MTV has recently announced the triumphant return of Beavis and Butt-head. Original series creator Mike Judge is on board to produce new episodes which will air on the one-time music network later this year.

As John Altschuler, head writer for the new series, explained to Rolling Stone, “In the years since Mike quit doing ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ he realized that there was a lot to make fun of.”  The pair will reportedly be the same Metal-loving, nacho-chomping numskulls they were back in the day (the last episode of the original series aired in 1997), but with a twist: instead of sitting on the couch and watching and pillorying music videos, they will now be sitting on the couch and taking aim at clips from YouTube and reality shows like “Jersey Shore.”

No doubt that modern pop culture (culture! Imagine I wrote that with a straight face) will provide much fodder for the un-dynamic duo, but I wonder…

Beavis and Butt-head seemed so much a product of their times, those gay ’90’s, when the Cold War ended with a whimper and the nation could afford a President with nothing better to do than chase interns around the Oval Office. Beavis and Butt-head both rode and propelled this peculiar, peace-dividend zeitgeist; Americans loved hanging out with these horny, semi-retarded boys, because really, what else did we have to do?

But the world is now a different, darker place. Since Beavis and Butt-head last left us, history returned with a vengeance — 9/11, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial meltdown, riots and unrest from Cairo to Athens to Wisconsin. When I first heard they were returning, I wasn’t sure the boys were right for this second decade of the 21st Century.  Though I’ve missed them terribly, I thought they might be too good for these ugly times.

But I’ve since come around. I can’t imagine two dudes with whom I would rather watch the decay of our republic. At the very least, it will be refreshing to spend time with someone with no knowledge or concern for the loss of freedom and prosperity going on all around us. Say what you want about Beavis and Butt-head, but at least they have their priorities straight – chicks and rock and roll.

And really, when you get right down to it, what else is there?

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.

The first “Goode” episode out of the gate is “Pleatherheads,” which finds the family’s adopted son Ubuntu (voiced by Dave Herman) trying out for the -gasp!- high school football team.

“You mean tackle football, like in the movies?” clueless dad Gerald (voiced by Judge) asks.

Community activist wife Helen (voiced by Nancy Carell) is incensed – mainly because she’s got a hidden football addiction and loses control when she goes off the wagon.

Meanwhile, daughter Bliss (voiced by Linda Cardellini) is flummoxed that her chances for earning a college scholarship are looking dim based on her skin color. Or lack thereof.

“Red is the new black,” she says as she considers changing her name to something that sounds more Native American.

“The Goode Family” had an entire topic nearly all to itself – mocking liberals who try oh, so hard to do the right thing all the time. And the series didn’t make fools of the family in the process. In “Pleatherheads,” the Goodes’ vegetarianism plays a key role in the story’s conclusion.

So here’s hoping “The Goode Family” finds a new, wider audience on Comedy Central. And if the show doesn’t end up coming back in one form or another, maybe it’ll convince other comedy writers there’s plenty of untapped humor to be minded from the Left.

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.

Hank is the archetypal anti-free spirit, an assistant manager at a local company selling “propane and propane accessories” with a wife, Peggy, who thinks she speaks fluent es-pan-nole, and a son, Bobby, who looks like a bag of potatoes with two feet and a head.  Hank loves his quiet life, and the mere idea that someone might consider him “cool” would terrify him – Hank likes routine, calm and the occasional Alamo beer.   And he’s perhaps the fussiest heterosexual character in television history – about his lawn, about his tools, about his abnormally narrow urethra.

But the true glory of Hank is his eternal conflict with those who somehow feel morally empowered to stick their noses into his life.  All Hank wants is to be left alone, but a never-ending stream of know-it-all petty fascist bureaucrats, nanny-state meddlers and smarmy government twerps with more authority than common sense are determined to get in his face.  Hank, you see, doesn’t understand his immense need to be changed and modified and improved by the forces of enlightenment. 

–

The beauty of King is that while it pokes fun at Hank’s myriad foibles, it understands the creepy nature of those who dedicate their lives to interfering in the lives of others, always claiming the moral high ground yet inevitably maximizing their own personal power and advantage.  From snooty school guidance counselors to pompous college professors to lazy municipal clerks, Hank is constantly beset by nimrods trying to force him to conform to their personal vision of how he should be.  He usually responds as any good American would – with an exasperated threat to “kick your ass.”  There were probably more than a few Hank Hills at Lexington and Concord.

Hank also embodies a kind of glorious naïveté, the shameless love and admiration for our country and its principles that would make a goateed hipster snigger.  Hank is the type of guy who would show up at a town hall meeting about health care and ask where the Constitution says the federal government has any business at all getting involved with him and his doctor.  The politician would roll his eyes – what kind of hick thinks the fact that the Constitution doesn’t empower the feds to take over health care is an argument against doing so?  You know, kind of like in real life.

The beauty of King is that it made no apologies for the Hanks of the world.  Liberals with a wide range of life experience living on the coast tend to think of those parts of America that stretch between Manhattan and Manhattan Beach as a sinister breeding ground of banjo-strumming inbreds aching to drag their terrified meterosexual victims off to a revival meeting.  Not quite – if you really want to take a risk, hang with a liberal icon.  Hank Hill wouldn’t have left a passenger in his truck at the bottom of a pond – but he wouldn’t have been heading to the beach with a gal pal for a personal pork barrel project in the first place.  If your daughter’s car broke down on the side of the road at night, you’d pray for one of the Hank Hills of this country to be the one to pull up beside her.

While King of the Hill will now be reside in syndication, Judge is continuing his campaign of subversion with the new film Extract and – assuming it gets revived on a new network – the conservative-friendly series The Goode Family, while Greg Daniels continues to work on the American version of The Office.  King never got the kind of street credit that the more surreal The Simpsons received.  A show where the husband was usually the wisest guy in the family and where traditional values seem to lead to happiness just doesn’t cut it with the hip crowd. 

King was never cool, which was kind of the point.  It had to get by on doing its job, which was being funny.  “Doing its job” – that kind of sums up Hank Hill, and the rest of the folks like him who make this country work.

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.

The clouds seem to finally part when General Mills makes an offer to buy Joel’s company. Eager to get out from under the thankless role of employer and escape the never-ending hassles his eccentric staff puts him through, “Sell!” Joel says, and then the mishap occurs. In what’s commonly known as an industrial accident, Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), loses a testicle and the sale of the company is put on hold due to all the unknowns surrounding a personal injury lawsuit.

Thankfully, Step has no desire to take advantage of the situation. All he really wants is a promotion to Floor Manager. Joel’s okay with that and once more the skies clear until the gorgeous, cunning, but still somewhat naive Cindy (Milas Kunis) arrives on the scene to complicate both the lawsuit and Joel’s love life. Having thus far coasted on her looks and made her way through life as a small-time con artist, Cindy sees the loss of a testicle as a shot at the big time.  

Batemen plays put upon about as well anyone out there, his Joel is no exception and he and the whole cast are the best part of a movie that has some fine pieces but never works as a whole. The plotting is choppy, the laughs sparse, and even for a somewhat off-center comedy, Joel’s actions – which turn most of the plot – strain credibility. My abiding affection for “Office Space” is well documented, and no one would argue that much beloved workplace comedy exemplifies tight plotting, but “Extract’s” whole reason for being is predicated on Joel’s inability to get home from work at 8pm and yet after this is firmly established, on at least three occasions, he up and leaves the office on a whim.

One can only suspend so much disbelief.

Judge’s insightful observational comedy is also lacking. “Office Space” (1999) nailed the subculture known as Planet Cubicle, and you didn’t have to live that life to appreciate how perfectly that world was captured. Here you never feel like you’re given the full tour of all the eccentric details that would make up the blue collar small business world of “Extract.” Bits and pieces work: Step’s empty machismo about being the fastest sorter, the tattooed fork-lift operator with the band, the bitter, territorial woman on the assembly line… Unfortunately, they serve only as a taste of what could have been.

Instead, the main focus is on one of those relationship comedies where the audience knows a simple conversation (or leaving work ten-minutes earlier) would solve everything, which in turn makes all the ensuing hilarity feel somewhat forced.

The luminous Kunis is sorely underused. Because the early focus (and the film’s advertising) is on her, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that her character’s primary function is to instigate the main story, not be a major participant in it. On the other hand, Affleck knocks his supporting role out of the park, Gene Simmons has a great time as a flamboyantly unscrupulous lawyer and in what could be a breakout role as the dumbest gigolo ever, Dustin Milligan is responsible for the film’s few memorable scenes.

One could argue the unfairness of comparing anything to “Office Space,” but that lightening in a bottle shared many of “Extract’s” plotting and structural problems. What swamped those flaws and made them irrelevant were endless streams of quotable dialogue and one iconic scene after another. “Extract” has some fine moments and will certainly play better on television than up on the big screen, but never gets off the ground. Removed from the shadow of what came before and placed in a vacuum, the result would not be a more entertaining movie just a less disappointing one.

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. 

And what characters they are, with Jason Bateman and Kristin Wiig as the lead couple; the gorgeous Mila Kunis playing Cindy, a con-artist whose ever-shifting false love interests enable her to sleep her way to the top of the bottom of the American ladder of success; Ben Affleck, in a hilarious turn as a mullet-sporting bartender named Dean, who can find a way to make any of his incredibly sleazy schemes sound perfectly moral; and Clifton Collins, Jr. as Step, the slow-witted warehouse worker whose twisted testicular travails drive the plot forward. Add in Dustin Milligan in a star-making performance as an incredibly dense aspiring gigolo named Brad, and you’ve got a cast of fresh faces and actors reinventing their personas, with the resulting effect being that Judge’s best lines aren’t just quotable, but rooted in a strong sense of realism turned askew. 

“Extract” marks a welcome return to form for Judge, who spent the decade following “Office Space” immersed in television work and writing-directing the ambitious but highly uneven film satire “Idiocracy” in 2006. After seeing that passion project – in which an average American soldier wakes up 500 years in the future after an experiment goes awry and discovers he’s now the smartest man in the country – trapped on the Fox studio shelf for more than two years before getting literally dumped into a handful of theaters with no ad campaign to support it, Judge has clearly decided to return to the working-class characters that have made him a zillionaire already. 

This time, though, Judge has improved his storytelling from the often-sketchy plotting of “Office Space,” making every scene an essential piece in an ever-more-complicated puzzle of riotous shenanigans. The overall effect matches the powerhouse effect of my favorite comedy of 2008, the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” due to its whiplash pacing, utterly amoral and unpredictable characters and twisted dialogue.

Usually a film’s release on Labor Day weekend suggests that it’s a forgettable failure, with a merciful death assured amid the fading glow of summer box-office expectations. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with “Extract,” which deserves a long life in the theaters before its inevitable union with Judge’s other works as comedy staples to be quoted by generations to come.

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.

Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday and you’re not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, “Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays”?

No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.

For those of you who have never been planted in a cubicle, who have never spent 40 hours a week swallowed by a McOffice Park, suffered through endless office birthday parties, been passively-aggressively terrorized by a Bill Lumbergh, or slogged daily through endless piles of mindless, pointless corporate bull shit created for the sole purpose of being mindless, endless corporate bull shit… For those of you who don’t know what it’s like to hate yourself for worrying about losing a job you loathe… You can’t begin to understand why, after “The Searchers” and “Deuce Bigalow,” the vicarious revenge Mike Judge created just for us ranks as the third greatest movie ever made.

“Oh, and remember: next Friday… is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.”

Peter Gibbons, an office drone/software developer played to dull-eyed desperate perfection by Ron Livingston, hates most everything about his existence; the generic apartment, his grating daily commute and most especially the time he spends at Initech where life is one endless cycle of worrying about being asked to work the weekend and this:

Hi  Peter. What’s happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.

Yeah. Did you get that memo?

Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I’ve already taken care of it so it’s not even really a problem anymore.

Ah! Yeah. It’s just we’re putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that’d be great. All right!

To his credit, Peter is at least wise enough to have figured out ambition is a poison you take yourself and has no desire to advance his way out of Initech. But there is rent to pay, which means he’s stuck at Initech or someplace just as bad … unless of course he wins the lottery, in which case he would do exactly what I dreamt of with each and every scratch off: “… relax … sit on my ass all day …do nothing.” The only problem is that unless that unlikely ship docks, Peter can only see life unspooling in a manner in which a good day is one where his boss Bill Lumbergh (a way beyond brilliant Gary Cole) doesn’t “request” his presence on Saturday.

Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too…

The only bright spot in Peter’s day is sneaking off with his fellow cube-bots Samir and Michael Bolton (no, not the singer) and strolling over to Chotchkie’s (one of those obnoxiously-themed restaurant chains that glom on to McOffice Parks like sucker fish on a shark) where from afar he admires Joanna (an all kinds of fetching Jennifer Aniston), a waitress as dissatisfied with her fifteen pieces of flaired existence as Peter. (You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair… that they made the Jews wear.)

Peter: Lumbergh’s gonna have me work on Saturday. I can tell already. I’m gonna end up doing it, because, uh… because I’m a big pussy, which is why I work at Initech to begin with.

Michael Bolton: Uh, yeah, well, I work at Initech and I don’t consider myself a pussy, okay?

Samir: Yes, I am also not a pussy.

Anne, Peter’s controlling girlfriend (who’s probably cheating on him), is tired of his increasingly gloomy outlook and drags him into hypnotherapy to get help. As a relaxation exercise, the therapist hypnotizes Peter and essentially orders him not to give a damn. But before he can bring Peter out of the spell, the therapist has a heart attack and a new Peter is born.

I uh, I don’t like my job, and, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.

You’re just not gonna go?

Yeah.

Won’t you get fired?

I don’t know, but I really don’t like it, and, uh, I’m not gonna go.

Rather than detail and ruin the surprise of what follows, suffice to say it fulfills the non-violent but still very satisfying daydreams every cubicle rat has ever had. In other words: Damn it feels good to be a gangsta’.

The consequence of Peter’s behavior ends up being what you might call counter-intuitive. Instead of his attitude getting him fired, Peter is seen as showing leadership, given a raise and promoted. Unfortunately, Samir and Michael Bolton (no, not the singer) are “downsized” by the “two Bobs,” a couple of hired guns brought in by Initech to “evaluate” everyone’s job.

–

After taking revenge on a hated office machine (see above) that only ever produced error messages (Mother… shitter… Son of an… ass. I just…), the trio steals Richard Pryor’s genius idea from “Superman III” and plots an even bigger revenge against Initech — the kind of revenge that might land them in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. All the while, Peter’s new give-a-damn attitude continues to make his dreams come true when he suddenly finds himself free to pursue Joanna after Anne dumps him.

I wanna take you out to dinner, and then I wanna go back to my apartment and watch ‘Kung Fu.’ Do you ever watch ‘Kung Fu’?

I love ‘Kung Fu.’

Channel 39.

Totally.

You should come over and watch ‘Kung Fu’ tonight.

Ok.

Besides the terrific performances already mentioned, Stephen Root disappears behind a genius mix of pathetic and creepy as the Swingline stapler-obsessed Milton Waddams. Richard Riehle (who would reach the heights of cinema esteem that very same year as Deuce Biglow’s dad) captures so well those middle-aged guys who do nothing all day beyond perfecting the art of looking busy and vital. As Lawrence, Peter’s construction-worker neighbor wise beyond his I.Q., Diedrich Bader gets most of the bigger laughs.

Another special mention must go out to Gary Cole’s — yeah-that-would-be great — work as Lumbergh. Somehow, in a single iconic performance, Cole brought together the characteristics of every manipulative, obtuse, coffee cup-carrying middle-manager who wouldn’t know an original thought if it kissed him on the mouth. The impact of this performance is so great you don’t realize how few scenes he really has.

For as long as there are soul-numbing commutes, sad little men in business-casual dying slowly under flickering fluorescents, and chirpy secretaries who define their existence planning that day’s office party, “Office Space” will live on because Judge brought this world to life with both penetrating insight and a sincere, good-natured sense of humor that never condescends but only sympathizes. Most important, in his delivery, Judge understood that you don’t have to exaggerate that which is already exaggerated.

In my day I’ve worked for more than my share of Lumberghs, with too many office supply-obsessed Miltons, and sang Happy Birthday to more people I loathe than I care to remember. Come Friday night, “Office Space” was my palate cleanser, my spirit guide, and my way to wash off the stain of the work week and begin another two day countdown to the next case of the Mondays.

Yes, by that objective standard, there are plenty of “superior” films.

But how many of those help to get us through? Or introduced us to the O Face?

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).

Expertly produced by Mike Judge (“Beavis and Butthead,” “King of the Hill,” “Office Space”), the animated sitcom “The Goode Family” expertly satirized the conformist, braindead nature of much Green thinking and brilliantly identified the movement’s evolution into a commercialized lifestyle. Judge and co. also made merciless fun of countless other aspects of lefty conventional thinking, such as the passion for being seen as encouraging homosexuality and supporting public radio and other big-government nonsense.

They accomplished all this, moreover, while managing to make the central characters likable in spite of the silliness of their pursuits, by emphasizing their good intentions.

Naturally, Disney-owned ABC, widely known as the “gayest” network and a tireless promoter of statist hedonism, couldn’t tolerate the program once it realized what Judge and co. were actually delivering.

Given the high expense of animated shows, it’s unlikely that “The Goode Family” will be picked up by a cable network. It would seem perfect for Fox, of course, but that network seems committed to destroying the last semblances of taste and common sense in this society through its presentation of Seth McFarlane animated shows such as “Family Guy” and “American Dad.”

Like “The Goode Family,” the Bob Saget sitcom “Surviving Surburbia” was a sprightly, often satirical comedy which promoted sound values. Naturally, it couldn’t last on the network that has long promoted itself as the youthful, innovative, clever alternative but has in fact become a stagnant, boring bastion of statist hedonism.

Coming after the cancellation of the interesting and appealingly unconventional police comedy-drama “The Unusuals,” the jettisoning of “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia” show that even as it plunges ever-further into the ratings basement, ABC refuses to deviate from its evident mission of pushing modern liberalism instead of providing good, appealing television.

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:

But 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. 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?

I guess Ginia didn’t read about the increasing numbers of Americans who believe that the global warming hype is exaggerated. And regardless of whether they believe it’s true, global warming is currently at the bottom of the list of Americans’ priorities. Poor Al Gore – time for another documentary to hype the masses.

That statement also made me think of the now famous quote by elite Manhattanite and New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael after Richard Nixon’s sweeping presidential victory in 1972: “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.” Maybe like Pauline, Ginia needs to get out a little more.

As my husband and I watched the show with our 16-year-old daughter, he told her, “Your mom and I were like that back in the ’90s.” To a certain extent, it was true. We used cloth grocery bags, we were vegetarians (but not vegans), we voted Democrat and saw Republicans as evil incarnate, and drove a Geo Metro, all the while patting ourselves on the back for being so caring and progressive. I even had Greenpeace checks, with a portion of the fee to buy them going toward the organization (shudder). My husband mowed the lawn with a no-gas lawnmower, huffing and puffing as he pushed. One of our neighbors, often when he’d been enjoying a beer or two, would hop on his rider mower and mow our lawn for us, laughing at us – in a good-natured fashion, of course. (When we returned to hilly New England from the flat Midwest, that people-powered mower went the way of the dodo pretty quickly.)

So as my husband and I laughed at the Goode Family, we were also laughing at ourselves and how self-absorbed we were at one time about being “good.” The reason for our “transformation” is fodder for another article at another time.

But The Goode Family has laughs for libs too:  In the premiere episode, mother Helen tries too hard to bond with daughter Bliss by being cool and hip when talking about sex. Creeped out, in an act of rebellion, Bliss invites father Gerald to a father-daughter “purity ball,” where daughters pledge to their fathers that they will keep their virginity until marriage. When they realize what they’ve gotten themselves into, Bliss and Gerald make their escape and Bliss admits to her mother that she didn’t belong with “those people” (Christian goody-goodies).

But libs, like reviewers at the New York Times, just can’t get past the fact that one of their core beliefs – global warming – has been snubbed.

And maybe, just maybe, they have a problem with the fact that while both Gerald and Helen Goode are both bleeding heart liberal weenies, Gerald seems to be the more reasonable one: he mentions the importance of tolerance of others’ beliefs and would rather shop at the less-expensive WalMart-like store than the Whole Foods knockoff, while Helen is much more militant about everything. This flies straight in the face of Hollywood sitcom couples today: the husband is a boorish buffoon, often overweight, who couldn’t tie his shoes much less hold down a job were it not for his wonderful, bright, sexy, witty wife who almost always manages to save the day.

How dare they make a woman look bad?

Overall, the show was fun, and I plan to give it another shot next week.

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.

When critics say it’s the wrong time to make such jokes, it’s exactly the time to make such jokes.

The Goodes live an obsessively “green” existence while obsessing over political correctness until they’re tied in knots. In other words, Judge isn’t attacking cleaning up the environment or treating others with respect. That’s all well and “goode.” He’s teasing those who over-think such choices so much and devote themselves to such thinking so blindly they lose sight of their own well-being and why they were doing it all in the first place.

It’ll be interesting to see how well a show does that deliberately ribs people who often lack a sense of humor. If the reviews we’re seeing so far are any indication, the hard left media had its nose turned up with a collective “You dare to offend me, sir…” before they even saw a screener.

Let’s hope this new show is a success because those same smug critics don’t dare touch a show like South Park because it’s too big for such a tussle. Only decent ratings will get the whiny pundits off Judge’s back now.

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