So anyone see it?
Really good cast.
The best I can say about it is that it wasn’t bad. It had it’s moments and there’s room for it to grow. I didn’t like the dog too much, but the rest of the family had some funny parts.
Felt sorry for the dog and would egg him on in real life, but I know dogs that need a broader diet. Daughter’s veggie boyfriend has a puppy that he insists should only get the kibble the vet sells him, with no people food. Puppy was looking pale so Wife didn’t argue when he stole a whole boneless chicken breast off her plate. Perked him right up. Anyway, Wife likes to quote an old Indian gent she met who said, “A dog that won’t steal food is no damn good.”
Thought the show was pretty bland. I don’t see it developing into another KOTH.
I didn’t watch it, but I’ve seen all the commercials for it. I’m curious what did they end up saying to the black guy? In the commercials they had the woman saying something like “you’re a neeeeee” but didn’t show the whole word. I’m just wondering if she said THE n-word or just negro.
I didn’t know anything about it, but recognized Mike Judge’s cartooning style right away and his voice about a third of the way through.
It definitely had a King of the Hill vibe. But it seems much too limited – the jokes on saving the environment are going to get stale pretty soon.
I thought it was much better than I had originally given it credit for. If something else had been on TV I probably wouldn’t have given it a chance, but I’m glad I did. I agree though, that it’s premise is limited.
I read one very bad review of it, but watched it anyway b/c of Mike Judge.
It had one joke that made me and the bf crack up. The wife is mad and the <mr van driessen voice> dad is trying to rub her shoulders and calm her down.
The Dad: Honey, The View is on and the pretty one is talking crazy.
I’ll try it again. It wasn’t great but most shows aren’t at first.
(I know, I know–it’s cool to be all ‘I liked it until ten minutes in, but then it jumped the shark!’ But I tend to try a show at least twice.)
The Horror…The Horror…
I thought it was terrible. Totally PC and wimpy.
Sheesh. This is what broadcast is turning to in lieu of reality TV?
Thanks. I’m turning my TV off.
She didn’t say either. She was extending the syllable to entice the black neighbor into telling her what he preferred to be called. She first said, “Neeee…,” then, “Afriiii…”, then one other thing I really can’t remember. She was trying to draw him out without making him feel unocmfortable.
I’ll give this this show a few episodes to hit its stride. I have faith in Mike Judge. And I liked hearing Brian Doyle-Murray in the show.
My favorite line was when Ubuntu wanted to learn to drive and Gerald (the dad) said, “With great emissions comes greater responsibility.”
Brian Doyle Murray was in the closing credits. He’s the wife’s father and was offering the son steaks and a ride in his giant SUV.
And I agree about the weak premise. It seems to me that it can only go so far but maybe now that they have the characters set up, they’ll take them in different directions and it will work.
And it wouldn’t hurt the show to have another good show after it. Wow did that Surviving the Suburbs suck-diddely-uck.
It wasn’t a complete waste of a half-hour. Some decent chuckles. I liked the bit about the dad “fixing” the 2-ply toilet paper… and “Sorry I used so much gas, Dad.”…“That’s OK, as long as you feel guilty about it.”
The question now is whether they can successfully expand on the 1-joke premise. We’ll see.
Regarding “Surviving Suburbia” afterward… I did kinda like Bob Saget in it, as a sort of Al Bundy Lite. But wow, what a terrible script. This deserves a quick mercy-killing.
The dog was the best part. I hope it gets better.
While I wasn’t on the ground laughing, it had some funny stuff and I think it has potential. First episodes of any series can be difficult to gauge. We’ll just have to see how it plays out for the next few episodes.
Er, puppies can look “pale”? And I thought they weren’t supposed to eat people food, let alone steal it. Sounds like your wife likes uppity dogs.
Neither Southern nor British, are ya? “Pale” means “suboptimal.” Dogs are omnivores (note: they get a lot of vegetable matter eating the digestive tracts of herbivores, besides the plants they eat on their own–have a dog I can barely keep away from the tomato plants, fr’instance). People are also omnivores, so our diets are, or should be, similar to that of dogs. Yeah, neither of us digests some of the things we recognize as food nearly as well when it’s raw, but that’s why Purina, just like KFC, cooks what it sells. The upshot is that one should feed ones dogs a diet as balanced as what one feeds his kids, and I had one dog so adept at climbing into my twins’ highchairs to steal their dinners that for a couple years I stopped giving her kibble and raised (and monitored better) the vittles of the kids to cover the shrinkage.
And, FTR, Wife will quickly put down “uppity,” but she indulges signs of intelligence.
I’ve liked everything Mike Judge has ever done, but this was disappointing to me. KOTH works because it’s grounded in reality. Hank is authentic. He’s conservative, but he’s not a stupid redneck. He’s basically a decent, solid, likeable and realistic person. Some of the supporting characters, like Dale, are caricatures, but Hank isn’t, and even the cultural jokes being done with characters like Dale and Cotton weren’t mean spirited and had some basis in reality.
The family in this show isn’t realsitic or believable at all. There’s no anchor similar to Hank to keep it grounded. It’s just a lot of straw liberals talking and acting like nobody really talks or acts. I think the dad on the show is basically Mr. Van Driesen from B&B the way Hank Hill was based on Mr. Anderson, but while Hank’s character was softened and made more realistic, the titular family in this show is still as farcical as the lead character’s progenator was on Beavis and Butt-Head.
I’ll give it a couple of more episodes, but isn’t grabbing me yet. What I saw last night was about as witty as an epsode of “Redeye” on Fox News. “Liberals don’t eat meat and are afraid of what to call black people, ho ho ho.”
I think it’s because Judge is, basically, conservative. Hank is heartfelt, and anybody who can relate OR accept a lead who has seriously coonsidered his beliefs, though they may disagree with ones own, can understand him. Gerald Good is not only outside the conservative, or middle, mainstream, he’s also outside the “mainstream” of the Left. Yeah, us Lefties, more than some right-wingers, we can laugh at ourselves, but he’s a cartoon, in a way that Hank Hill was usually not. I like Hank Hill. He would tell me I need to pay more attention to my lawn, but he’d be polite about it. Goode, and his family, are cartoons.
I watched part of the episode before getting really bored. I think the concept had some potential but the characters were so unbelievable annoying (I can’t stand hippies in real life so watching extreme caricatures of them was even worse). I’m just wondering how thin they can stretch the far-far-left-wing-personification premise if they plan on lasting more than a few episodes. I do love Mike Judge though…
I think they are trying to make the husband a bit more grounded at least, he is more accepting of his daughter’s absitnence decision, he isn’t all judgemental about the correct term for Ne-e-e-…Af-f-f-. The mother is really the annoying one, who is trying to be “good” because it is what is expected of her. I am not sure they are being very successful, to be honest, but the characters may flesh out better…or they may stay very cartoony.
I liked what I saw. I’ll give it another try.
Huh. I don’t have TV (I watch my stuff online) and never heard of the show before its mention here at the SDMB. But from the intial description my first thought is: does anyone know if there’s a connection between this and The Good Life, the BBC comedy series from the 1970s about a couple, Tom and Barbara Good, who decide to give up the rat race and live a self-sufficient existence – e.g. growing their own food, raising their own pigs/chickens/goat, and building/trading everything they need on their own – right in the middle of suburbia? (Probably my favorite sitcom of all time, btw. A very underrated gem. Known here in the US as Good Neighbors due to a conflict with an older existing show’s title.)
Probably there’s no connection, and by “connection” I mean “was Judge inspired by the BBC show?” But it just seems a funny coincidence that they’re using the surname “Good” as a pun in a story about green living.
Of course, in The Good Life, the sympathetic, funny, well-meaning but sometimes too bloodyminded Goods (played with incredible charm and humor by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall) were balanced out by their friends and next door neighbors, the ambitious, materialistic but generous and overall quite supportive Leadbetters (played by the brilliant Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington). No one was a strawman, and both sides were fairly well represented.