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That's an awfully blanket statement which indicates to me you judge the show entirely by the cover, and have seen at most a few episodes. You probably saw a red

That's an awfully blanket statement which indicates to me you judge the show entirely by the cover, and have seen at most a few episodes. You probably saw a redneck family and immediately assumed the show centers entirely around the popular stereotypes and tropes of that subset of society. While it's certainly not lacking in the aforementioned, the show explores a far wider range of subject matter than you'd probably care to give it credit for. While any show running for so long has hit-and-miss episodes, overall the the show is very well rounded - it explores controversial subjects with care and grace, while remaining funny and heartwarming. And yes, the humor can be quite dry. It's not for kids with short attention spans and who need constant gag after gag, i.e. Family Guy. In most episodes it's difficult to discern whether the moralistic views are real "American values" or a parody of them. It's much more about episode-long deep satire than one-off jokes.

freshhawk 14y ago
Well I have seen most of the episodes of King of the Hill and pretty much agree with that assessment. It's not about the setting or the characters or even the jokes (which are both more dry and generally less funny than other projects, and I love dry humour). It's about the complete reversal of the counter-culture commentary that made Office Space and Idiocracy popular. If you choose a boring hack writer setting (teacher wife, blue collar father, stupid son, etc, etc) for your show then you better make that choice the focus of your commentary, like the Simpsons did. The setting was chosen in order to comment on it. If King of the Hill was doing that then the commentary appeared to be "Isn't this nice. See how wonderful life can be when you don't question your place? Learning won't make you happy, conformity will. Good hard work and ignorance can be fulfilling". I don't think anyone is wrong for liking it, but you certainly can't complain that fans of Judge's other work dislike that level of support for an anti-intellectual outlook.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  > It's about the complete reversal of the counter-culture commentary that made Office Space and Idiocracy popular... If King of the Hill was doing that then the commentary appeared to be "Isn't this nice. See how wonderful life can be when you don't question your place? Learning won't make you happy, conformity will. Good hard work and ignorance can be fulfilling". But it's really not. Another reply put it better than I could as far as the reversal of commentary: > if you really think KOTH "carefully reinforces the traditional power structure", your irony sensors are so irreparably broken that you should have all of modern culture explained to you via a translator.

freshhawk 14y ago

Well I have seen most of the episodes of King of the Hill and pretty much agree with that assessment. It's not about the setting or the characters or even the jokes (which are both more dry and generally less funny than other projects, and I love dry humour). It's about the complete reversal of the counter-culture commentary that made Office Space and Idiocracy popular. If you choose a boring hack writer setting (teacher wife, blue collar father, stupid son, etc, etc) for your show then you better make that choice the focus of your commentary, like the Simpsons did. The setting was chosen in order to comment on it. If King of the Hill was doing that then the commentary appeared to be "Isn't this nice. See how wonderful life can be when you don't question your place? Learning won't make you happy, conformity will. Good hard work and ignorance can be fulfilling". I don't think anyone is wrong for liking it, but you certainly can't complain that fans of Judge's other work dislike that level of support for an anti-intellectual outlook.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
> It's about the complete reversal of the counter-culture commentary that made Office Space and Idiocracy popular... If King of the Hill was doing that then the commentary appeared to be "Isn't this nice. See how wonderful life can be when you don't question your place? Learning won't make you happy, conformity will. Good hard work and ignorance can be fulfilling". But it's really not. Another reply put it better than I could as far as the reversal of commentary: > if you really think KOTH "carefully reinforces the traditional power structure", your irony sensors are so irreparably broken that you should have all of modern culture explained to you via a translator.