The similarly rave reviews among the entertainment intelligentsia and the general public suggest that King of the Hill endures because it reflects what is true.

O n Monday, August 4, 2025, the hit comedy King of the Hill returned after a nearly 16-year hiatus. When it was initially cancelled after 13 successful seasons, conservatives lamented the loss of a rare cultural touchstone that resembled their own reality: a church-going nuclear family who took pleasure and pride in the things that long mattered — a manicured lawn, small-town high school football victories, and a perfectly seared steak grilled over a free American’s fuel of choice (Hill family patriarch, Hank, opts exclusively for clean-burning propane and a panoply of propane accessories).

For the Hills, the daily drama in their fictional hometown of Arlen, Texas, wasn’t about politics. It centered upon more perennial dilemmas, like coping with a new family sitting in their regular pew, cleaning up the messes made by Hank’s feckless boss, or routinely bailing out his misfit friends.

While King of the Hill delivered few enduring one-liners like those perfected by The Office, the two shows shared a creator and writers, and they were grounded in a belief that resonant comedies gave audiences moments that were “small, real, and relatable.” The typical goings-on of life, they concluded, featured ample absurdity that made for good television.

Beyond the humor, King of the Hill affirmed the stability conferred by moral normality. The Hills and their friends weren’t sophisticated, but they weren’t stupid, either. There were people cleverer than Hank Hill, but they never got the best of him. Antagonists — hipsters, conmen, reprobates — didn’t win in the end. Things worked out as they should because the main characters ultimately did as they should. For millions of Americans, it was a potent cultural reassurance.

Despite its continued popularity after 250 episodes, King of the Hill’s run came to an end in 2009 when Fox decided that expanding an adult cartoon portfolio required it to ditch the subtle humor of Hank and Co. for something decidedly edgier: a short-lived Family Guy spinoff called The Cleveland Show. Cartoon Network syndication gave the series a new home, where long-time King of the Hill die-hards and new, younger audiences could both enjoy reruns of the Hill family and all of Arlen’s downright regular people. These fans joined forces online to demand a reboot of their beloved television program, and in January 2023, they finally got their wish when Hulu announced they would resurrect the series for streaming.

Co-creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels told audiences that while the show would age its characters and modernize its setting for 2025, it would keep the Hills’ commonsense values central, avoiding getting “too into the weeds politically” and focusing instead on character reactions to these shifts. In Season 14, Hank and his wife, Peggy, return to Arlen after Hank’s stint working in the propane industry in Saudi Arabia. America seems much different since they left, as the Hills try to make sense of nuisance bike lanes and ubiquitous rideshare apps. What remains unchanged, however, are the people, especially their now-adult son, Bobby, and their circle of friends who find themselves in all-too-familiar predicaments brought about by their same foibles and flaws.

While Bobby operates a Japanese-Texas-Hill-Country-German fusion restaurant in nearby Dallas, Hank and Peggy must figure out how they’ll fill their days in retirement. Hank grapples with his newfound love of soccer, a contradiction to his long-held hatred of the game, and how young people need more coddling than he did at their age. Meanwhile, Bobby can’t disguise his disgust when he discovers his childhood girlfriend, a straitlaced overachiever, now practices “ethical non-monogamy” in her college years. And Peggy panics about undergoing an MRI for a knee injury sustained while playing pickleball. “Small, real, and relatable,” indeed.

In the reboot, “laugh out loud” scenes are rewards primarily reserved for returning fans relishing references to seasons past. The heart of the comedy is as it was before, found in true-to-life characters and authentic situations easily understood — a paranoid friend who insists he knows the hidden truth behind current events, microbreweries pushing the limits on what can be considered beer, or the struggle to find one’s place back home.

While conservatives may celebrate Hank’s levelheaded and un-woke view of the world, King of the Hill can’t accurately be categorized as an “equal opportunity offender” that implicitly gives viewers permission to laugh at things society says they ought not to. That’s because the show is not actually poking fun at anyone. It simply showcases different types of people — progressive and conservative, traditional and trendy, pretentious and pedestrian — just as they are, contending with universal truths in the course of day-to-day life. A laugh watching King of the Hill is come by honestly since it’s the product of how one relates to the show rather than a reaction to social commentary from its creators.

Unlike other series that shame segments of their viewership by uncharitably portraying the characters meant to represent them, King of the Hill demonstrates in a friendly and funny way the genuine diversity of Americans. Their premise accepts that the country is filled with people who have a variety of dispositions on politics, religion, sports, child-rearing, and everything in between. Real tolerance is in taking people as they are, even if their faults and eccentricities exasperate us, because most are decent and motivated by the same fundamental needs and desires.

In today’s polarized public life, such a philosophy feels rare. That might be why critics and fans agree that the return of King of the Hill is a triumph, giving it 98 percent and 90 percent approval ratings, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. The unusual alignment among the entertainment intelligentsia and general public suggests that King of the Hill endures because it reflects what is true at a time we need to hear it most: Our fellow Americans are good, we should do our part to get along with others, and there is plenty of humor to be found in the ordinary things of life.