Mike Judge and Greg Daniels are bringing back that dang ol’ King Of The Hill
The duo are reviving the beloved Fox series with their Bandera production studio, we tell you what
Aux News Greg Daniels
12 years after Fox TV audiences bid adieu to Arlen, Texas—home to football, beer, barbecue, and a truly staggering array of propane accessories—Mike Judge’s King Of The Hill is apparently set for a revival. This is per THR, which reports that Judge and co-creator Greg Daniels have (somewhat unofficially) announced that they’re bringing the beloved animated sitcom back, via their recently formed Bandera production comedy.
That’s right: You’ll soon be able to have all new conversations in which you explain to your mildly tolerant friends that King Of The Hill—despite its aggressively blue-collar trappings and Tom Petty voicework—was actually one of the most subversive and funny cartoons of its generation, creating, in its own, more subdued way, a surreal world nearly as odd as Springfield or Family Guy’s Quahog.
The King Of The Hill revival is just one of several projects that are in the works at Bandera, most notably a new Netflix cartoon, Bad Crimes, that’ll team up Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus as FBI agents. Other projects at the studio include a Sacha Baron Cohen kids’ show, an adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For that’ll reportedly involve Carrie Brownstein, and a project centered on the work of tattoo/graffiti artist Mr. Cartoon.
For fans of King Of The Hill, though, it’s news of the show’s revival (still largely under wraps) that arrives with all of the force of a precision hurled fistful of pocket sand. Per THR, Bandera itself actually grew out of conversations that happened at KOTH reunion panels, with both Daniels and Judge—who’ve each had pretty massive success in the TV realm since the show’s passing—reflecting on how much they missed their regular collaborations.
This is actually the second Judge project to get a revival recently, of course; he’s also currently working on the return of Beavis & Butt-Head at Comedy Central.
146 Comments
I would be ok with this if its done as a special event type movie. You know, something like a check in the characters 20+ years later (similar to that Rocko’s Modern Life movie a couple of years back). That could work really well.
I have doubts this could work as a full series though. King Of The Hill is perfect as is. It’d be damn near impossible to come up with something even close to the original so you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.
It’s just… How would de hard conservative Hank have approached the Trump era? Would Dale’s conspiracy obsession seem as funny post-pizza gate, qanon? I think they’d have to pretty much pretend that era never happened to be successful.
“ It’d be damn near impossible to come up with something even close to the original”.Or, to put it another way, I’m skeptical that they could, but intrigued that they may.
I always used to go with the idea that if something returns and isn’t any good I’d just pretend it doesn’t exist and that wouldn’t spoil my love for the original series.
Arrested Development Season 5 and what they did with Buster’s character changed all that though, so now I’m a little nervous about a new season of KotH despite it being one of my all time favourite shows.
I adored Arrested Development, bought the DVDs and forcefed them to my friends, colleagues and neighbours before the revival was a thing. Then when I eventually watched two episodes of the fourth series, it was so painfully awful by comparison, I stopped there and I never went back. And I still won’t, so I’ve no idea what happens in series 5. So can you please clarify what you mean? Is it that, if something isn’t any good you pretend it doesn’t exist, but S5 was so good, it changed your mind about forgetting S4 or S5 was so bad you can’t pretend to forget it?
It’s that season 5 was so bad that I can’t forget (or forgive) it, they fundamentally altered something in Buster’s past in a way that for me is truly horrible.
*sigh* That makes me sad, even as it kinda vindicates my decision not to watch it. (I mean, as much as random internet commenters can/should vindicate one’s life choices).
What we’d really love would be a revival of pre-Spanfeller AV Club.
For those who don’t know, per NYT:
“The staff of The A.V. Club, the Chicago-based pop culture website
published by G/O Media, was given a choice: accept a relocation to Los
Angeles or leave the publication with a severance package. On Tuesday,
seven people on the staff said they had decided to stay put — and give
up their jobs.”
And not only relocate, but to a city with a higher cost of living, but at the same salary. They were effectively being told they could keep their jobs only if they accept a pay cut.
a pay cut AND leaving behind all your family/friends/life AND… living in the hellhole that is LA. (sorry LA’ers. Y’all hot as hell, have to drive everywhere, got no water, and are constantly on fire)
Not to mention they’re one quake away from turning into Mad Max.
Pfft, Mad Max is one movie star sighting away from turning into L.A.
IMMORTAN JOE LOOKED AT ME!
we have Mad Max, it’s called Wasteland Weekend. Or are you not familiar?
You really don’t have to drive everywhere in LA. Yes, the transit is worse than Chicago, certainly, but there’s a fairly extensive Metro (subway) plus lots of buses. If you live downtown or in Koreatown it’s actually easier *not* to have a car. It’s San Diego that is the “drive everywhere” city in Southern California, not LA (lived both places, don’t drive, but thankfully live in the Washington, DC area these days).
Right? I’ve lived in LA my entire life and for the past five years I’ve been working from home, so I barely ever drive anywhere at all. I think my favorite thing is people who don’t live in a place acting like they know what it’s like to live there.
Yeah, it’s the same here on Cape Cod – we too only need to drive if we want to go to places.
Too bad you don’t have any public transit, like we do here in L.A.
I’ve never lived in LA, but have visited there plenty, and it’s… fine. Seriously, it’s fine— the traffic can be a bit annoying and driving around the mountains at super high speed on the highways outside the city proper can be terrifying, but driving around isn’t completely terrible as a visitor.Living there, I imagine the traffic would get old, but I hate commuting anyways, so I’d probably just try to live close to wherever I work, if possible, and privileged enough to do so. It’s expensive sure— but that’s to be expected for a huge city with large wealth discrepancies, and you need a car in most American cities anyways. In large urban sprawling ones and mid-tier cities (I have lived in both those types of cities) and if you live in rural areas, a car is a downright “need for life” necessity like food, shelter, and water.What is bullshit in this situation is the lack of a cost of living increase, it’s complete fucking horseshit. I’ve relocated for the same company twice and they do have a cost of living adjustment, it’s not great, but they finally actually increased it for once instead of continuing to drag their feet. While Chicago probably is relatively expensive compared to surrounding large cities in the Midwest, expecting people to relocate to a completely different place (thousands of miles away) without compensation is basically just firing people without explicitly saying you’re firing them. Fucking herbs run G/O, or whatever they’ve brand themselves as now
no, hot as hell is anywhere above 80* with high humidity, sir. This is not that. or if you want to go to Dry Heat Hell go to Palm Springs. LA Ain’t Hot As Hell. Anaheim aka DISNEYLAND is hotter.On the money thing, City Living in Chicago can’t be _that_ much cheaper than Los Angeles, can it? It’s a City. If we were comparing say, a suburb of IL vs SoCal that would make sense, but as I understand it downtown core city life is always prohibitively expensive.
I dunno I’m from Canada (and the hot part that was itself on fire all last summer) and even here is too hot for me. So yeah I guess it’s more a “me” thing. I can’t function in warmer climates. The few times I went to Cali was awful (and yes especially Palm Springs). But Florida was absolute hell holy shit snacks.
It’s hilarious that one of your objections is that LA weather is somehow worse than Chicago’s. Plus, LA certainly has traffic but I also take public transit all the time. What’s ludicrous is that they want people to move at all when running a digital business and wanting them to do so without providing a robust COL adjustment and moving costs. It’s clearly an underhanded way to clean house and subvert the union.
I mean, it’s not great news, but I would feel worse about it if this were 2011, and the site was stronger.
Others have fonder regards for The Dissolve, but it bled away a lot of major talent at a crucial time, and for a venture that was thoroughly half-baked. I’m amazed the Dissolve lasted as long as it did.
I guess, although still not two years. It says something about inertia, I think, that I never got in the habit of going there, still here, even though a lot of the newer writers I didn’t enjoy as much.
Might be a dumb question – but what are the alternatives at this point? Vulture? I’ve been here so long I don’t even know what else is out there anymore.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I think there’s a good half of Vulture (some of the reviews, most of the longer features), while the other half (the news items) is Jezebel-level dreck. I like more and more of what’s on The Ringer, and it seems like either Simmons, the HBO investment, or some combination gets them access to pretty good names.In terms of recaps, though, I don’t know. I stopped reading them here, mostly, the last one being SNL and the endless ranting at the show for not paying sufficient attention to the critic’s own political grudges.
Thanks, I haven’t been to The Ringer in ages. I’ll go check it out 😀
To write for an online blog, no less.
Yeah it was a wholly disingenuous offer intended to be so unfavorable that they wouldn’t accept it. Because let’s be real, why the hell does it matter WHERE you live if you’re doing pop culture writing for an online periodical?
Absolutely
It’s so incongruous too at a time when we’ve seen remote work really works and the ability to work with people from anywhere regardless of geography is unlocking scalability and other barriers for so many companies. Dumb.
Not sure if he’s included in those seven, but Dennis Perkins (he does SNL recaps, among other things) also announced yesterday he was leaving the AV Club. He worked freelance, not out of Chicago, and hadn’t been told one way or the other about his status, but he quit in solidarity with his coworkers.
Good on him, although I have to say I was never a fan, so I’m not particularly sorry to see him go.
Thanks for that. I caught wind of something going on in another AVClub post and started googling to no avail. What a shit move, especially when literally everyone who used to work in an office has successfully worked remotely for nearly the past two years. Can’t Spanfeller just take candy from a baby if he needs an ego boost?
Apologies if it’s somewhere else obvious but do we know who’s leaving? I saw someone mention Dowd on another post, which is a shame – I don’t always agree with his points and tastes but he’s a great film writer.
Do you want a pony, too?Because I want a pony. Pony pony pony!Sorry, what was the question?
Is it a specially trained pony that will crush Jim Spanfeller’s balls? Because then I’ll totally support the idea of you getting this pony.
Every gen x ass hole thinks they are cute with shit like this.
I’ll take the pony if I can sell it to pay off my student loans.
“Ignatiy, we’re putting the band back together. What do you say?”*long drag on unfiltered Soviet-era cigarette*“You sonofabitch, you got me. I’m in!”
Bring back Disqus!… God, never thought I’d be saying that.
I’ve honestly always been saying that. This two tiered commenting system is bullshit, especially when overly sensitive writers can shadowban you for calling them out on their bullshit(I’m looking at you, Jezebel and The Root… you can drop N-bombs and C-bombs all day and you will still be readable in the greys, but call them on some hypocrisy or hurt their fee-fees in any way and then you are only readable to you, and they don’t even do the courtesy of telling you)I got grandfathered in here, but am still in the greys at Jalopnik, along with many others, while some saboteur on staff keeps approving trolls (especially on The Root) while leaving long-time good commenters in the grays. I find myself routinely going through the greys here and the Takeout and approving comments that aren’t trolls, even if I don’t necessarily agree with them.Not only that, but they seem to be purposely breaking the comment system for some reason I can’t figure out, and also breaking it through incompetence at the same time. Disqus might not be great, but at least it’s functional.
Yeah, I got shadow-banned on ye olde Deadspin, and it wasn’t even for anything trollish, it was from a writer (Burneko) notorious for doing that if you dared disagree with one of his takes. I was never out of the greys there, but then I had to make a whole other account just to comment on that site and switch between that and this one thanks to the temperamental whims of one writer and not even for violating any sort of terms of conditions for commenting.I’m with you and I never really found Kinja better in any way from the start, but since AV Club got merged with G/O (it was called something else back then) they had to adopt their broken-ass system.
I like herbs in my food, not my AVClub.
I watched this show for the first time last year. Loved it at first but I just realized I never finished it. It got pretty meh eventually. I just checked and I checked out early in season six. Those first three seasons were really really great though.
Diminishing returns for sure. The last couple seasons were bad. No reason for it to come back other than the fact that everyone else is doing it.
Lies! King of the Hill was consistently subtle, sweet and funny for years (all while the Simpsons and Seth McFarlane produced enough crap to vastly outweigh anything good they’d done before).
Firstly, I agree about The Simpsons and Self McFarlane. I was gonna say it’s just my opinion on King of the Hill, but then I went to wikipedia and something did change. Judge and Daniels’ reduced involvement with the show resulted in the series’ format turning more episodic and formulaic.[6] Beginning in season seven, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, who had worked on the series since season two, took it over completely, tending to emphasize Judge’s concept that the series was built around sociopolitical humor rather than character-driven humor.[6] … Judge and Daniels had managed to develop minor arcs and story elements throughout the early years of the series, such as Luanne’s becoming more independent and educated after Buckley’s death, and the aging of characters being acknowledged (a rare narrative occurrence for an animated series).[6] Lacking Judge and Daniels’ supervision, the series ceased aging its characters and even began retconning character backstories; in the episode “A Rover Runs Through It”, Peggy’s mother was abruptly changed from a neurotic housewife with whom Peggy shared a competitive relationship to a bitter rancher from whom Peggy had been estranged for years. The format change also resulted in at least one minor character—Laoma, Kahn’s mother—being written out of the show completely, and her relationship with Bill ignored in all future episodes.So it’s not just me and Magpie187 who noticed.
I mean… you’re not wrong about the retconning and things being ignored. I was betting the house that Junichiro would make an appearance in the last episode (or before) but it seems like they forgot Hank had a brother. But I still feel it maintained a level of quality above that of its competitors. I also have always been slightly baffled by the Mike Judge effect because while King of the Hill touched greatness, I’ve never been fond of Beavis and Butthead and I think Idiocracy is extremely overrated.
no
can’t wait to find out that Peggy went full-blown QAnon, while Dale of all people shuns it as being entry-level conspiracy shit
His pocket sand is now organically grown though.
Yeah, people got it backwards when they say Dale would go QAnon. He’d view them as a bunch of posers. But Peggy? Oh she’d fall for that shit in a heartbeat.
Nah, Peggy can be an idiot, but she wouldn’t believe in any Qanon sh*t…or for that long, anyway, since they may feed her ego at first. Bill, on the other hand, nice as he can be, has been shown to be super gullible, especially if it involves any sort of organization that he can feel like a valued part of (in his eyes, anyway). He would totally be suckered in by the Trump era, at least until someone slapped him out of it, but then someone would brag him back in…
between her long-term delusion of Spanish fluency and her complete inability to detect Joseph’s true parentage without Hank coming right out and saying it…I totally believe she’d go QAnon
Dale wouldn’t be QAnon, but he’d have descended even FURTHER into madness anyway. Not that it matters since his conspiracy riddled ass would’ve died from COVID a while ago.
People try to hard to let their favorite characters off the hook.
Goddam I’m excited. This show was so underrated, it hurts. I’m hoping the loss of Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty won’t hurt its quality too much, but I tell you what, I’m excited for this dang show, yo.
That’s sad to think about— Gracie is an orphan now 🙁
There is no way Peggy and Hank would not have taken her in. They probably have GH too (Cotton and Didi’s baby).
Very true, I just meant like, technically
“They moved to LA/New York/etc so Luanne could finally be a famous movie/tv/broadway hairstylist”
Interested to see what they do with it, as it’s one of my favorite shows, but it’s a big hill to climb. I’m sure they’ll come up with an excuse for why Luanne and Lucky aren’t featured on this revival show (moved away, won the lottery, etc.) but it’s hard to imagine King of the Hill without Brittany Murphy. She was so perfect in the role and her character’s arc is arguably the most considered throughout the run (from the pilot where she moves into the den to the intended finale of her wedding).Also wonder if they’ll recast the voice actor for Kahn.
Oy veh! But yes.
I enjoyed King of the Hill back in the day – but I feel like (as with most shows) it doesn’t really need to come back. It wasn’t exactly cancelled prematurely – it ran for like, what 10 years?
13! It had more episodes by far than Futurama, even post revival.
And it ended on a somewhat good note. Not exactly a season finale, but a good note nonetheless.
Agree completely. I’d rather see something brand new (animated) from Judge.
Bobby, I got propane in my urethra.
I wonder how comfortable people these days would be with a sympathetic portrayal of a staunch conservative, even one who’s decent and not at the extreme end of the spectrum. Personally, I think a character like that is helpful at the moment. It feels to me that the divide in society these days is less and less between conservatives and liberals, and more between those willing to be civil and those who refuse.
Look what happened to “Bless the Hearts”, canceled right? That show what basically an attempt bring back the blue collar KOTH vibe.
I mean it was set in the same universe as KoTH , so it was a similar vibe.
That could easily be the premise of an episode. Hank is civil to a fault. It takes a lot to wind that man up. It’d be interesting to see him be enemies with someone he fundamentally agrees with, or rather who takes what he agrees with and twists it for their own ends.
That’s why I don’t buy Dale being a Trump supporter. One, Dale’s never voted in his life. And two, before he got into politics, Trump was a symbol for big business, something else Dale doesn’t trust. He’d brush off QAnon as a bunch of mindless followers, not “respectable” conspiracy theorists like he is.
Yeah, I haven’t watched a whole heap of KOTH, but from what I have seen I don’t buy Dale as a Trumper either. Apart from anything else, the Donald is New York through and through, and I can’t see Dale respecting anyone from the East coast.
Yeah, Dale is too smart to be a Trump follower. Consider that for a moment: Dale Gribble is smarter that the average Trump follower.
He’s not smarter or dumber. He’s just too much his own thing to even join.
This ignores the complete lack of a rightwing protest vote against Trump (Utah sorta did a centrist protest vote with McMullin in 2016).
Nobody on the right has held “East coast elite” or “Obvious big business interests” against Trump.
True.For the overwhelming majority of them, being a Trumper makes no logical sense, yet there they are. You can’t have millions of redneck Trump followers without a mass epidemic of cognitive dissonance.
I tend to agree with you regarding Dale, but I was genuinely surprised by my various conservative friends who went from mocking the douchebag to supportingb him. I do believe they only supported him because of what they thought he could get done, but support him they did.
If the show is set in the present Dale would have died from COVID at least a year ago.
Dale: “QAnon isn’t even the real source. RAnon told me.”
Hank is civil to a fault. It takes a lot to wind that man up.
Kinda. There is that whole anger management episode, even if it’s a bit exaggerated.That said, I do think he expects civility from politicians and I don’t think he’d agree with Trump at least on how he handles himself.That’s why I don’t buy Dale being a Trump supporter. One, Dale’s never voted in his life. And two, before he got into politics, Trump was a symbol for big business, something else Dale doesn’t trust.
Trump embodies a whole bunch of shit conservatives say they wouldn’t support but still do (see: any evangelical supporter). I wouldn’t expect Dale to be first in line to support him, but I could definitely see him swayed by some nutty conspiracy shit.
God forbid liberals be presented with a depiction of someone who is not 100% a reflection of themselves.
Hell, Hank would be considered a beta-cuck, libtard, snowflake… uh, what else… soy boy(?) now thanks to the comical shift in the Overton Window the past several years.He is willing to learn things, adjusts his behavior occasionally, changes his staunchly held opinions in some episodes, is tolerant and even accepting of other peoples— none of those things has a place for modern conservative voters now.
Hank wouldn’t have voted for Trump. Dale, though… He’s probably in jail for January 6th.
I have to admit, there have been more than a few times that I have pondered who Hank would have voted for in 2016. Obviously, he couldn’t vote for Hillary, but I can imagine Hank being equally repulsed at the prospect of Donald Trump’s election.
I wonder how comfortable people these days would be with a sympathetic
portrayal of a staunch conservative, even one who’s decent and not at
the extreme end of the spectrum.
Hank wasn’t a “staunch conservative” though. He’s very accepting of things most modern GOPers wouldn’t.Him having to deal with where he fits in the new world would be a hell of a show, though. Especially with a friend like Dale.
The show’s tone is strange in the present world. I have been rewatching it lately and both Hank and Cotton were starstruck meeting Jimmy Carter, and eminently respectful of the man and his office with only gentle ribbing. In another episode, the school was thrown into chaos when a liberal racial justice advocate began stirring up hatred by asking the kids to talk about historic racial injustice. So on the one hand you’ve got respectable conservatives admiring (or at least respecting) a lefty POTUS, and on the other hand you’ve got the myth of the liberals being the ones who stir up racial animus. It’s strange to see how the show aged.
Is that what Jan 6 was about? Politeness and its lack?
I saw a debate recently over if Hank Hill would be pro- or anti-Trump, and I feel like that could be an interesting focus for maybe a movie revival. I feel like KotH has overall aged very well and went long enough that I don’t think we need a revival, but a single movie of ‘the Arlen community deal with recent technological and political changes’ would be interesting.Even just that ‘would Hank support Trump’ question has a lot of interesting angles. Would he hate Trump because he’s a New Yorker who’s all flash and no substance, or like him because he’s a tough-talking businessman who’s got proven successes and who’s saying the right things? Would all the experience he’s had with a similar figure in Buck Strickland be a positive or a negative? Is Trump’s overpowering handshake style what Hank likes to see, or is that just as bad as Bush’s weak handshake?
That all sounds as entertaining as a toothache.
I am pretty sure Hank would see right through Trump as a damn jackass. Hank would so be the guy who votes on platform and policy and Trump didn’t really seem to have a platform. Plus I feel like the Access Hollywood tape would have really upset him.
Hank can’t stand asinine behavior and there’s basically a picture of Trump next to that definition in the dictionary at this point.
If it’s based in any sort of reality, he makes a lot of noise about being Never-Trump, then votes for him twice just like, say, Ted Cruz, or a couple million other Texans.
Ignoring the fact that all of us are just projecting our own weird biases on a bunch of fictional characters, I think it’s odd that so many people argue that “Hank is actually a very reasonable conservative,” as though we didn’t all find out over the course of the last 8 years that most of the people we thought were just “reasonable conservatives” had all either gone batshit crazy, or were just hiding it all along. Hank would definitely have done the same 180 that most Boomers did in the run up to 2016, beginning with “Trump is an elitist New York RINO”, and ending with “that’s just locker room talk, and only billionaires should ever be president because they can’t be bought.”
Judge knows his audience and knows the characters. Hank’s not Walter White, there’s no reason to believe he’s gonna be off the deep end.
Forcing Hank to grapple with the Trump era GOP would be a hell of a thing. Because he’s got friends like Dale and Bill who’d almost certainly get caught up in that bullshit one way or another.It’d be a great metaphor for people who think they’re doing something to help counter the madness but are too afraid to call out their own circle of friends.
He absolutely would hate Trump because he’s not a fucking imbecile.
YES.For anyone who needs a starting point:Bobby Goes Nuts (Season 6 Ep 1)And They Call It Bobby Love (Season 3 Ep 2)There are plenty of other good episodes, but I just watched those recently.
my personal favoritesLittle Horrors of ShopI Don’t Want to Wait… The Texas Skillsaw Massacre Megalo DaleReturning Japanese Smoking and the Bandit To Sirloin with Love (the true finale, last episodes are out of order on Hulu/Netflix)
I hate this idea. Hate it. Just let it be.
How, without Brittany Murphy?
One big depressing thought about this show: both Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty are dead. So, what are they gonna do with Luanne and Lucky? Will they recast? Or, is their daughter gonna be living with The Hills?
Luanne goes to LA to follow her Manger Baby dreams after Lucky dies following another unfortunate slip and fall on pee-pee.Or so I imagine
Just make them moving to Dallas after Lucky wins another peepee lawsuit and gets a hefty award and they buy a mansion in a Dallas suburb and become part of the Texas elite. Easy peasy. And since Khan would be seen as some kind of racist portrayal, have Bobby and Khan Jr. marry and have a kid (a girl version of Bobby would be funny) and Khan and Mihn retire and move to Arizona and Bobby and Khan Jr move into their house.
They moved away.
This site is unusable LOL fuck this shitpile.
I cannot tell if Tom Petty is actually in that photo or is just a cardboard cut out on the side.
Do you think Hank Hill voted for Trump? It’s a question that keeps me up at night.
Agreed. I’ve spent time pondering this. Hank’s choice in 2016 was impossible, but it’s equally impossible for him not to vote, never mind voting for a third party candidate.
Fuck no. Hank Hill was both moral, and intelligent.
I’m sure he was shuttering and puking after he voted for Hilary. Because, Hank is too damn smart and moral to vote for Donald Trump.
I tell ya hwat man, talkin’ bout this seems like a dang ol’ bad idea, you know, the original run already ran its dang ol’ course, man, talkin’ bout different climate and hwatnot, no dang ol’ Luanne or Lucky either, man, just can’t see this workin’ out, I tell ya hwat.
Hell, even ignoring how you sympathize with characters like Hank in a post-Trump world, Season 10 alone already made Hank practically full-on unlikable for me, since episodes like “Business Is Picking Up,” “Hank Fixes Everything,” “You Gotta Believe (in Moderation),“ & especially “Church Hopping” cemented his “Designated Hero” status hard.I mean, I know everyone has a lot of nostalgia for KotH, but there’s a good reason why it was cancelled: It just wasn’t that good anymore. Sure, there was the occasional highlight, but like modern Simpsons, the amount of average episodes and outright duds outnumbered the good episodes in its later seasons, including dreck like “Bystand Me,” my own pick for the show’s worst episode (also from Season 10, seriously, that was a truly awful season), “Hank Gets Dusted,” “Uh-Oh Canada,” & yes, stuff that poorly aged like “Bobby Rae,” an episode all about how protests & protesters suck donkey balls which, f*ck, imagine trying to do that episode these days (hell, it already had a ton of “ok boomer” energy back when it first aired, IMO).And that’s not even bringing in the fact that we already have proper successors to KotH in the form of Bob’s Burgers, The Great North, & Bless the Harts (R.I.P.). We don’t need the Hills back again, we’ve learned what we need to from them. The only reason to bring them back is likely because there’s a ton of execs trying to play the “both sides” card, believing that it can’t be a show about a working class family unless they’re explicitly conservative as well.
My point is, just let the shows rest in peace & keep its dignity, and stop trying to force the nostalgia glasses on us. And for those who want KotH back, well, maybe just take the glasses off for a bit, at least for the later stuff.
After the hubbub about Hank Azaria’s Apu, is there any way that Toby Huss can play Khan? Or was the problem that Apu was a too stereotypical and cartoonish portrayal of an Indian person in a menial position? I’ve been around people from India and Pakistan who sound kind of like Apu, but I’ve been around Southeast Asians who basically sound exactly like Khan.
The whole thing has turned into any voice actor not being able to play anyone of another race anymore. The Simpsons and a few other shows have recast all their minority characters played by White people.
The whole thing has turned into any voice actor not being able to play anyone of another race anymore.
Not sure why that’s a problem.
The new Cleveland on Family Guy is spot on. The new Dr. Hibbard sucks.
Yes but (cliché) the last twenty years of the Simpsons have too so… no great loss.
Yeah no way Toby Huss could play Khan. Which is absurd, of course, because he was a great character, but that’s what happened to Apu and it would happen here, too.
Plus where are you going to find a voice actor who is from The Ocean?
Considering Khan wasn’t a walking stereotype in the same what Apu is, I want to believe there will be no issue.
This is one of those shows where I’ve seen a lot of it (it used to air between episodes of The Simpsons back in the late 90s/early 2000s before I had access to the internet and DVDs) but I couldn’t say I actually liked it. Not being from the US, I’m not sure if the humour simply doesn’t transfer well or maybe the show itself simply doesn’t click with me but it’s one I never really got.
I could definitely see a chunk of the humor not landing with non-Americans; it pokes at a ton of American tropes/clichés.
Must be the latter. I’m Scottish and loved this programme from day 1, until the end. And I’d prefer it not to come back as it’s likely to be not as good, but that’s how it is now. Anything that once was profitable, will never not be brought back. Repeatedly.
Tv Idiocracy spin-off would be better.
There was. But DirectTV decided not to renew the contract.
You mean Fox News?
I loved this show so much! I do wonder two things though….1. Will they try to bring someone in to replace Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty or will Gracie simply be an orphan?2. With everything going on now, how do they intend to play Khan? Especially after everything with Apu from The Simpsons!
Looking at the cast list on IMDb, I had NO IDEA Toby Huss played Khan Sr. He’s delightful in everything I’ve seen/heard him in.
Is that…Tom Petty all the way on the right?
Yep; he played Lucky.
I loved King of the Hill but I don’t think a revival of that show is really needed. I wish that Judge would focus solely on the Beavis & Butt-head comeback, a show which I think CAN still be good and made relevant to today (the first revival back in 2011 was terrific, I thought).
I like KOTH but I am still yet to see a post-cancelation revival of a show be of high enough quality to convince me it should exist.
The Futurama revival was definitely worth it.
The Comeback
Dunno if I’m gonna be able to laugh at Dale in a post Trump Texas.
“…King Of The Hill—despite its aggressively blue-collar trappings and Tom Petty voicework—was actually one of the most subversive and funny cartoons of its generation…”Why are you shitting on Tom Petty and his voicework for no reason? He did a great job on that show.
I want the revival to have Bobby living with his life partner in Austin and fostering cats. (not my joke)
Best animation to come out of FOX’s Sunday night lineup:1) The Simpsons (first 10-15 years)2) Bob’s Burgers3) King of the Hill4) American Dad