Mike Judge won’t let go the woke.
The “Beavis & Butt-head” creator is one of the few comic voices to challenge the “Woke Mind Virus.” Judge’s 2022 comedy “Beavis & Butt-Head Do the Universe” slapped White Privilege around to grand effect.
His ahead-of-its-time animated sitcom, “The Goode Family,” struck a similar vein.
That 2009 series mocked an uber-progressive family years before the word “woke” went mainstream. The show got a swift pink slip from ABC, but its good-natured humor mattered.
It wasn’t cruel, just prescient.
Now, Judge is back with a rebooted “King of the Hill” series for Hulu. The original show ran from 1997 to 2009 and offered a witty, respectful take on Texas culture. That itself was a minor miracle.
The 10-episode reboot gives Judge, along with original show co-creator Greg Daniels and Saladin Patterson, a chance to explore the tension between the old-school Hills and modern life.
Uber ratings. Gender fluidity. Cultural appropriation.
And, once again, Judge and co. aren’t here to “own the libs” or take a Culture War side. The show acknowledges cultural changes and mines the humor within.
Except that humor is often mild, at best, and the rest of the stories lack tension.
The reboot doesn’t pick up where we last left Hank (Judge) and Peggy Hill (Kathy Najimy). They’re older now, and fresh from a stint in Saudi Arabia where Hank plied his propane trade. Young Bobby is a grown man, overseeing a fusion restaurant as its owner and head chef.
That scratchy voice, supplied once again by Pamela Adlon, mostly remains the same.
The Hills have called it a career, leaving them with new challenges in retirement. That doesn’t prepare them for the shock of seeing how much has changed back home in (fictional) Arlen, Texas.
Suddenly, they miss their Middle East days, a thread established in the first episode but subsequently ignored.
The early jokes hit on cultural outrages, the kind that flood social media on the daily. The Hills find it all bewildering, letting viewers process it through their eyes. It’s sweet, smart and often amusing.
It’s also a rarity that any Hollywood product pokes fun at these off-limit topics. Judge has the confidence and clarity to go where others fear to tread.
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“King of the Hill” occasionally mocks the Right, too. One episode finds Dale Gribble (Johnny Hardwick), the OG conspiracy theorist, quoting Newsmax and spinning farcical tales tied to the Bush political dynasty.
(Hardwick died in 2023 and the character’s voice toward the end of the season is supplied by Toby Huss)
It’s clear Judge’s team isn’t gunning to score points with liberal Hollywood. Heck, Hank’s devotion to the Bushes alone is “problematic” in some circles. Call it observational humor that speaks to our bewildering times.
More, please.
So why does “King of the Hill” feel like an old friend who overstayed his welcome? The reboot’s quiet life lessons and cautious pacing feel slack against the onslaught of newer, cutting-edge fare. Some of the initial storylines are sweet but slight, leaving audiences hungry for something more substantial.
Maybe we need a sharper-edged take on societal decline? Or the “King of the Hill” template said all that was needed to be said about Small Town Texas the first time ’round?
The original run of “King of the Hill” was rarely hilarious. The gags proved winning and true, never cutting too closely to the targets in play. The show’s colorful characters gave the series its pulse, while Hank’s traditional values proved comical yet refreshing.
The same is true of the reboot, at least according to the three episodes this critic sampled. The show is neither woke nor a bland cash grab. It’s just not as bracing as the first time around, a time when sharing a right-leaning family on the boob tube felt revolutionary.
“King of the Hill” returns, courtesy of Hulu, Aug. 4.
Arlen, which is Garland, isn’t really small town Texas. It is a suburb of Dallas and not a very small town.