Judge returns to Texas roots with ‘King of the Hill’ revival

The king is once more chugging over the hill as the animated sitcom “King of the Hill” is resurrected for its 14th season on Hulu.

Mike Judge, famous for his “Beavis and Butt-Head” characters, created the series and plays Hank Hill, the patriarch of the family of a well-meaning and earnest blue-collar family in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas. The popular series ran on Fox and in syndication and on various sites.

Judge says he got the idea for the series by watching his neighbors. “I think as far back as in college a good friend of mine and I used to sort of do a bit of two bubbas sitting around drinking beer and talking about what’s in the news or whatever,” he recalls.

“I had a paper route that was sort of in a blue-collar neighborhood with lots of Texas transplants, so early on I had these kinds of characters around me. But I think when I lived north of Dallas, I had really a pretty good neighborhood. Everyone took care of each other, helped out with each other’s lawns.

“Later on when I was back from New York, after ‘Beavis and Butt-Head,’ I had done a panel cartoon. I just had this image of four guys with beers standing out in front of the fence, kind of like I used to see when I’d look out my kitchen window.

“And I just drew them all saying, ‘Yep, yep, yep.’ And that’s still basically the drawing you see at the beginning of the show, is those four guys and their beers. That was really the seed of the idea, I guess.

‘One of our strengths’

Unlike other cartoons, which often blast their way into the flat screen, “King of the Hill” is about ordinary people doing everyday things. “When I was first writing the pilot, I was just really thinking about the neighborhood I lived in in Dallas and what I did day-to-day. I would go to Home Depot all the time and work on my fence.

“So it’s really just kind of trying to just look to real life for inspiration as much as possible instead of other TV and movie characters.”

At first, Judge says he and co-writer Greg Daniels weren’t sure how to depict the quirky family.

“We debated in the beginning about having them age possibly, and then quickly decided not to. But I think some of the characters have evolved a little. Especially, I think, Peggy became more interesting around the second season.

“At one point there was a note from an executive, who’s not there anymore, that we need more life-changing episodes. And they were trying to apply that theory that works on some shows about just constantly shocking the audience and having crazy things happen. I think you do that too much and then you don’t have anything left. I think part of the strength of the show is that we haven’t changed that much,” he says.

“I like shows like the old ‘Bob Newhart Show,’ where you can pretty much see something the first season or the last season in one of those episodes and really everybody stayed pretty consistent. I think that’s one of our strengths.”

But plunging into its 14th season after an extended hiatus calls for change. This time Hank and his wife, Peggy, are back in Arlen from years in Saudi Arabia, where they secured their retirement nest egg. And their son, Bobby, is now trying to negotiate life in Dallas as a chef.

Of course, the guys with their brews at that Tom Sawyer fence are back: Dale, Boomhauer and Bill. Most of the original cast returns headed by Judge, Kathy Najimy as Peggy and Pamela Adlon as Bobby.

Stand-up comic Ronny Chieng guests as Laotian neighbor Kahn Souphanousinphone, an arrogant and materialistic IT guy who thinks he’s better than his working-class neighbors.

‘That’s funnier’

When Fox anointed the first season, Judge was working “like crazy on the ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ movie, he says..

“With the ‘King of the Hill’ animation you work way ahead of the schedule, so I’d done most of (the episodes). We had a half season so we had, I think it was 12 episodes or 11, maybe it was 13, I don’t know — but our first season was a half season, and those were all recorded pretty much in the can, and I was working on the ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ movie and I thought, ‘Who knows what ‘King of the Hill’ will do? Who knows what people will make of this?’ ”

What people made of it is part of TV history. And while Hank and Peggy have aged, Judge’s technique for making them funny hasn’t.

“It’s usually putting Hank up against something really annoying and ridiculous in the modern world and just making it as annoying and ridiculous as possible,” Judge says. “Also, we’ve lined up all the characters and just had them really humiliated and embarrassed, putting them in humiliating situations

“I try to not let the show get too political. To me, it’s more social than political, I guess you’d say, because that’s funnier.”

The “King of the Hill” revival premieres Monday on Hulu.