[Editor’s note: This interview contains minor spoilers for Season 14 of “King of the Hill.”]
For nearly 15 years, “King of the Hill” was probably the most reliably humorous and persistently comforting reveals on community tv. Mike Decide and Greg Daniels’ animated sitcom managed a tough balancing act: Its protagonist, the old school traditionalist Republican Hank Hill (Mike Decide), maintained politics old-fashioned with a altering tradition, and with views usually extra conservative than most of the writers on the present’s workers.
However the collection additionally admired Hank’s constructive attributes — his work ethic, his basic decency — by no means decreasing him to a one-note stereotype. In some ways, the present had its cake and ate it, too. It was a evenly satirical portrait of conservative America that conservative viewers themselves may take pleasure in, a collection that handled its characters — from the strait-laced Hank to the conspiracy-theory-spouting Dale Gribble (Johnny Hardwick) — as each objects of laughter and endearingly lovable regardless of their flaws.
Now, after getting canceled unceremoniously in 2014 to make room for a “Household Man” spinoff, “King of the Hill” has been resurrected for streaming, with all 10 episodes of its new 14th season dropping on Hulu this Monday. Components of the method have modified: Time has handed in Arlen, Texas (though not precisely the quantity of actual time because the collection went off the air), and Hank and Peggy (Kathy Najimy) are returning as retirees and disoriented outsiders, having spent a number of years working in Saudi Arabia and dwelling in an organization compound stylized after an old-school Americana that doesn’t exist anymore. Their son Bobby (Pamela Adlon), perpetually a hyperactive center schooler within the unique, is now a younger grownup working a “Japanese/German fusion” restaurant in Dallas.
However the fundamentals of the present, from its cowbell-licked opening theme to its wry sense of observational humor and nostalgic heat, nonetheless stay. Which begs the query: How do you make a present like “King of the Hill” work in an period of political discourse a lot extra divisive and traumatic than the largely optimistic Clinton years it was born beneath, and even the turbulent Bush period?
For brand new showrunner Saladin Okay. Patterson, it was one of many first questions he had when Decide and Daniels employed him to work on the undertaking: the best way to adapt the present for a time the place, as he places it, “simply flying an American flag in your entrance yard means one thing completely totally different.”
“‘King of the Hill’ has all the time been a present that talked about cultural points. Folks will say it was a political present, however it actually wasn’t that a lot a political present because it was a cultural present,” Patterson mentioned in an interview with IndieWire. “To me, what was most fascinating was taking a personality like Hank who represented the widespread sense center, the place we have now extra in widespread than we have now variations, and placing him again on this planet at the moment, the place the acute has moved thus far to the place that center appears to be like like the opposite facet to them.”
Patterson was a longtime fan of the unique “King of the Hill” collection — about six months after the present first premiered, he wrote a spec script for an episode as a part of a writing fellowship program at Disney. Just a few years later, he was provided a job on the writing workers, and turned it all the way down to work on “Frasier” as a substitute.
“That’s one thing that Greg Daniels by no means lets me reside down,” he mentioned. He remained in contact with Daniels, and when discussions started about bringing “King of the Hill” again to TV, Daniels reached out to him partially due to his work on the 2021 “Surprise Years” remake, one other replace of a beloved present for a recent viewers.
Along with Decide and Daniels, Patterson wrote the pilot of the revival, deciding that the hook of the collection could be seeing Peggy and Hank alter to a modified Arlen and a modified tradition, positioning Hank as a fish-out-of-water in his own residence. “That felt actually fascinating to me, to have the ability to discover these kinds of issues as a method, as a result of everybody will relate to Hank Hill, and whenever you see how issues are shifted so far-off from Hank, it might assist us to show the lens on ourselves, too,” Patterson mentioned.
Present U.S. political discourse of additionally affected the writing of Dale, who within the unique collection represented essentially the most excessive fringe when it comes to conspiracy theories. The early Seasn 14 episode “Bobby Will get Grilled” — the place he shares conspiracy theories at a George Bush museum tour that then develop common among the many remainder of the attendees moreover Hank — demonstrates how, in some ways, the tradition has shifted rightward even of him.
“He’s nonetheless the perimeter in his group of associates, however Dale can now level to society and say, ‘Hey, I’m not that loopy,’” Patterson mentioned. “In actual life, there are theories that surpass even Dale’s degree of craziness that folks will latch on to.”
One other of this season’s extra blatantly political episodes is “No Man Left Behind,” which sees Hank convey his younger half-brother to a masculinity workshop that closely recollects the rhetoric of manosphere social media personalities like Andrew Tate. The episode capabilities nearly as a mirror to the unique collection, which rooted its principal battle in Hank’s very conventional imaginative and prescient of masculinity and his issue referring to his son’s pursuits. Right here, contrasted with a regressive rhetoric that promotes misogyny, Hank’s old school nature abruptly appears to be like progressive.
“The unique collection did an incredible job displaying how ideas of conventional masculinity had been butting heads with society on the time,” Patterson mentioned. “Hank was making an attempt to boost a son on this setting the place typically he didn’t see issues the identical method, or he was thought of too old school, proper? Now, Hank comes again to an America [where] simply the phrase masculinity can be utilized as a pejorative. These ideas have simply been pushed to the acute, to the place it’s poisonous. We wished to see how Hank would acknowledge that, react to it, and the way he would attempt to right it.”
Exterior of politics, the updating of the collection and the choice to let actual time go in Arlen — a rarity for an animated collection — led to new story avenues for the writers. Over the course of the season, Peggy and Hank each deal, in their very own separate methods, with frustrations about retirement. Bobby, in the meantime, is an grownup now coping with actual, mature romance and a profession. Patterson, Decide, and Daniels had been all impressed by their very own experiences as dad and mom with youngsters of their twenties whereas writing Bobby’s storyline of navigating early maturity, and significantly with Hank’s storyline of studying the best way to let Bobby make his personal selections in life.
“Hank all the time mentioned, ‘That boy ain’t proper.’ Nicely, now, that boy is a person, and that man could make his personal selections,” Patterson mentioned. “And you’ll’t inform a person what to do.”
These conflicts happen throughout a season that, whereas nonetheless stuffed with standalone tales, is barely extra serialized than the unique present, partially due to the instant 10-episode launch mannequin Hulu used for the season, versus the 22-episode seasons that made “King of the Hill” a rerun staple for years on Fox and Grownup Swim. That shift modified the storytelling of the present in some ways, main the writers to prioritize effectivity in how they dealt with the character arcs.
“Say we wished to finish the Bobby-Connie relationship at a sure level. When you could have 22 episodes, you possibly can lay out an arc in much more element when it comes to what you wish to present. And you’ll have two steps ahead, one step again. We solely have 10. You must be very environment friendly within the episodes that you simply dedicate to a sure story arc. You must type of accomplish lots in these in order that the viewers continues to be alongside for the journey. That definitely is a problem,” Patterson mentioned. “It’s not essentially all the time a nasty problem. 22 episodes, that’s lots, and in the direction of the tip, you usually run into story fatigue, and it’s actually onerous to maintain from repeating your self. In order that’s one thing that you simply don’t have to fret about as a lot when you could have these 10-episode seasons. It definitely does make you extra environment friendly, and in addition it signifies that there are much more tales we have now to inform that we’ve talked about and damaged.”
“King of the Hill” has not but been renewed for one more season at Hulu, however Patterson already has loads of concepts for the place he needs to take these characters. Particularly, he needs to revisit Hank’s previous office, Strickland Propane, and test in on the solid from that facet of the collection who don’t seem within the first season of the revival. He’s additionally desirous about exploring extra of Hank and Peggy’s life in retirement, and particularly Peggy’s potential experiences as a lady experiencing menopause.
One different concept Patterson has is a direct recognition of the characters of Luanne and Fortunate (voiced by the late Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty), who weren’t recast and don’t seem within the revival (Hardwick and solid member Jonathan Joss additionally died throughout and after manufacturing of the season; they obtain onscreen tributes in Episodes 7 and 10). The collection doesn’t instantly deal with their absence from the Hills’ lives, a choice Patterson mentioned got here after a lot thought from the writing workforce, although they felt strongly that they shouldn’t be recast.
“Generally, the most effective factor you are able to do is hold that jersey up within the rafters and retire that quantity,” Patterson mentioned. “If we’re blessed to do extra tales, the followers will see that we have now a option to acknowledge that they nonetheless exist on this world in a method, to nonetheless really feel prefer it honors them, however nonetheless stays true to the story we’re telling now.”
“King of the Hill” Season 14 is now streaming on Hulu.