The Goode family are too nice and sincere to laugh at. Where is the liberal fascism and liberal totalitarianism? Observe that the kid gets away with defining his ethnicity as “African American” (he is white from South Africa) while in real life the kid from South Africa who pulled that stunt got expelled from college.
The only funny character is the dog, because he is rebelling against the family veganism by devouring every neighborhood pet smaller than himself.
The show fails because it is too soft on liberalism. To get a laugh, have to stick the knife in and twist it a bit. This show is too much like “Father knows best”
The only part of the first episode where they really stick the knife in, and follow it up with a few boots to the head, is, of course, where they stick the knife into fundamentalist Christians.
The Goode Family are genuinely and sincerely trying to do good. That is not funny. They should be genuinely and sincerely deluded that they are doing good. That would be funny.
I’m liberal, and I thought it was pretty funny. You don’t have to agree with everything to find humour in it. I think you can just as easily make fun of overzealous conservatives as you can liberals. Its just the truth. You have Animal Liberation front on the left, and Libertarian capitalists on the other hand that think the NWO is going to put RIF chips in them and throw them into FEMA camps. Those are both extremes, and extremes are what a lot of great comedy is based off of. Really, the far left overlaps with the far right at some point. The Goodes weren’t really far anything. They were probably social democrats at best. The show made fun of eco-terrorists though in one episode where Ubuntu ended up joining one by accident, thinking it was an after school retreat. The Unibomber was essentially the same as Timothy McVeigh. One would have identified as right, the other left, when in reality they’re similar. It has less to do with being socialist or capitalist and just being batshit crazy. There’s certainly ‘mockable extremes on both sides, and anyone who fails to see that because of a political bias is full of shit. It was just a caricature. They took a lot of shots at conservatives too. Overall, I liked the show and hope to see more. However, to be fair, you have to admit that nobody has really made a show making fun of fundamentalist, Christian, Republicans as the central characters, unless FOX intends to make a Simpsons spin off featuring Ned Flanders. I hope Cartoon Network brings it back. I like the fact that there’s still some animated, prime time comedies that don’t rely on disgusting, raunchy humour, unlike Family Guy and South Park, both of which I despise.
No. The Goodes were a lot further than Libertarians etc, but the show was reluctant to stick its claws in. The Goodes are not the center between eco terrorists and people who physically attack those they disagree with, and it is absurd to suggest that people who blow up private property are the equivalent of people who politically disagree with you.
Beavis and Butthead left a lasting impression on me.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not seen the series. But based on the little bits that I have seen so far, I have been wondering how Judge and the rest of his team can make a satire of a family who also serve as the point-of-view characters. South Park works well, in part, because the point-of-view characters are kids who are on the receiving end of the SWPL nonsense dished out at the hands of their clueless parents and school administrators. Cartman illustrates the power and constraints of point of view characters. He does not fit well into a role of convincing villain because of our reflexive sympathy for him when we see through his eyes (or at least over his shoulder).
I also wonder how long a shelf life some of the jokes will have. How many times can you hear about a white “African-American” adopted child before it gets stale? A joke that my work in a 120 minute movie may not work well in a multi-season TV series.
EG:
They cannot.
The genuinely funny bits in episode one are the dog eating a cat and a bird, and the ridicule of Christians – because the writers are not worried about hurting Christians, cats, or birds. But the writers cannot hurt these very nice guy members of the Goode family, and indeed, we like them too much, are supposed to like them too much, to laugh at them. Instead we feel embarrassed for them.