It's So Hard to Be Good! John Altschuler, Executive Producer of The Goode Family

TreeHugger: The Goode Family is an interesting juxtaposition to King of the Hill, which focuses around this red-meat-eating, Southern, NASCAR family. Is the Goode family the flip side to the family in King of the Hill?

Altschuler: Exactly. You know what's interesting, some people have written a few criticisms like, "Oh, this is just a flip side of 'King of the Hill.'" And we're like, "Yeah, that's exactly what we wanted to do."

We've spent twelve years, thirteen seasons, dealing with your description of that Texas family, and one thing that we loved about King of the Hill is that we never tried to mock the conservative white Southerner. But we would make fun because it's a world that we knew.

We wanted to bring that to the new rising family, the eco-conscious, green family, and treat it the same way. I think what's encouraging when I check in on Twitter and Facebook is that people really do seem to understand that it's not mocking, it's just making fun.

TreeHugger: But that said, John, there's definitely been some political brouhaha around this show with conservatives reading it one way and liberals reading it another. You wrote on the Huffington Post recently about the issue of taking sides. So whose side are you on?

Altschuler: You know, I swear this is not a cop-out. We're on the side of comedy. One of the things that's so sad, when I grew up it was all about comedy. Comedy was about taking on the social order. That's what you do. You make fun of the institutions. You make fun of the power structure. And the saddest thing to me is that comedy has rolled over and has decided that they need to pick sides.

I was talking to one of the creators of South Park and he said, 'Yeah, it's frustrating. They always ask what side are you on when you make fun of anything except for Christian, right-wing, Republican."

If you veer your lens off of that, people in our business get upset, and it's such a tragedy because we live in very funny times and you just need to look at it and enjoy it.

TreeHugger: So is that a double standard, that you can make fun of conservative Americans, but once you put the lens on the liberal, upper-middle class do-gooders, you get all this backlash?

Altschuler: I do believe it's a double standard. What is nice is that the fans out there get it. But when we first came out it was almost a joke; we got these scathing reviews from the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR.

The San Francisco Chronicle was all happy when we were making fun and observing Republican, white Texans, but when we then turn the lens on ourselves looking at our lives, it sort of flipped them out.