The Tetrad Initiative Salutes King of the Hill

Whenever I bring up King of the Hill in conversation, I tend to be met with a fairly lukewarm response- amongst the hordes of educated, liberal, upper-middle class white artists who make up a significant portion of your average art school, my mention of King of the Hill tends to be met with some variation of "Isn't that just white-trash Simpsons?" They couldn't be much more wrong, and "ignorant" doesn't even cover it.

King of the Hill was born in a peculiar time and place- January 12th, 1997 on the typically conservative Fox network, but was the brain-child of Mike Judge- creator of the highly controversial early-1990's MTV series Beavis & Butthead. Alongside former Simpsons writer Greg Daniels, Judge created the fictional town of Arlen, Texas (clearly, NO connection whatsoever to Garland, Texas where Judge had previously lived) and it's many colorful characters- propane (and propane accessories) salesman Hank Hill, his housewife Peggy, and their boy (who ain't right) Bobby and niece Luanne, along with neighbors Bill, Boomhauer, Dale & Nancy, and Kahn, plus a whole host of others. The intro to the pilot begins with Hank and his friends working slowly and diligently on determining the problems with a truck engine, and then begin to discuss their love of Seinfeld, a show about nothing. Cue the title sequence. This first scene would kick off a 255 episode run over 13 years, and while that scene meant to imply King of the Hill would be a show about nothing, it failed to deliver on that promise.

While the Simpsons and, yes, Family Guy love to revel in the cartoonish and absurd, King of the Hill grounds itself in to a muddy, brutal, and loving realism. Hank is oblivious and sometimes acts without thinking, but he isn't even in the same league of oafishness as Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin. While the Simpsons and Family Guy devote scenes to Homer getting repeatedly bit by rattlesnakes or Peter getting into fights with giant anthropomorphic roosters, Hank's role on King of the Hill is that of any real working parent- he goes to work, he spends time with his family, he works on projects around the house, and when he has time, he spends it with his long held friends. And while Homer has been choking Bart Simpson for 21 years now and Peter has been farting in Meg's face for longer than I'd prefer to say (really, has this show ACTUALLY stayed on air?), Hank has been trying to raise his son Bobby with all the moments of embarrassment and pride that any real parent should hope to have. But that's the kind of show King of the Hill is- it isn't about hill billies or rednecks or "white trash" as my upper-middle class peers might attest, it's about blue collar, real-world Americans who live and breath their lives and take pride in their job, home, and family.

Though King of the Hill was cancelled in September, 2009 after it's 13th season, 4 new episodes went unaired. Join the Tetrad Initiative in celebration of one of television's most realistic shows by watching the remaining episodes, which are syndicated this week on local stations. The episodes run from the 3rd to the 7th, so sorry to those who missed last night's episode. All four members of TI are KotH fans, and we may someday reflect back more on the care and love that went into such a great television series.

- David Mitchell