It looks like The Goode Family and Surviving Suburbia won't be surviving. ABC confirmed that Friday night's airings of both episodes season finales are in fact their respective series finales. I've sampled both series at one point or another in their runs, and this fate was inevitable.It was great seeing the "other" Bob Saget get some TV time, but Surviving Suburbia just wasn't good television. Maybe if you're a television fan who's never seen a family sitcom, then the formulaic plotlines and dialogue won't bother you. In a way, I had the same problem with The Goode Family.
However, with the latter, it seemed like they had the potential to grow into something better. I think in the beginning they were too bogged down by their schtick: a family of do-gooders, recycling and living green and all of that crap.
It would have been interesting if ABC had stuck with the show and maybe considered a counter-programming of animation against FOX's Seth MacFarlane heavy Sunday. Other than FOX, no one has really pulled off prime-time animation in the past 20 years, but now might be a good time to give it a try. There are plenty of people who seem to dislike what MacFarlane does, and FOX is devoting one-and-a-half hours to him this fall. What better time to give those fans of animation something different to consider.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-09-2009 @ 1:23PM
windem said...
Bob Saget is a comedian?
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8-09-2009 @ 1:48PM
Darsh said...
If this is true, it is very upsetting news. I was enjoying The Goode Family more and more every week. I understood they had to introduce the family stereotypically in the first few episodes, but the characters were getting deeper each episode. Side characters are being introduced as well and the audience was getting to learn more about them. It was getting to the point where an episode could be focused around a side character, a la King of the Hill or the Simpsons.
Bottom line, Mike Judge's humor needs to be on TV.
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8-09-2009 @ 2:09PM
tunaman said...
"Bob Saget is a comedian?"
Yes, and his stand-up stuff is some of the nastiest, filthiest stuff you've ever heard. Saget could make Eddie Murphy, Redd Foxx or Martin Lawrence blush.
That's actually what makes a lot of his TV work so amusing: it was actually funny seeing him on AFHV, doing grandparent-friendly humor, when you KNOW that his stand-up stuff would give your grandma a heart attack!
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8-09-2009 @ 7:11PM
Joshed said...
Damn! Goode Family was just getting Goode!
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8-09-2009 @ 8:08PM
Michael said...
RIP, Goode Family! :-(
It was one of the shows I looked forward to seeing recorded on my DVR.
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8-10-2009 @ 2:21AM
fuhughes said...
lucky no one cares what jason hughes thinks. macfarlane is a genius.
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8-10-2009 @ 2:43AM
Matt said...
I missed episode 13, the "series finale," because ABC aired it on the same day as episode 12, which I didn't think they'd do. I thought it'd play next week. So I'm upset. Don't have DVR. The first season of Goode Family was not hilarious, but it did make me like the characters, and I think future seasons could be very funny. I agree with this article.
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8-10-2009 @ 3:04AM
bruce said...
Yeah I was just getting into the Goode Family. I'm not saying it's a fantastic show, but it had a lot of potential (if KOTH could go 54 seasons, then surely this show had a dozen or so in it). ABC should have given it a chance to grow. The other night's episode, with the prisoners and road cleanup, was quite funny.
I still think the show needs a good antagonist. Move Dale Gribble in next door. The grandfather is not enough. I figured they'd have a right-wing teabagger with a "W" bumpersticker on his car living next door to the Goodes. Of course, the networks and the multinational companies that own them don't want to offend anyone, and since the American people are so easily offended, it means you cannot even so much as make a statement about anyone's politics (saying something as straightforward as "catholics tend to oppose abortion" is controversial, bigoted, and ignorant, or so the flood of angry letters will claim). This fact was going to be something a show like The Goode Family would always be working against, and it would always hold it back. They can't make any normative statement about the Goode's politics. Even so, I thought the show was pretty funny.
So now it will be replaced by some asinine, cheap reality show. Tune in for the exciting hit series "In the Closet" - where a real family spends a month living in their house-size closet, and the shenanigans fly!
... or something like that. Shoot me now.
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