationships that come unhinged and turn his life upside-down in the new comedy film “Extract.” 

Written and directed by Mike Judge, who has chronicled the modern everyman’s life in the long-running and brilliant Fox cartoon “King of the Hill” as well as in the short-running yet brilliant 1999 film “Office Space,” “Extract” takes a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued look at middle-class values in Middle America. But once again, Judge proves that he possesses a true love for the common, working-class Joe that translates into comedy that uplifts rather than demeans the lives of its characters.  (more…)

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Tags: "Extract", "Office Space", ben affleck, Jason Bateman, King of the Hill
Posted Sep 1st 2009 at 11:44 am in Reviews | 21483051 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ckozlowski/2009/09/01/extract-ing-laughs-is-easy/Review%3A+%27Extract%27-ing+Laughs+is+Easy2009-09-01+18%3A44%3A19Carl+Kozlowski

Movies We Like: ‘Office Space’ (1999)

Transcending what objectively qualifies as “a great movie,” there is a rarer film still — a special kind of drug, tonic, and comfort blanket that guarantees a couple hours of escape from punishing reality. In 1999, “Office Space” died at the box office but something about it wouldn’t be denied and on DVD writer/director Mike Judge’s sharp, savage, right-on take of suburban office life found a ready-made audience desperate for that tonic – for anything that proved someone somewhere understood and sympathized with their own personal Cubicle Hell.

It was on a Friday night and I was in the Wal-Mart DVD aisle desperately searching for anything that might help to take the edge off a particularly brutal week of corporate bill collecting when the tagline “Work Sucks” caught my eye. Normally the thought of paying retail would’ve worked against such an impulse buy, but the comfort gained from those two words were alone worth $19.99, and home with me “Office Space” went. (more…)

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Tags: "Kung Fu", "Office Space", "Superman III", Diedrich Bader, Gary Cole
Posted Aug 21st 2009 at 6:35 am in Film, Reviews, Video | 209006105 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/08/21/movies-we-like-office-space-1999/Movies+We+Like%3A+%27Office+Space%27+%281999%292009-08-21+13%3A35%3A02John+Nolte

‘Goode Family’ Canceled, Too Left for ABC

Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to succeed.

No wonder the cab/sat USA Network actually beat ABC (and the CW network) in the national ratings last week. USA’s formula of original series with unusual but likable characters and sound values carries consistently impressive audience appeal.

Although the ABC cancellations were expected–given the fact that the network had brilliantly moved both series to Friday night, a network television Dead Zone, thus guaranteeing that the shows would not be able to generate an audience over time–they nonetheless prove that ABC hates anything with decent values and ideas and cannot appreciate good, solid entertainment with real sense (Castle being the rare exception). (more…)

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Tags: "American Dad", "The Goode Family", abc, Bob Saget, disney
Posted Aug 18th 2009 at 12:56 pm in Uncategorized | 207446111 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/stkarnick/2009/08/18/goode-family%e2%80%99-canceled-too-left-for-abc/%27Goode+Family%E2%80%99+Canceled%2C+Too+Left+for+ABC+2009-08-18+19%3A56%3A41S.T.+Karnick

More on ‘The Goode Family’ – Lighten Up, Libs!

After seeing video trailers for Mike Judge’s new show The Goode Family online last week, I was looking forward to seeing the show. Who couldn’t appreciate jabs being taken at a vegan family who wanted to adopt an African baby to show how much they “care” but end up with a white South African baby and name him Ubuntu? (There’s an inside joke in there for computer geeks, which my husband got but I didn’t.) Whose poor dog, Che, also on a vegan diet, is so desperate for meat that he eats all the small animals in the neighborhood he can get his paws on? Who wonder “What would Al Gore do?” when Ubuntu wants his driver’s license even though driving cars and burning fuel is evil? It helped too that I liked Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill.

My interest was piqued even more after reading John Nolte’s post about the New York Times review of the show. Apparently, reviewer Ginia Bellafante had a hard time appreciating the foibles of a family who try so hard to be perfect in how they live and how they relate to their black neighbors that their lives become highly stressful.  To quote The Times: (more…)

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Tags: "The Goode Family", Al Gore, Ginia Bellafante, Global warming, Mike Judge
Posted May 29th 2009 at 5:09 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Political Humor, Reviews | 14571864 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/05/29/more-on-the-goode-family-lighten-up-libs/More+on+%27The+Goode+Family%27+-+Lighten+Up%2C+Libs%212009-05-29+12%3A09%3A47Pam+Meister

‘The Goode Family’: Animation Continues to Save Political Satire on TV

Since the election of Barack Obama, aggressive political parody has been hard to come by outside of Comedy Central. But, as noted here on Big Hollywood, ABC and Mike Judge are taking on political correctness and progressive activists with The Goode Family.

When Bush and Cheney left office, they became old news. Mocking them now is like making Eisenhower jokes, but that doesn’t stop the occasional hack like Wanda Sykes trotting out tired material. And Obama seems off limits lest anyone wants to look like a buzz kill during the ever-lengthening, forced-fed honeymoon. In fact, the only show that really dared effectively to venture into political mockery consistently this season was South Park.

Mike Judge

And spare me any mention of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Both shows kiss the Democratic ass (the donkey, I mean) all week until they realize how biased they’ve become. Then they scramble around to make fun of some minor Dem Congressman for 30 seconds and applaud their own objectivity. Meanwhile, Stewart rages at every conservative cause he can find with the furor (not the wit) of Murrow until he’s called on it. Then he scrambles back into his hole screaming, “I’m only a comic!”

Fortunately, The Goode Family levels the satirical skills of Judge (creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill) at the taboo supporters of global warming, racial hypersensitivity, animal rights and any other cause over-hyped by self-righteous busybodies. (more…)

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Tags: " "The Daily Show, "The Colbert Report", "The Goode Family", abc, animation
Posted May 28th 2009 at 9:37 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Political Humor | 14496665 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jslewinski/2009/05/28/goode-animation-continues-to-save-political-satire-on-tv/%27The+Goode+Family%27%3A+Animation+Continues+to+Save+Political+Satire+on+TV2009-05-28+16%3A37%3A02John+Scott+Lewinski

The Goode, the Bad and the New York Times

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. (more…)

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Tags: "The Goode Family", Beavis and Butthead, Jayson Blair, King of the Hill, Mike Judge
Posted May 27th 2009 at 2:40 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 14422242 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/egolub/2009/05/27/the-goode-the-bad-and-the-ugly/The+Goode%2C+the+Bad+and+the+New+York+Times2009-05-27+21%3A40%3A15Eric+Golub

NY Times: Knives Come Out for ‘The Goode Family’

In the closing sentence of her New York Times review, Ginia Bellafante damns Mike Judge’s new series, “The Goode Family” — which appears to mercilessly mock everything anyone employed at the Times holds dear — with the harshest of criticisms:  

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. Sometimes you’ve just got to move on.

Ouch.

In the world of pop culture-dom, to be accused of not being cutting-edge is bad enough, but the Times engages the nuclear option by dismissing the new series as passé, outdated, antiquated, behind the times… Pick your poison. (more…)

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Tags: environmentalism, Ginia Bellafante, Global warming, Mike Judge, New York Times. The Goode Family
Posted May 26th 2009 at 2:29 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism | 144250146 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/05/26/ny-times-knives-come-out-for-the-goode-family/NY+Times%3A+Knives+Come+Out+for+%27The+Goode+Family%272009-05-26+21%3A29%3A25John+Nolte

ABC’s ‘The Goode Family’

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This owned me at the six-second mark with the bumper sticker that reads, “Support Our Troops … And Their Opponents.”

What’s going on at ABC? First the miniseries “O” “V,” and now this…? Is it… (more…)

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Tags: "The Goode Family", abc, Beavis and Butthead, environmentalists, liberalism
Posted May 23rd 2009 at 9:34 am in Entertainment, Politics | 14209875 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/05/23/abcs-the-goode-family/ABC%27s+%27The+Goode+Family%272009-05-23+16%3A34%3A24John+Nolte