“Bobby, if you weren’t my son, I’d hug you.”

I recently— well, a few months back —completed a rewatch of King of the Hill, as soon low-intensity background TV. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit; it aged better than I would have expected, and it's interesting from the standpoint of it being a show about conservative people that doesn't itself necessarily have a conservative viewpoint. It’s basically about how they’re being confronted by a changing world and how they are forced to adapt and grow because of it, which is a timeless premise that I think they did a lot with.



It can be too "centrist" for my taste, occasionally depicting manipulative or overzealous upsetters of the status quo as villain-of-the-week. Sometimes those “go too far” antagonists are gun nuts or religious zealots or society mavens, but sometimes they’re social workers or hippies or an anti-racism educator. Overall, though, I’d say it's actually quite critical of the narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and bigotry that shows up in that kind of culture, even as it has clear affection for other parts of living in a small, mostly working class town in Texas. One of the greatest strengths in the writing is how they depict the kid characters. Bobby, Connie, and Joseph all feel very believably like real children, with that very real mix of being ignorant of the ways of the world and yet much more aware and with it than you’d necessarily expect. And I think their conception of Kahn, though not without flaws, was a pretty complex and human depiction of an Asian man for a late 90’s-early 2000’s era show. He’s one of my favorite characters, and I might write more about him sometime later.

But the piece that's most interesting to me looking back on it with 2021 eyes is Dale Gribble-- the basement-dwelling gun nut who's obsessed with anti-government conspiracy theories. If he were a little bit wealthier, you can imagine him being one of those yahoos who stormed the capitol. It’s kind of shocking at how differently we have been forced to see people like that. The show definitely portrays him in an unflattering light-- dumb, helpless, cowardly, financially supported by a wife who cheated on him with a hot neighbor for years, unwittingly raising the son of that other man. QUITE LITERALLY, as people like him would say, a beta cuck. Still, he is largely presented as harmless, and actually an extremely loving and supportive husband and father. I guess they’ve let him be a more well-rounded character, and they certainly make it clear he sucks, but I’m not sure how I feel about how ultimately they act like’s nothing really dangerous about him.