It really does. It was based off of Mike Judge’s experiences living in Texas.
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I expected a show taking cheap shots at hicks, but it was obvious that Mike Judge was deeply familiar with Texas / suburban families and had a lot of affection for these characters and the local culture. It’s interesting comparing it with his other family cartoon sitcom on the other end of the cultural spectrum, The Goode Family – it’s just as obvious how much he loathes hippies/liberals and how little he actually understands or knows about them as real people. (Plus it simply wasn’t funny.)
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I’ve been tempted to watch The Goode Family just so I could personally see if the unfunniness lives up to the hype
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That scenario actually makes sense and I’m glad it worked out for everyone. But in a major metropolitan city? Not so much. (And I’m done wasting my energy on the New Girl).
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It made sense, but was also totally sexist. The new principal’s own wife worked at the school, and had more than five years’ teaching experience over him.
He says the night he got the offer, he ranted about how sexist it was (he was the only male teacher at the school), and asked his wife what he should do.
She told him to take it.
He asked how he was gong to handle it with his own lack of experience, and she promised to help him. Which she did.
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I was in eastie the other day, and my GPS tried to route me onto 1A to the airport. It said I should go left, but since it did’t ALSO say go 30 feet straight down… I was unable to comply. I seriously had to guess my way out of Eastie, it kept trying to get me to take U turns and get on the underground highway!
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I’ve just enjoyed the first series of Hap and Leonard on Amazon. It’s based on the books of Joe R Lansdale and it’s really been a blast to watch.
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I watched it on Netflix a few months ago. Yeah, lots of fun. Apparently Season 2 is coming out next March.
Season 2 is out already, at least on Amazon. I think it was March/April.
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IIRC Judge is a good pal with far right scumbag Gavin McInnes and some of the other Libertarian (The “angry at their mom” types and and not the “I hate taxes!” types) babymen that crawled out of 90s pop culture. That he created a show for broflakes isn’t surprising.
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Yeah.
It’s too bad, because King of the Hill had some strong bits, and Office Space is an underground classic.
But then.
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KOTH worked because everyone was an utter moron. But they were sympathetic utter morons and were portrayed with compassion.
Beavis & Butthead, and I’d say Office Space as well, worked because they really tapped into what made Gen X tick at the time. The characters were identifiable even though they were far from sympathetic. B&B were latchkey kids raised on TV and OS was about discovering that the system is stacked against you.
This Goode Family.… I’ve never watched it and the copyright owner in the above link has blocked in here in South Korea. And I don’t give enough of a shit to track it down. But the Google shows me nothing identifiable nor sympathetic in the characters or situation. It reads like someone animated the more idiotic parts of Reddit.
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ironically, animated gifs are the best part of reddit
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Having watched several episodes back when it was on – I was very hopeful it’d be a gentle, playful ribbing of liberals and as sympathetic as KotH – it felt more like Mike Judge spent a week hanging out at Whole Foods, juice bars, and raw food restaurants, wrote down the most lefty-liberal-hippie things he heard, and made a show about how he imagined those peoples lives would be like. There’s some clever funny stuff there, but it’s not sympathetic. The characters are so ridiculously well meaning that they inevitably cause pain and destruction to everyone around them. It’s the opposite of compassion.
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i feel King of the Hill took the lessons of The Simpsons and translated it to Texas: on the surface it’s a cast of hilarious, simple people, but every so often he would blindside you with some deep, touching moment or heartbreaking character development. over the course of the series, you really came to love all the characters for different reasons, even though it’s just an animated show.
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But not Cotton.
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well, even though he was abusive and rude, you had to feel sorry for him sometimes, even if you had to howl at what a dick he was.
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Yea, I’ve got empathy for Cotton, because his life was so hard. But, that doesn’t mean I’d want to be around him. I’ll be over here drinking beer with Dale, because I love crazy ass conspiracy theories.
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yeah, i wouldn’t want to hang with Cotton for any length of time. i think i’d prefer beers with Hank, Bill, or Peggy. and yeah, Dale’s conspiracy theories would be a hoot to hear him expound on.
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Obligatory XKCD:
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