King of the Hill

Last night I plowed into the new season of King of the Hill, which revisits Arlen after Hank and Peggy’s fifteen year absence selling propane and propane accessories for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia. My general feeling about these kinds of efforts is that they’re a waste of time; it’s very difficult to recapture the magic of the original because both the people and the vibes have moved on. Perhaps because King of the Hill was such an odd duck of a series in the first place, and perhaps because Mike Judge has just about the most subtle and nuanced understanding of American life of anyone in the business today, this one works.

 King of the Hill has always drawn its essence from Hank’s sense of being out of step with the times, and this belated 14th season’s premiere leans into the broadest version of that dynamic to reestablish its premise. In the first of the ten episodes dropping on August 4, we catch up with a newly retired Hank and Peggy returning from an extended stint in Saudi Arabia, where our ever-loyal propane advocate had been working for Aramco while living in an Americana-styled company town seemingly preserved in time. This is the show’s slightly absurd meta-explanation for its long hiatus and the Hills’ disorientation when they come home to a Texas now transformed by Ring cameras, smartphones, and the gig economy. (Not that such things aren’t available in Saudi Arabia. I wouldn’t worry about it.) Hank is perturbed by the passive-aggressive mechanics of the two-way ride-share rating system and baffled when he encounters a gender-neutral restroom: “Are we all-gender?” he asks Peggy.

These fish-out-of-water gags tap into the same sensibility that once led some viewers, along with plenty of people who never actually watched the show, to mistake King of the Hill for some right-wing send-up of liberal excess. To be fair, it’s kind of a strange time to return to Arlen. The show’s original run ended right on the edge of a rapid cultural shift: three years after the iPhone, two years before Twitter became widespread, and five years before Donald Trump descended the escalators at Trump Tower. In that context, revisiting a grounded animated sitcom about small-town Texans carries extra charge and weight. A character like Dale Gribble, for example, paranoid and conspiracy-theory-addled, just hits a little differently in an age shaped by QAnon, viral misinformation, and Epstein brain.

But the show was always more nuanced and subversive than it appears at first glance. Its comedy is observational rather than overtly satirical, far less biting than other Judge creations like Idiocracy and Silicon Valley. Unusually slice-of-life for a network cartoon, the original series presented Hank, a Reagan-adoring small-c conservative, as neither exemplar nor punch line. Same goes with the rest of Arlen, a textured and quietly diverse ecosystem of suburbanites, oddballs, immigrants, and whatever sad-sack category Bill Dauterive fits into. King of the Hill clearly enjoys poking fun at Hank and the people of Arlen, but it avoids making them the butt of the joke, and while Hank may often do the right thing, it’s not because the show insists on his worldview being unimpeachable. He’s just someone trying, as best he can, to be a decent person.

King of the Hill was never my favorite among the Sunday night animated shows, but it had an admirable degree of consistency because it held to the view that everyone, literally EVERYONE, has an interesting story and is deserving of a modicum of dignity in telling that story. The time jump gives King of the Hill the opportunity to score some cheap laughs off of Hank’s befuddlement (although it has always been such) but also allows Bobby, Boomhauer, and some of the other characters to stretch their legs. Bobby’s arc as a chef is particularly well drawn. It probably doesn’t hurt that I’ve known folks who’ve gone and worked in Saudi Arabia (and other places) for extended periods of time, with all of the requisite cultural repositioning when they get home. If I have one quibble, it’s that the Zoomer need (which I have now fully become acculturated within) to watch everything with subtitles kind of ruins Boomhauer.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something to watch, check it out. See also this list of older King of the Hill eps that are worth watching in anticipation of or in lieu of the revival.