The Mike Judge Retrospective
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Liquid Television: Frog Baseball
In the early ‘90s, MTV was a lot more experimental with its programming than it is now. There were actually animated shows on the network!
The animated anthology series, “Liquid Television’ series marked the first appearance of “Aeon Flux.” It also introduced Mike Judge’s signature creations: Beavis and Butt-Head in a short titled “Frog Baseball.”
The response to Beavis and Butt-Head’s hilariously violent antics quickly led to bigger and better things.
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Beavis and Butt-Head
Spinning out of “Liquid Television,” “Beavis and Butt-Head” ran for seven seasons and quickly became THE franchise for MTV. This show was "South Park" before there was a "South Park," as Judge wrote and voiced the animated adventures of two idiots in stories that satirized popular culture and even MTV itself!
Among the many brilliant comedic touches, Beavis and Butt-Head offered their own commentary on MTV’s videos during the short breaks between story segments.
There was nothing quite like Beavis and Butt-Head. But all things eventually come to an end.
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Beavis and Butt-head Do America
As “Beavis and Butt-Head” was near the end of its first life, Judge directed an animated feature, Beavis and Butt-head Do America that became a modest hit at the box office.
Of course, Judge reprised his roles as America’s favorite idiots and most of their hapless supporting cast. But Judge also landed Demi Moore, Bruce Willis and Robert Stack in supporting roles. Stack is particularly funny as an ATF agent who is obsessed with body cavity searches.
After this movie and the end of their TV series, Beavis and Butt-Head went away for a long time.
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King of the Hill
Believe it or not, “Beavis and Butt-Head” is not Judge’s most successful TV series. That honor belongs to “King of The Hill,” an animated comedy that Judge co-created for Fox in 1997.
The series revolved around Hank Hill (Judge) and his family and friends in their small town of Arlen, Texas. After a 13 season run, “King of The Hill” was one of Fox’s longest running shows when it came to an end in 2009.
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Office Space
Office Space was Judge’s first major jump into live action... and it wasn’t initially successful.
For his comedic tale of angry and underappreciated office workers, Judge assembled a very talented cast including Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu and Diedrich Bader; with Gary Cole as the boss everyone loved to hate.
Office Space didn’t find much of an audience in theaters, but it quickly achieved cult status when it hit TV and when it was released on home video. This is arguably Judge’s most well known project outside of animation. And its influence can still be felt in “Silicon Valley."
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Idiocracy
Judge’s second live action feature as a writer and a director faced even greater hurdles.
Idiocracy was held back from its initial release date in 2005 when test audiences didn’t respond to its darkly comedic story that found present day everyman Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) stuck in a future where he was the smartest man alive... compared to everyone else.
When Idiocracy was eventually released in 2006, it bombed hard in limited release. In all fairness, Idiocracy didn’t get much support from Fox or a wide release.
However, Idiocracy has followed in Office Space’s footsteps and gained a small cult following of its own.
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The Goode Family
Mike Judge’s third animated series, “The Goode Family,” was his first TV show that wasn’t embraced by audiences at large. Although the ABC of 2009 may not have been the right home for a show about a multi-cultural family that was obsessed with environmentally responsible.
Even a move to Comedy Central couldn’t save “The Goode Family” from low ratings and it was canceled after only 13 episodes.
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Extract
For his third live action feature film, Extract, Judge cast “Arrested Development” star Jason Bateman as Joel Reynolds, the owner of an flavoring-extract company whose livelihood is threatened when a grifter named Cindy (Mila Kunis) begins manipulating Joel and the people around him in hopes of a big score.
Audience support for Extract was not great, despite the presence of Bateman, Kunis and their co-stars Kristen Wiig, Dustin Milligan, J. K. Simmons, and Ben Affleck. Extract did manage to make a small profit at the box office. However, it has not garnered the cult following Judge's two previous films.
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Beavis and Butt-Head (2011)
To the surprise of many, Judge returned to MTV for a new season of “Beavis and Butt-Head” in 2011. And Judge’s idiotic cartoon alter-egos hadn’t changed a bit in the 13 years between seasons.
By the time that “Beavis and Butt-Head” came back to MTV, it wasn’t a network that showed many music videos. So Judge reworked the format so that his titular duo offered commentary about MTV’s “Teen Mom” and “Jersey Shore.”
The result was comedy gold.
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Silicon Valley
Welcome to the present.
Judge’s current HBO series revisits his time as an unhappy programmer in Silicon Valley. But this time, Judge has the stage on one of the biggest players in original cable programming.
“Silicon Valley” follows four programmers, Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch), Big Head (Josh Brener), Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) as they stumble upon a discovery that could make them all rich and transform the computer industry as we know it.
The late Christopher Evan Welch also has what would have been a star making turn in the first season as Peter Gregory, the strangest character on this show.
“Silicon Valley” debuted to a respectable 2 million viewers last Sunday, but it’s too soon to call this series a hit.
However, HBO could prove to be the best home for Judge’s comedic vision since his early days at MTV.
