When we see Hank Hill for the first time in 15 years, he’s being humiliated: trying (and mostly failing) to pee in a tiny airplane bathroom while being forced to listen to his wife regale a growing crowd of irritated onlookers with his most intimate medical details. It’s a strange start to what will prove to be a largely gentle return to King Of The Hill’s world of propane, propane accessories, and, yes, the inescapable specter of the “narrow urethra.” It suggests that there might be something just a tad crueler operating in the show’s new-old heart, a suspicion that lurks throughout a first episode that dances around the idea that Hank Hill’s small-c conservatism may have calcified into something a little uglier, and more reactive, in his advancing years.
It’s a weird pilot all around, really—most notably when it deliberately cuts the show off from its most vital relationship: the one between Hank and Peggy Hill (still series co-creator Mike Judge and the wonderful Kathy Najimy) and their now-adult son, Bobby (Pamela Adlon). There’s a reason for this—Bobby has changed the most out of all our characters in the eight (in-universe) years since we last saw him, and the show wants to give him room to stand on his own two feet. But the disconnect still makes for a weak first impression, as the Hills acclimate (poorly) to life back on Rainey Street after several years spent working in the propane business in Saudi Arabia.
Luckily, once King Of The Hill—now showrun by Saladin K. Patterson, a veteran TV writer who last wrestled with The Reboot Machine in service of The Wonder Years—settles into its groove, these initial tensions largely vanish. Sure, Hank will occasionally get a little “uncle you don’t talk to at dinner much anymore,” cracking an “assigned at birth” joke here or waxing ecstatic about the legacy of George W. Bush there. (The infamous limp handshake has, apparently, been forgiven.) But the show’s belief in its hero’s inherent decency manages to transform those moments from red flags into mere eye rolls. King Of The Hill was never a political show, in any meaningful sense of the phrase, and it hasn’t fallen into that pitfall here: This is still first and foremost a comedy about culture and character.
And oh, what a character it’s found in Bobby Hill, who has managed—despite eight billion childhood recitations of “that boy ain’t right”—to grow up into a genuinely great TV protagonist, powered by Adlon’s good-as-ever voice work. Now 21, and working in his own fusion Japanese-German restaurant in Dallas, Bobby has been largely exorcised of an original slate of character flaws that were, to be fair, mostly rooted in being an impressionable kid. Smarter and more driven, but still possessed of his old kindness and charisma, this Bobby naturally gravitates into the “sane man surrounded by weirdos” position that was once the sole province of his old man. He’s also a lot harder to push around, with many of the revival’s best episodes—including one where Hank learns, to his enduring horror, that his son’s restaurant runs on charcoal—focusing on the pair working through conflicts that once would have seen Bobby get steamrolled by Hank. Call it fan service if you like. But there’s real pleasure, which the series itself revels in, in seeing this soft, sweet kid grow into a genuinely good man. (Also, in case you were wondering: Bobby Hill absolutely pulls.)
The younger Hill is also at the center of the revival show’s very lightly serialized elements, which focus on both his restaurant (bankrolled by classic KOTH amoral money guy Ted Wassanasong) and his efforts to rekindle a friendship with childhood sweetheart Connie Souphanousinphone (a returning Lauren Tom). The emphasis here is on lightly. The original King Of The Hill often went for Simpsons levels of resetting the table between episodes; the revival, by contrast, allows small narrative threads to wind across its ten-episode season. (The most notable non-Bobby one examines how both Hank and Peggy struggle to adapt to the free time of retirement.) It’s a mild concession to the realities of modern TV but not an unwelcome one. Characters can’t help but feel a little realer when they have memories that actually persist between episodes.
But, you’re likely wondering, is the show funny? Undeniably and most especially when it leans on two factors that were both hallmarks of the original series. The first is a best-in-class voice cast, once again MVP’d by Stephen Root. Having gone full shut-in since the original series ended, Root’s Bill Dauterive remains the definitive TV sad sack, with the veteran actor still capturing every nuance of the character’s prickly, deeply attention-seeking brand of existential loneliness. He’s matched, as ever, by Najimy, who continues to make a virtue of many of Peggy Hill’s most joyfully irritating character traits. (Her confident pronunciation of “Saudi Arabi-eye” rates at least a smile every time it crops up.) The situation surrounding the show’s other top character, Dale Gribble, is, admittedly, a bit more complicated. Even before Johnny Hardwick died midway through the show’s production, it’s clear his voice had changed significantly in the intervening years: His Dale is gruffer, and more monotone, than it was in the original series and doesn’t have the excitable high-pitched registers that powered so many memorable “sh-sha” and “S’go!”s. (Toby Huss, picking up the character three-quarters of the way into the season, opts to match Hardwick’s modern voice instead of his earlier one.) But Dale, as a character, is still wholly recognizable—even as some of his conspiratorial, rabble-rousing madness has become slightly less charming on account of becoming quite a bit more mainstream since the series was last on the air.
Which leads neatly into the other familiar factor powering King Of The Hill’s comedy engine: Its willingness to tackle cultural criticism head-on. “The One Where Hank Hill Wrestles With A Societal Concept” was a classic King Of The Hill plotline back in the old days, and the show doesn’t shy away from it here: The new series examines topics like cultural appropriation and the gig economy and—in a satisfying late-season entry—demonstrates exactly what a Certified Wife Guy like Hank Hill would think of the misogynistic other-blaming of the manosphere. The commentary itself ranges from surface-level to modestly insightful—if you’re seeking anything deeper than “basic common sense and decency” from an animated sitcom, you’re out of luck—but it’s still nice to see the series bare its teeth from time to time.
Revival projects like King Of The Hill serve multiple masters as a matter of course. Nostalgia must be fed, whether it comes in the form of a sight gag referencing (the now-late) Chuck Mangione or the simple pleasure of hearing Judge slip back into good ol’ boy Boomhauer’s beautiful, semi-coherent mumbles. (The show struggles a bit more with how to handle less rosy aspects of its legacy. Hardwick and Jonathan Joss both get “In Memory” cards, and Tom Petty is at least acknowledged via a needle drop. But there’s something sad, and maybe even a little disingenuous, about the series neglecting to give even a passing tribute to Brittany Murphy’s Luanne.)
But in the grand scheme of things, shows like this live or die not on whether we loved their characters back in the day but if we love the people they’ve become now. By that metric, King Of The Hill is a rousing success. The show isn’t perfect. But that boy? He’s just right.
King Of The Hill season 14 premieres August 4 on Hulu
