King of the Hill Show Review
Updated: Dec 31, 2022
I’ve been thinking about King of the Hill recently because they recently announced that they are going to bring back the series, which I'm super excited about. I think this show was a wonderful program that had a whopping 10-year reign, and lots of nostalgia from watching it a lot when I was younger. I like it because it mainly focuses on one-family, and how it just shows them going through everyday things, nothing extraordinary. I think King of the Hill was also a blueprint for a lot of animated programs that came after, like Bob's burgers as an example.
The main thing I like about the show was that it had a really good representation of what every community has, which is all of these personality types living in one area. For instance, we have the classic father figure, conspiracy theorist, a town gossiper, a know it all. It had the well-roundedness of a cast and good classic mix of people. The show showed that even with normal situations, there can be funny moments.
The show had a big focus on the relationship between the father, Hank Hill, and his son, Bobby ,and their differences and similarities. For example, Bobby likes comedy whereas Hank finds his son's interests odd, to say the least. Bobby's main interest is comedy and him trying to be a comedian that and a lot of the episodes were about Bobby growing up in general. The main focus with Hank was on him adjusting to having a son so different from himself. Hank was a football star in high school and would have preferred his son to follow in his footsteps.
While the show zoomed in a lot on Hank and Bobby, there were other characters involved as well who made the show really entertaining. You had Dale Gribble as the conspiracy theorist neighbor who also has an adulterous wife, Nancy, who was a weather woman on the news. I wish in Dale's case, there was one friend who actually told him his wife was cheating on him, which I think is unfair to him even though his characters is this conspiracy theorist. I also never understood why she stayed with them. Then another character was the neighbor who was a kid from Laos who they write as the stereotypical overachieving Asian. We find out as the series goes on, that he suffers from depression and simply wants to be accepted in society. I think this is because he wants to feel like he made it in life and all the sacrifices that he made to get his family to America meant something.
There is also Boomhauer who we find out in the last episode is a law enforcement officer. He's an interesting one because you never really know what he does at the end, he's kind of just there. Like does he live off of social security the whole time or what? There is also Bill who works for the military as a farmer and is also divorced. The sad thing about that is that there is no real closure for Bill in terms of his acceptance of his situation. I hope that when they bring the show back, they put him in a happy sustainable relationship because he deserves it after all the torment he went through.
I would not change a thing about this program because I think it was a well-written program and I am very happy that it is being brought back. I am often not a fan of bringing the shows back from their grave, but I am very happy that they are bringing back other programs in a similar way. I think it is important that if someone is thinking about bringing back a show that has ended, that they go to the original creator, if possible, to kind of get the same continuity to the show/honor the source material. What are your thoughts of the show? Are you excited that it's coming back?