It's honestly a pretty big deal to expose a lot of Americans to the concept like they did in the show. Regardless how what kind of mental gymnastics people will do, many people in small towns watching this show probably saw a familiar sense of community there and then wondered if they were communist themselves. The scene in the show is going to bring up semantic arguments (which conservatives revel in) and they will have to explain away why it isn't really communism or why it wont work on larger scale.

The single greatest way to get through to the average conservative is to destroy their sense of identity, and it is easier than it sounds. Simply telling them that you hate liberals too can suddenly detach a lot of their rehearsed defensiveness and talking points. If you show them things are not what they think they are, they become more open.