There is no longer a point to asking why a show gets rebooted. It happens if there is money for it, a platform willing to carry it and enough of the original people to recreate a passable, timelier version of an existing product.
So trying to discern the reasoning behind the reappearance of “King of the Hill,” 15 years after the long-running animated sitcom bowed out, might not be a productive use of time. For all we know, the algorithms summoned it back to life.
Its new season, whose 10 episodes are streaming on Hulu, reunites creator Mike Judge with most of the original voice actors, minus a few performers who have died since 2010, when the show last aired.
It follows the same principal characters in the same small town (Arlen) in the same state (Texas), dealing with updated versions of many of the same neighborhood, familial and generational conflicts that filled its original 13-season tenure on Fox.
But the intervening years have turned “King of the Hill” into a curious political time capsule. The series primarily dealt with the ongoing struggle of a level-headed conservative man, the propane salesman Hank Hill (voiced by Judge), to comprehend the cultural swings of the late 1990s and 2000s.
Most episodes ended with some kind of bipartisan consensus in which Hank’s traditional sensibilities and the relatively progressive attitudes of “the kids these days,” articulated ever-so-gently by his son, Bobby (voice of Pamela Adlon), were mutually honored.
In the poisonous air of 2025, that equation doesn’t add up in quite the same way. Twenty years ago, for instance, Hank’s conspiracy-theorist drinking buddy Dale (Johnny Hardwick), was a source of easy punchlines. Now, his tinfoil-hat ideas about vaccines, fluoride, chemtrails, “false flags,” etc., are mainstream within the GOP.
Hank, as a pragmatic Republican in the centrist style of John McCain or Mitt Romney, today is the fringe character, represented by a fast-dwindling power base in conservative politics. It is inconceivable that Hank’s family, or at least his friend group, wouldn’t have been ruptured by Trumpism at some point in the last decade.
The show’s response is to sidestep this reality. When the season begins, Hank and Peggy Hill (Kathy Najimy) are returning to Arlen, Texas from Saudi Arabia, where Hank has spent several years working for an international propane conglomerate.
The implication is that they are unaware of the recent upheavals in U.S. politics, although I’m sure Saudi Arabia has some version of the internet.
Their homecoming is nonetheless destabilizing. Newly retired and directionless, Hank discovers more boba tea than barbecue, craft beer that tastes like fruit, a generation obsessed with pronouns and appropriation and a town still piecing itself together after the pandemic.
For instance, his sad-sack friend Bill (Stephen Root) literally hasn’t left the house in five years, a grim scenario played for mild laughs. (“Did you know that when you finish Netflix, they give you a wellness check?,” says the now morbidly obese, depressive shut-in.)
Bobby, however, has become a hardworking and respected chef, which is a pleasant surprise, since his character seemed like he would have grown into an adult who streams podcasts on Youtube to the exclusion of professional ambitions. His restaurant combines traditional Japanese and German cuisine, a complicated fusion that apparently left no room for the third Axis power, Italy.
The new episodes retain the show’s affection for its cast, its warmth and its consistently solid joke writing. But it labors to keep its politics implicit. One gets the sense that Judge, via Hank, is holding his tongue. After all, this is the guy who made “Idiocracy,” one of the most influential political texts of the 21st century.
But maybe his restraint is the message. Not every show can, or should, turn into the current version of “South Park.” And how many families have survived by talking around political issues rather than through them?
This might not be a sustainable way to engage with the world, but it works well enough for a pleasant return to a familiar place, I tell you what.