TV Verdict

Just caught the mini-hyped new animated sitcom from Mike Judge, the brains behind Office Space and King of the Hill. What makes The Goode Family intriguing and sort-of-but-not-really controversial is that it puts the hopey-changey-hippie types in its comic crosshairs.

My capsule reaction: the comedy was hit and miss, but there’s potential.

All the cards on the table, I’m a curmudgeonly conservative type, so my approach to this material is skewed rightward, at least in the fact that aside from South Park, you don’t see much fictionalized TV entertainment that skewer the Left (and intercepting the joke before it hits, no, Fox News doesn’t count).

I like Mike Judge and am impressed that he summoned the testicular muscularity to craft such a relentless satire of liberal do-goodery. But more importantly is The Goode Family funny? It is. I laughed. Sporadically and in various degrees of heartiness, but there are some hugely clever moments.

Stuff I laughed at:

1. The adopted son from South Africa named Ubuntu (who the Goodes insist is technically African-American).

2. Che, the vegan dog driven to homicidal rage from meat-lust.

3. The “Incovenient Bag.”

4. The constantly changing politically correct scoreboard in the Organic Foods store.

5. The national conference that settles on names for minorities (and the funny pay-off to the gag).

Lots of other jabs are strewn about, totaling to a fairly aggressive parody of a guilt-ridden liberal family. And that’s my biggest criticism–sometimes the harpooning is too blatant, exhibiting the subtlety of a Hybrid SUV crashing into Al Gore.

Speaking of which, the WWAGD (What Would Al Gore Do) gag falls in that category as well as extended conversation about the dilemma of wearing flag pins even after Obama’s election and the final line of the episode: “Ubuntu, what’s important is you feel guilty about it.”

If Judge can employ some of the more wry humor he has in the past and tone down the sledgehammer approach to the satire, I think there’s big potential here. The wit is evident and God knows the subject matter provides a fertile landscape for a comedy harvest. At the very least, and hopefully we (i.e., the non-humorless types) can all agree, Left or Right, that it’s always nice to see something different on TV. Especially something done well.

I just hope the kinks get hammered out before the series is put out to free-range grazing on an organic pasture.