If Mike Judge can’t be a success on the big screen, he’ll just go back to the small one and make a ton of money for whatever network is lucky enough to have him. And while King of the Hill enjoys its twelfth season on Fox, ABC will has wisely elected to hook up with Judge for a thirteen-episode order of his latest animated comedy, The Goode Family.
I‘m wary of taking Variety‘s word on anything (they’ve apparently laid off their fact checkers), but I’m pretty sure they’re correct in stating that The Goode Family will be ABC’s first animated series since Kevin Smith’s Clerks. Hopefully, they treat Judge’s show better than they did Smith’s. There isn’t much out there in the way of details on Goode; all we know thus far is that the show centers on a family of do-gooders “that tries to do the right thing in all facets of life”. Sounds like a scenario ripe for sociopolitical satire. And, if handled poorly by ABC, something that should be canceled within four episodes.
Judge is teaming with the ubiquitous Media Rights Capital (MRC) and two of his executive producers from King of the Hill, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. MRC signed one of those handy interim agreements with the WGA, so scripts for The Goode Family are already being written. The company is also prepping a half-hour sitcom for David Koechner, which makes me very happy (even though I just saw him completely wasted in yet another studio comedy this evening).
For Judge’s sake, I hope The Goode Family is yet another small screen success. Anything that gets his confidence back up for another stab at the movie business. And if all else fails, he can always fall back on inducing farts out of Wee Man.
7 comments
I loved Office Space and Idiocracy. I hope he finds a studio that is willing to take a chance and give him full creative control and a decent budget. His movies have legs on DVD and cable, and he should get the chance to keep making them.
And then there is God, the Devil and Bob..but that was NBC right?
As a devoted Kevin Smith Bot, even I thought the Clerks series was a bit lacking.
Oh man, I'm going to have to disagree with you Steve F. Clerks Animated was FULL of win.
The Clerks animated show, once it got going, was very funny. ABC just did not give it a chance. If you watch all the episodes on DVD, you would see that it did eventually pick up legs.
As for Mike Judge's movies — the problem is that major mainstream studios don't get his sense of humor or don't see how his films can be funny to an audience. Fox's attempts to bury "Idiocracy" failed precisely because of their attempts to bury it. It gained a bigger audience because of the publicity surrounding how Fox wouldn't release it to theaters.
Clerks Animated is probably the best thing Kevin Smith ever did. Certainly the most coherent (even when it was intentionally incoherent).
Well played, clerks, well played… Actually, I thought "The Goode Family" was already on Adult Swim, just under the name "Moral Orel".
wasn't duckman and the clerk on NBC?
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