Apr 29 2009
A Little Bit of History: King of The Hill
To describe King of The Hill, is to describe a more updated version of The Flintstones, probably the last cartoon situational sitcom that was aimed to adult; sure, we can mention The Simpsons and Family Guy but those series use a slapstick/ shocking humor to entertain, opposite to the King of the Hill that searched for humor in the quotidian and the mundane to entertain and make his audience laugh; one cool thing about the show it was the only show of FOX who tried to maintain a realistic approach of life even if it was a cartoon, you wouldn’t see any of the characters doing something without any repercussion, other cool thing about King of the Hill was that it had some form of continuity, where the viewer won’t see see a perpetual status-quo in the characters or the settings. A practice that was later taken by other shows as well.
In 1995 Mike Judge (The creator and star of the show) after a long and successful run with MTV, he decided to create something different from the juvenile humor that was in Beavis and Butthead and with the collaboration of Greg Daniels, King of the Hill was born and soon after the first episode the show was an instant hit with mature audience and was named by several publications of the time one of the best shows on history of television ever. Also, it was the second longest running cartoon, right after The Simpsons who started eight years early (1989) setting the ground for situational comedies and Sunday prime time T.V. as we know it.
Is difficult to think of today’s T.V. without thinking on King of The Hill, practically if you grew up in the 90’s this was one of the series that changed the view of cartoons in history and also it was one of the few who created the schism between the sweet 80’s television sitcoms and realistic approach of the 90’s. I know is difficult to think about how much television changed, but imagine Married With Children or Parker Lewis Can’t Loose set today, probably they fell and probably that’s why Married With Children was canceled because it was extremely surreal and people grew up tired of the antics of Al Bundy because they wanted something more real and less fictional (even if it was a cartoon) at first The Simpsons was the answer for the dose of reality, the anti-Cosby, but after season 10th the show went “ga-ga” and less smart, even if today entertains is not the same as it was in his first years of run, so King of The Hill took over when the Simpsons became strange.
But today’s television dynamics are changing again and following the principle of entropy, television history is repeating itself by the renaisance of the slapstick humor in the Seth McFarlane shows, who are gaining a lot of popularity lately; but Seth couldn’t do anything without the founding fathers of today’s television comedy who set the bases in the 90’s. Is going to be difficult forget a groundbreaking comedy as King of The Hill as is going to be for a very long time now in syndication and reruns because the show was canceled in early 2009, but at the end is not going to be the end but just a new beginning.
