NYT Review: "The Goode Family" Is Exceptionally Funny, But You Shouldn't Watch It

Huh?

Readers are pointing out this John Nolte review-of-the-review at Big Hollywood.

The reviewer sneers that this is all passe and old-hat, despite the fact that, um, I am aware of only one other show in the history of television to routinely target liberals for parody.

It's old-hat after a single other series did it? Really? For some strange reason I think the NYT reviewer might have somewhat less appreciation for the jokes than most people would. She seems to be the sort of person who will allow that one single joke about liberals is funny -- like "Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" A: "That's not funny!" -- and that joke, having now been told, exhausts the creative potential of the genre.

Since that joke obviously can't be topped, there's no use even trying. Time to try out a less-explored area of comedy with still-robust potential, like... say, how about making fun of conservatives? That's a fresh new idea that ought to finally be given a chance.

As MoveOn.org always tells us: It's time to move on.

Oddly though, after instructing us how dated this is (and objecting to the lunacy that anyone would doubt Global Warming now, today, in this period of ten-year global cooling), she admits...

The voice of the patriarch, Gerald Goode, an administrator at a community college where even students qualify for tenure, is provided by Mr. Judge, who could not have improved on his tone of narcoleptic earnestness if he had apprenticed for “All Things Considered.” He is exceptionally funny in the role (as he was playing Hank in “King of the Hill”), and a lot of the writing is too.

By the way, I made a joke about "moving on," liberals' go-to mantra whenever an issue comes up they'd prefer not to discuss. I wrote that before I read the end of the actual article:

But the show feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s, when it was possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed. Who really thinks of wind power — an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show — as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?

Mr. Judge, who remains obsessed with the absurdities 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 grab your cup of free-trade coffee and move on.

Huh. How on earth did I foresee that. I must be psychic or somethin'.

Hmm. 1, it apparently pisses off the New York Times, but 2, is yet funny enough that she is forced to concede this.

Well, okay. I've got nothing to do tonight anyhow.

posted by Ace at 02:17 PM

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