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Goode Family Not Great

A few good jokes, but show's aim seems off

By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff

Posted May 27, 2009 9:02 AM CDT

(Newser) The Goode Family, an animated series about an eco-obsessed, passionately politically correct family that airs tonight on ABC, is fairly funny, but leaves reviewers scratching their heads:

  • It “feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s,” writes Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times. "Who really thinks of wind power—an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show—as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?"

  • “It's not quite clear whether we're supposed to regard the Goodes as deluded or as just too hard on themselves,” notes Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times. The show “works best when the cultural potshots give way to the more basic human needs of its characters.”
  • Still, The Goode Family “does contain a few sharply observed jokes about the socially, environmentally and politically correct lives of its characters,” observes Rick Porter in Zap2It. “But just as the Goodes grow weary of always having to calculate the right choices, the show can wear thin, too.”

Mike Judge, executive producer of the ABC comedy series The Goode Family, participates in a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour  in Los Angeles, Friday, Jan. 16, 2009.
Mike Judge, executive producer of the ABC comedy series "The Goode Family," participates in a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Los Angeles, Friday, Jan. 16,...   (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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A first look at the show.   (TubedOutNow)

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