During Silicon Valley’s final season, HBO decided to extend its overall deal with the hit show’s creator, Mike Judge, by two years. This gave him plenty of time to crank out two new show ideas, A5 and Qualityland. Now, according to Deadline, the cabler has decided not to move forward with either of the projects, leaving them both up in the air.
Qualityland is an adaptation of Marc-Uwe Kling’s novel and is co-written by Judge and Emmy-winning writer Josh Lieb. Set some time in the near future, the show is vaguely described as “the story of humanity’s struggle against the tyranny of convenience. But funny.” A5, co-written alongside screenwriter Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder, Recess), follows a bioengineer who discovers the asshole gene and is determined to find the cure. Neither project had reached the casting stage and A5 was in early development, so there’s still a possibility that it could land somewhere else.
There’s no need to cry for Judge, a busy man who still has very important work ahead of him—specifically, two seasons of the Beavis & Butthead revival for Comedy Central. Judge will have his hands full writing, producing, and voicing the show’s two leads. Per TheWrap, he’s also overseeing the expansion of the franchise.
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Mike Judge could read the phonebook as Hank Hill and I’d be happy. But this is the greatest thing he ever did:https://youtu.be/Et3ky01YyqQThe original by Red Sovine for comparison:https://youtu.be/5zoTLwrm9QE
“Tyranny of Convenience” and “The Asshole Gene” are the two best band names of the day and they’re in one piece!
“The Asshole Gene” would be even better if the band was formed out of a grudge against a specific guy. “Here’s another song about how much Gene fucking sucks! 1 2 3 4!”
You mean like Megadeth?
“The Asshole Gene” would be even better if the band was formed out of a grudge against a specific guy. “Here’s another song about how much Gene fucking sucks! 1 2 3 4!”And that Gene would be Gene Simmons.
> > The Asshole Gene> And that Gene is Gene Simmons.Just put a backing beat behind autotuned clips of his Fresh Air interview.Whole thing will take 15 minutes to put together, and you’ll have a hit comparable to “Always Wear Sunscreen.”
Kinda like Better than Ezra?Ezra really did suck though.
…and yet less than Jake.
3rd wave ska fools represent.
I assumed The Asshole Gene was just a guy called Gene. And that wasn’t originally the name he chose for his act, it’s just how MCs insisted on introducing him, so he went with it to maintain the name recognition.
aren’t those both Ted Leo albums?
The world needs more Tales from the Tour Bus.
seconded! what a treat that show is.
I wouldn’t mind, but I found the 2nd season to be pretty underwhelming. Which was odd, because I think the subjects for the 2nd season were more interesting overall.
I felt the opposite but I’m a big fan of classic country so I’d heard a good many of the stories from the first season. If they do make another season I’d like to see him do early hip hop, maybe ending with Hammer. There’s got to be some wild stories about him.
That may have been my problem, as well. I was more familiar with Prince/Rick James/James Brown than the classic country artists, so I had higher expectations, but at the same time I had already heard a lot of their best/worst stories, so I ended up feeling a bit disappointed.
All I could think of while watching the first season was that one day I am going to cast Jim Carrey as George Jones.
Yes, I’ve thought the same and with deaging CGI he could play him for the whole movie. I’d make Carrey really grow the hair though.
There’s a wild story from back in the day about MC Hammer putting out a $50,000 contract to kill the group 3rd Bass because he misunderstood a diss as being against his mother.
You hear that Judge? People are doing your research for you!
Sauce:
For some reason I felt sadder for the Funk Tales than the Country Tales and didn’t laugh as much.
I’d prefer they revive King of the Hill rather than Beavis & Butthead. Though I never saw the last season of KotH, so maybe it ended satisfactorily.
The series finale was kind of sweet, with Hank and Bobby finally bonding over something. Also you find out what Boomhauer does for a living finally.But I could always use more KotH.
I remember the series finale being rather informal, like a regular episode that had a few ‘the series is over’ scenes tacked-on in the last two minutes.
I was thinking the other day about what a modern KotH would be like, especially if they aged the characters for the modern day. Would Luann and Lucky be killed-off, since both of their voice actors perished? Did Hank vote for Trump? What would Dale’s more traditional conspiracy-theory mindset be like in the wake of crazy right-wing theories? Is Bobby still not right?
There was that episode where he was conflicted about voting for Bush because he had a weak handshake— I think he’d fall into the never-Trumper camp… Or since the political window has skewed so far right nowadays, he’d be a Democrat like what happened with my formerly conservative parents.
Hank had a crisis over voting for Bush Jr. because of his weak handshake. There’s no way he’d put up with this nonsense:
from what we know of him, it seems like hank would be a lincoln project type voter who went romney-johnson-biden. he’s still a conservative, but refuses to support trump and the current GOP and recognizes that it’s a 2 party system.
Go with a sequel series. Bobby’s the 36-year-old lead character, Luanne’s got kids who are running around getting underfoot, Hank’s pushing 70, refusing to retire and increasingly reluctant to do any getting with any kind of times, etc. Right?
i’ve thought about this and think it’d be something like bobby returning from austin where he was a small time comic and part time teacher having to get a full time teaching job in arlen because he can’t support himself on his comedy. connie moved back home after having a break down trying to live up to her parent’s expectations, hank is manager of strickland propane and in control of the business. joseph is asst manager, not because of talent, but b/c his rep as a football star brings in customers (brought the team to state all 5 years he was in high school and they won 3 times). bill boomhaurer and dale have pretty much not changed at all. luann and lucky inherited the ranch in montana as peggy’s mom’s final fuck you to peggy. they live in montana and are never seen but implied to have a happy life. buck strickland is the governor of texas, one of those old fashioned good ol boy governors who are super corrupt, which is why hank’s in charge of the strickland empire (tho he doesn’t get any extra money).Peggy is the principal of tom landry middle school, but she’s constantly trying to glom onto the power around her and failing. She tried to get hired as an advisor to gov strickland and even lobbied to be made sec of education, but was ignored. strickland has blocked her number. she also ran for mayor once and got 2%.the basic plot is about bobby trying to navigate his adult relationships with his parents, and rekindling his relationships with joseph and connie and maybe seeing if it leads to more. with either, bobby is totes bi. All the while he’s trying to rebuild his life and career and grappling with his dreams of stardom against his slightly above average talent and the need for a normal day to day job.
No — he gets into alternative energy, including new sources of propane. Has a propane car.
How would you explain the absence of Luanne and Lucky?
A wizard
Huh, I was thinking like, Lucky get’s a big settlement and buys Luanne a salon in Huston or something.You may be on to something though….
Wait, Is Bobby the Wizard? ‘Cause I would watch the shit out of that.
they inherited the ranch in montana and are living there happily.
I’d like them to be happy somewhere, in any event
oh, that’s so sad.
A king of the hill revival would be a disaster. Worst idea imaginable
I recall the last few seasons having a few too many “Strawman Antagonist of the week introduces a cosmopolitan, big-city idea that creates problems only Hank can solve with Common Sense” episodes for my taste, but the character-focused episodes were still great (i.e., “Death Picks Cotton,” the episode where…well, the title’s pretty self-explanatory. Great scene with Cotton and Peggy where she finally tells him to his face that he was a miserable, hateful man who was a terrible father, and how she hopes he will live forever, “In the Hell you’ve created for yourself,” which Cotton responds to by dying – seemingly at-will and out of spite.)
Much of the later episodes are really, really not great because they follow this theory, forgetting character qualities from before (Luann got really dumb, Bobby got dumb and upopular and i dont think he every was that bad, Bill never got a single win, and Dale was so unlikable it was uncomfrotable)…I would love an updated, aged series-about 10 years. Sigh.
“Dale was so unlikable it was uncomfrotable”Given that frottage exists, that’s an uncomfortable typo . . . 😉
Yep. Super uncomfortable. (hey, I can spell) See, this is why you proofread. 🙂
I don’t think I want to do a search for that.
Yeah, the problem was that KotH really struggled with why was Hank the good guy as it got deeper because he wasn’t…He was just the least awful. Also, if they did it now Bobby would come out as non-binary and Hank would have to be rewritten as the pretty honest bigot he was, the kind of guy who didn’t necessarily vote Republican so long as the Dem in the race wasn’t supporting broader 3rd generation feminism or broader social equality for people (race is almost never addressed in KotH except regarding SE Asians so we can kind of feel like Hank is only casually racist).
Bless the Harts
This is my recollection too — it lost a step and relied too much on Hank being the only reasonable person, but it was still good and occasionally great. Death Picks Cotton is outstanding and the finale is really sweet, it resolves the most important relationship on the show (Bobby and Hank) perfectly.
That episode with Cotton has my absolute favorite joke in the whole series. Hank, in all of his humble earnestness, looks at the other guys and says, “There’s a lot we didn’t know about sheds 20 years ago.”
I’m a big fan of Bobby causing a spill in the garage and Hank’s reaction being “Dangit, Bobby, now people are going to see that oil stain and think I’m a drunk.”
Hurry up Peggy, gotta get to the swap meet before the tube sock guy sells out. . . .
“The Board of Zoning and Resources did this? Huh. I love their setback requirements.”
Yeah that was my problem with the later seasons too. In the beginning the show is skewering Hank’s uptight sensibilities while in later seasons he’s the sole voice of reason against whatever silly progressive idea is ruining things around Arlen. The show was always willing to poke fun at Hank while also suggesting his moral code is a good thing to have, if a bit old fashioned. Later seasons jettisoned this to position Hank as unfailingly correct.
yeah, i wouldn’t like to watch the episode where the moral is that yes, high school foot ball is dangerous, but it’s foot ball dammit. or yes racism exists, but you stand for the flag. or yes police brutality happens, but you unquestioningly support the police.
That’s the entire back half of KotH. People get very angry when you point it out. I love that show, but man, the last 5 or 6 seasons stop any real commentary on Hank. It’s always some cartoonish liberal shows up, people love him, Hank hates him, in the second act Hank starts to wonder if he’s wrong, and in the third act Hank is proven absolutely correct and his outlook on life is validated to all around him.The show was best when it didn’t validate anyone but Bobby.
honestly king of the hill works better as an old show. i want those characters to live blissfully in the 90s/early 00s forever.beavis and butthead, however, i think do lend themselves to whatever changes happen to the world. the 2011 revival was awesome.that being said i’m sure we’re 10 years away from a ‘bobby is grown up – AND ADDICTED TO PILLS’ show.
Are they going to comment on videos in this series.
Yeah but they’ll be tiktok videos.
“beavis and butthead, however, i think do lend themselves to whatever changes happen to the world.”Ain’t that the truth. The revival of them crapping on teen moms and other MTV shows ruled. Are they going to be watching YouTube now?
I have no idea what MTV does these days that Beavis & Butthead can riff on. Is it still all shitty reality shows all the time?
Apparently something like 75% of last week’s programming was re-runs of Ridiculousness. There was an article about it on here from sometime in the last week. Wonder if they’re going to be trashing CC instead since they’ve moved?
Ooooo, I missed the bit where it said it was going to be on Comedy Central now. Okay. No idea what they would riff on CC either come to think of it lol.
Yeah, can’t really riff on re-runs of South Park! Maybe Beavis & Butthead will learn about “The Porn Machine,” find a shitty, old laptop, and can make fun of porn parodies?
There was a great comic a few years ago where Bobby is a therapist for all of the then grown up kids from old cartoon shows. They had all basically turned into trainwrecks because of abusive fathers. At the end he called Hank and told him he was a great dad. I teared up quite a bit.
KOTH was okay. I wouldn’t complain about it coming back because I can do a dead on Hank Hill impersonation. It was a dead on Tom Anderson first.
I literally just finished rewatching all of KotH. I appreciated the way the show brought resolution to Hank and Kanh’s tumultuous relationship. I think the show’s best seasons were probably in the middle, like 3-8, and not every take (there are some iffy gender jokes) has aged well, but it stayed mostly quality throughout.
Go with a sequel series. Bobby’s the 36-year-old lead character, Luanne’s got kids who are running around getting underfoot, Hank’s pushing 70, refusing to retire and increasingly reluctant to do any getting with any kind of times, etc. Right?
Bless the Harts hit my King of the Hill itch better than anything else since then. Check it out.
Never heard of it… Thanks for the recommendation!
I remember the episode where Hank met GW Bush, and was so disappointed at his weak handshake, he decided not to vote. Makes me a little curious what he thinks of Trumpism.
It did end well.
But if were to come back it would have been great see a few years ago during the Trump era. Dale as a flat earther, Q-anon advocate. Hank finding Trump and twitter asinine that would have been great.
i imagine dale finding Q to be trite and getting jealous that no one cares about his alien conspiracies anymore. either that or he is Q.
That’s brilliant
I dig that. Dale in a fit of jealously writes down all his most crazy ideas and then accidently posts them on the dark web and becomes Q. Hank tries to help him by suggesting he just posts more and more crazy shit because his fundamental faith in humanity makes him think everyone will realize it’s asinine BS. But they do not.
Mike Judge if your reading this hit me and Max Powers up, we got this.
It’s oddly refreshing to read about a show not being picked up based solely on business/creative reasons, not because somebody was a creep in his or her personal life. Go, Mike Judge, Go!
It’s oddly refreshing to read about a show not being picked up based
solely on business/creative reasons, not because somebody was a creep in
his or her personal life. Go, Mike Judge, Go!I know people who worked on King of the Hill back in the day and none of them had a bad word to say about him. They said that he was pretty down to earth and would actually talk to the artists when he visited.
Judge is about the least “Hollywood” person imaginable. He gives off an awe struck and slightly skeptical vibe of not quite believing how successful he has become. You won’t see him at Hollywood parties because he would rather spend his time surfing with Kelly Slater(!)
I have to admit, my first thought was “oh no, what did Mike Judge do?!?” Which sucked, because finding out that he did/said/was/is something terrible would be a surprise based on everything I’ve ever heard about him. I’m glad it wasn’t that.
Totally agreed! haha. I saw the headline and my heart sank because he’s always seemed like such a decent and creative guy which is so rare. Men tend to abuse the shit out of authority and I hoped he was an exception. He’s still holding strong!
Alice Wetterlund, who played goth hacker Carla on Silicon Valley still mentioned a toxic work environment on the set, with most of the cast and crew enabling TJ Miller.https://www.bustle.com/p/silicon-valley-actor-alice-wetterlund-accuses-tj-miller-of-being-a-bully-claims-powerful-men-enabled-him-9806558Two days ago, she repeated the accusations, naming Mike Judge and Alec Berg as people “who treated [her] like dogwater”.
HBO originally signed onto A5 because they thought it was being written by one of the Coen Brothers.
Nice.
Bill Murray was attached to star.
this certainly does not seem to be based on a scandal, given that the toxic atmosphere of Silicon Valley was outed before HBO signed on for these
Was there any outside of TJ Miller? I hadn’t heard otherwise.
I agree with this article, it wasn’t just TJ Miller, Monica was a prop and the show quickly rounded the corner from “reflecting” to “perpetuating”http://www.femestella.com/silicon-valley-season-6-sexism/
I always wondered why they didn’t give Amanda Crew more to do. She’s a spectacular actress, as evidenced by her hilarious turn in Sex Drive, which is much better than it has any business being. With the right agent, she could be the next Paget Brewster.
They had no idea what to do with her. It seems like they hired her to bang Richard, then they at least realized that was lame, then they were like “I guess we have to make her good at her job?” but they never came close to having anybody who could give her a voice or make her some kind of counterpart to Richard with a different kind of intelligence. Writing failure.
She wasn’t meant to be a direct counterpart to Richard, but rather a counterpoint to the other Venture Capitalists on the show (Gavin, PEter, Russ, Laurie)–she was the recognizably human (and therefore relatable) version of this wretched crew. (And ‘good at her job’ was part of her character profile from the start.) In which case she’s kind of a parallel to Richard, the humanized techbro. Which is to say, I’ve never seen complaints about Monica’s character as anything but people trying to score cheap representation points off of a show that is (like the real Silicon Valley) going to tilt towards its major characters, and such complaints necessarily overlook the importance of her role.
Or you are reading those complaints in a biased manner because of your inaccurate preconceptions and the character is thinly-conceived and poorly written. You know, pick ‘em. Was she “recognizably human” just because she was not awful? Because she was never given an inner life, and much of the point is that she was never a major character like Zach Woods’ character was despite being in about the same number of episodes. You are both saying that she is not a major character and that her role is important, so…you know, pick ‘em, bro-bro.
OK then. I’m just going to ask you to think about your concluding warrant that a character can only be ‘important’ if they are ‘major’, and I’ll go about my day
sounds to me like the importance of her role was giving the writers cover and giving you cover to say they addressed things they didn’t, always an important role
Mike Judge is not great at creating female characters. “Daria” is a good example of meddling executives shoe-horning a completely off-model character into a world just to tone down the very elements that made “Beavis & Butthead” great in the first place.
Thank you, HBO. We shouldn’t be trying to cure the asshole gene. Those things are useful! I use mine every day, as a matter of fact.
Wait are we actually calling cable channels “cablers” now? I thought that was just Variety being weird.
Sez you!
Marvel would like a word.
Bummer. Skipping two new things in favor of rehashing an old thing. I absolutely would have watched a5 and qualityland, and there’s no way I’m watching a b&b retread.But I’m probably in the minority.
I’m kinda relieved these are just “regular” cancelations. I clicked through kinda worried that Judge had exposed himself as a sexual predator and/or racist dick.
Qualityland sounds like a prequel to Idiocracy.
HBO is in hell right now, they can barely find a thing that works and GOT’s disaster ruined them for a decade-plus. Maybe the movies can fix it? Who knows. I’m sad we won’t get more awesome MJ projects, that sucks. Comedy was the only thing HBO was doing right. They’re basically a giant tentacle monster flailing on fire right now, screaming at the top of its lungs to, “sUbScRIbE hBo mAX!”
Uh… might just be me, but they still seem to be doing pretty well overall. Succession, Euphoria, I May destroy You, and miniseries like Watchmen have been successful even after people were disappointed by GoT.
HBO really is in a downward creative spiral. It feels like their post-GoT strategy was ‘become Netflix, but with a bigger budget’, but they’ve invested in interminably slow-paced dour star-driven series and mediocre documentary series, and they seem to have abandoned creating the kind of serious tentpole series that made their reputation (once Succession is gone, it’s over.) When HBO no longer has the financial advantage that Netflix has it’s going to be horrifying.
read: ‘when HBO no longer has a financial advantage over Netflix…’ and this makes sense
I think you’re selling them pretty short. Succession, Euphoria, I May Destroy You, Barry, Lovecraft Country, Watchmen are all quality shows that emerged post Thrones.If you want to raise the alarm for anyone it should be the little brother paid cable networks of Showtime, Cinemax and Starz who every year at best have a small blip that quickly fades away as they become more and more disposable.
Oh shoot. I completely forgot about Barry. So good.
If anything, I’d have thought they’re in kind of a mini-renaissance at the moment, at least in terms of critical acclaim. They’re not where they were in the mid-00s golden age, but they’re doing much better than they have been in some periods since then.
That was all pre-HboMAX though. I think those might end up being some of the last of the traditionally good HBO shows, and going forward we’ll have a lot more shows chosen for quick, broad appeal vs the quality of the content.
Judge’s forte is characters more than plotting. “Tales From the Tour Bus” was such a great vehicle for him to focus on (real) characters who didn’t have to eventually get all warm and fuzzy to carry an entire season of episodes.
SPOILER: The cure for the asshole gene is a knuckle sandwich.
Those both sound really fun and interesting. I hope they manage to find a home somewhere. I’d love to see how they turn out.
It seems like Mike Judge thinks that Aldous Huxley was more on the money than George Orwell (I tend to agree). I wonder if he’s a Neil Postman fan?
It’s not like he has a proven track record. beavis and butthead, king of the hill, office space, idiocracy, silicon valley. Apart from Extract (whose biggest crime is that it’s just mediocre), pretty much everything he’s produced is somewhere between near- legendary and actually legendary.Hell of a fucking batting average he’s got going there.
The problem, of course, is that it takes about a year for most people to recognize a Judge show as ‘legendary’. And this isn’t a bad thing–I think it speaks to his craft–but I can see it being a challenge when he’s trying to pitch/produce things these days
You’re not wrong at all… But you’d think with his history of success there’d be a line of producers with bags of cash and leaps off faith. And also, it’s not like anything he makes costs tons to produce. No big special effects, mostly lower tier or unknown actors (I can’t speak for the animation… B&B was always pretty crude and mtv is notoriously cheap; king of the hill was probably one of his more expensive projects, but i can’t imagine it cost that much considering the length of its run).
You’ll need to add “Tales from the Tour Bus” to that list, and if you haven’t watched it, do you eyeballs and ears a favor and do so.
Tales from the Tour Bus is also fun
That’s too bad! I love Mike Judge’s stuff. I was really looking forward to whatever his next live action thing was.
https://www.salon.com/2013/05/23/mike_judd_talks_gun_control_with_alex_jones/