Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Steppenwolf of East Texas

2026-Sep-12

Heraclitus sticks out in my mind as the pre-Socratic philosopher who said in some form or another that, “you cannot step into the same river twice.” The other thing I remember about him is that he was one of the monists. Meaning they thought ultimately there is one elementary thing all reality was made from. Heraclitus said fire. Maybe literally? He chose it because fire was always changing yet always the same.

He had a real Classical sounding name that was easy to remember. Aniximander’s name in English plays too many tricks with my could-be-dyslexia, so he was unlikely to be an ancient Greek thinker that sticks out in my mind. Pythagoras was the juiciest of those names from before writing became en vogue for the intellectual Hellenes.

I first saw that aphorism about the impossibility of stepping into the same river twice in the early pages of the textbooks that was assigned to my (PHIL 1301) Introduction To Western Philosophy course at Blinn College. Likely the first chapter. It does not get more introductory to Western thought than the studies of the surviving work of deep thinkers writing in Greek. I thought I grasped the meaning of the expression.

I did. That is an objective truth. Not the full extent of it though. Just a surface truth, but not the whole underlying principle. Like seeing a circle before you notice that it is a sphere. Sure, I knew that the river is a flowing body of water. The water itself is not the same river when you step through it again. The second twist to how crossing the same river twice is impossible is that the person stepping into the river each time is a new person. Subject to change at all times. Up until a point where they stop changing.

All that waxing about classical philosophy is the sobering introduction needed for reflecting on the wisdom to be had from our subject: King of the Hill. The show had been briefly touched upon here at the blog. You can find it in the archives. In the 2023 section. Issue fifty seven. Back then the blog was intended to update the users of fredlambuth.com about the committed changes. Only a few lines were mentioned in the last two paragraphs about how the show was enjoyed for its homey sensibilities. An effect that only reinforced with age of the viewer. Little did I know back at the time of writing, but the show got approved for a revival season soon after. At this point we are up to two of them. 20 whole new episodes of plausible Texas hijinks delivered with a modest animation style.

So far I have only seen the ten episodes of the first season. I hear the second revival season is even better. Good enough to sit side by side with the golden age seasons in the late 90s/early 2000s. If they are, perhaps that would be occasion enough to write a second blog post about it when they are finally seen. Right now the editorial board feel there is enough to talk about with this ‘fourteenth’ season to fill our usual word count. They watched the show even more than I did, so I will defer to the board’s judgement.

For my tastes, revival seasons of television shows are a dicey affair. I rarely find satisfaction when they happen. The greater the gap between the original run and the second shot, the less likely of a worthwhile outcome. The Deadwood movie that was released a few years ago pleased a superfan like me on a superficial level. Nothing else comes to mind as being an obvious example of sticking the landing on a delayed output of a treasured TV series. That HBO miniseries We Own This Town set in Baltimore and made by a lot of The Wire crew totally rocked my television drama sensibilities. Does that one count?

King of The Hill runs some screwy math to fit their revival season timeframe into where they left the characters in the last original season, broadcast in 2008. Between season thirteen and fourteen, 17 years have gone by on the calendar that you and I use, dear reader. For the contrivances of what the revival screenwriters want, only about eight years have passed. The ages of everybody get fuzzy when you try to make sense of this adjusted timeline.

Fussiness was my first reaction whenever I did the wee bit of math to guess how old each character is supposed to be. Quite a bit of Hank can be attributed to him coming of age in semi-rural Texas in the 50s through 70s. Despite knowing how much of that chronological background is necessary for Hank, or most of the adult characters, to function as the superb comedy the show was, I got over it. I rolled with the fuzzy math about how the Hill clan and Hank’s friends have landed into the mid 2020s.

Once getting over that hump, I found myself in the familiar waters of Arlen, Texas. A TV world that skirts the reality of the Texas I have known all my life. The 2020 seasons of King of The Hill more or less reaches that psychic geography as the previous seasons did. The adult characters have aged up into what they would be doing two and a half decades after the show started. Bill got fatter. Boomhauer settled down with a woman who has a dorky kid. They all found ways for the smartphone to play to their characters’ vices. The children have become college aged adults, written like college aged TV characters. It is not hard to imagine Joseph Gribble, or his type, doing sophomoric shit in any decade.

Bobby being a chef that already has the wherewithal to already have a restaurant that he manages and co-owns is another hump that I had to get over to get back to the warm currents of great King of the Hill’s plotlines. I do not know for sure, but I can imagine Bobby being a restaurateur is a more flexible career choice for episode ideas. Rather than if he were a prop comic in LA to middling success. Whatever contrivance the writers needed for Bobby, I was willing to give it to them for the sake of the rest of the show feeling comfortable. This food snob twenty year old Bobby may not be who I imagined the thirteen year old Bobby of the prior seasons would grow up to be. However, he is a believable enough character in the semi-real world of Arlen, TX in 2025.

Hank and Peggy Hill are a Rip Van Winkle set of characters in the revival season. They were written to be living in a very managed and contained replica of the USA inside Saudi Arabia for the time in between the original and the revival season. Let’s just say ten years. That sounds like a reasonable length. In that time, the Hills have experienced little to no personal growth. They were hermetically sealed in a compound in the Arabian desert, enjoying their creature comforts. When the revival series begins, they are retiring back into the ‘modern’ USA. A land that the writers would have us believe is now a slightly alien place to the Hills.

Another contrivance I can allow the writers. I see it as being the theme to which they wanted to revive a TV show about stodgy conservative Texans having trouble adjusting to the 1990s. It is a tall challenge to create the same show, two dozen years later. That was what I was looking for. That is what I found in this second wind season of King of The Hill. Thoughtful, hard working Americans of all stripes working together, despite all the jackasses. The pieces are not exactly how I would have found them years after the show started. What I found was still that damn relaxing Texas warmth.

Each episode of the original run boils down to elementary hard truths. Each one finds some character, presumably Hank since he is the stable protagonist around which the show orbits. The start of the episode will have him, or sometimes a supporting character, thinking rigidly about how life is supposed to be, then something happens to upend those notions, and it concludes with said character readjusting to the new circumstance that is definitely not what they wanted to happen at the start.

In this fictional Arlen, Texas there is a church, with a very Minnesota sounding lady preacher. Jesus is talked about here and there. The presence of Christianity on this show is not why I find this show to be so virtuous, or borderline holy. The church, and the social trappings that come with that in East Texas, are just presented just as quotidian as the Whataburger, Luby’s, or the highways connecting everything in Texas. They’re set dressing.

What is so virtuous and holy about this gosh darn show is the moral rectitude of Hank. It comes without righteousness. The second genesis season dangles the idea of Hank still being a stubborn conservative at the very end of the first episode. Hank and Peggy buy some girl scout cookies from a troop posted up outside a grocery store (presumably H.E.B.) When presented with the information that a cookie had some new name at the request of the Samoans, the Hills said out loud that switching out a word as to not hurt somebody’s feelings is an easy change.

First season Hank Hill would definitely have had a whole episode about the name change if the episode started with that scene. Or it would have triggered something else, maybe by meeting a wacky one-shot character voiced by a celebrity. First-season Hank definitely would have been one of those asinine people he always complains about throughout the series. The ones who get pissy over such an inconsequential matter.

The characters' chronological ages get fuzzy, but Hank had grown a lot with the passing seasons. I definitely see him calling himself a conservative. He is. The modern world Hank kept brushing up again is not the one he envisioned when he was the quarterback of his high school football team. These scrapes were points of learning for Hank. Blows that softened him and showed him what is worth conserving.

This second wave Hank is the effective continuation of that boring center of moral uprightness continuing its path. A difficult path cutting through a world of cheap thrills that sometimes taunt him. There are changes that last between episodes on King of The Hill. That commitment to continuity is something always to be respected. Developing actual personal change among one, let alone many, characters on a TV comedy is a challenge when you have so many seasons to write.

The writers of King of The Hill should be championed for continuing the vibe of suburban Texas. I personally can attest to the bonafides of this show for the 90s/00s, and once again in the 2020s. They did it again! With a Hank , who is a little bit wiser and the world just as infuriating to him.