Talking Simpsons - Bonus Episode: King of the Hill's Reboot Season

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

On this special free feed preview, we're finally discussing King of the Hill's long-teased and long-awaited reboot. Listen in and learn how this new season came into being—and how we were kinda in on the ground floor—get to know the creative staff behind it, and find out just what happened to our favorite Arlenians over the past 15 years... or was it nine? No matter how complicated the new timeline is, we're just happy to be back! If you like this portion and want to hear the rest of the episode and all of our TalKing of the Hill miniseries (with more to come every month), head over to Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up at the $5 level. Once you do, you'll have immediate access to all of our limited miniseries, covering animated shows like Futurama, Mission Hill, The Critic, and Batman: The Animated Series. (Over 200 episodes to date!) So visit Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up today!

What you're listening to, son? Howdy all, and welcome to Talk King of the Hill, the podcast where we go pro, pro pain. I'm your host, the White Whale of the Extermination Community, Bob Mackie, and this is the Talking Sipsons Network's chronological exploration of King of the Hill, who is here with me today, as always. People with bad bugs love to read. It's Henry Gilbert. And this month's episode is Any Given Hill Day.

It's kind of like I'm 11 again over hearing my dad telling my mom that I better get better at math if I'm going to be so bad at sports, which hurt double because I suck at math too. This month's episode originally aired on August 4th, 2025, the same day all of the other episodes aired of season 14. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. This is Hank Hill with the news. The Fantastic Four First Steps Baintains First Against the Naked Gun of the box office. Skydance officially buys Paramount for $8 billion, and Alex Warren's Ordinary is topping the charts,

a song we've all heard and know so well. Yes, I have my fingers on the pulse of pop music, and I'm humming this every day. Actually, Henry made me aware of this song for the very first time, and you did send me a clip of this, Henry. This is the old person test. you recognize these notes old people so that's a big note for me so old people so that's a big note from me everybody i'm sorry i'm too old for this shit and it's nice to know that speaking of ordinary

an ordinary looking guy like whoever this is can make a pop song he's like an ed sheerin type unexpected. Yeah, it's like a white American Ed Sheeran who it's like, but it has like the stomp-clap ethos of like 10 years ago songs that were hits. Yeah, except they don't have the oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, or like some kind of weird millennial howl, whatever that was, where they have to include that in every chorus. Yeah, it definitely has more of the traditionalists. Like, I mean, when I looked at this guy, he reminded me of that of the guy I did. Now I've thankfully forgotten his name. But the, the reaction. white conservative

like musician guys. Was that the rich man of Richmond man? That guy, yes, yeah. Okay. The last I heard about him is he got divorced when you thought like, well, he had already have been divorced, I thought. But now he's divorced. Yeah, he had a smaller flash in the pan than Hawk Tua, everybody.

So that just shows make your podcast if you become famous. Oliver Anthony is his name, by the way. Ah, that's the guy. See, even that even just sounds like Alex Warren to me, same name, basically. But yeah, no, this guy, I'd never heard of him. He's apparently huge. Like, this has been number one on the charts for weeks. It's big on Spotify.

The YouTube video I linked Bob to at the time of this recording has 115 million plays. I never heard of this guy before. Yes. And if you're mad at us for this, this is not our job anymore to know what's on the radio or know who, whoever this man is. Well, I've already forgot the person's name. Alex Warren. Alex Warren, yes. It just glided off my brain.

So, hey, if you're enjoying him, fine. It seems pretty inoffensive. So Fantastic Four First Steps. How is this doing, Henry? This is no surprise to anybody, but we are basically a little over a month after this episode has premiered. So it's recent history. Yeah, no, the, this summer has been the story of superhero fatigue. Is it real?

Or is China just not getting the movies anymore or not going to them? Because basically it was Superman versus the Fantastic Four. Superman won. It's looking like, and this also, this is something they talk about on the Blanky. check podcast and they blame themselves for starting this kind of thing. People shouldn't know if regular people shouldn't care if a movie is profitable or not

but everybody's like oh can Fantastic Four even limp to 500 million and it's like we shouldn't care about this we're not the businessmen but it is limping to 500 million globally and that's not great for a Marvel movie. They're cutting them from Avengers End Game 2 or whatever that's called.

Yes the do no they can't make Doomsday without them it's Dr. Dooms movie. I I could go a very long time about this if you want me to. But yeah. Well, I guess my movies of this summer have been The Naked Gun and Weapons, my most recent favorite movies I've seen in the theater. Yes, I saw Weapons as well, and I really enjoyed it. It was funny to see the trailer for Weapons preceding Fantastic Four First Steps

because the Silver Surfer actress, Julie Garner, no, Garner's her last name. God, what's her name? I can't remember. old blondeie herself yes blondeie the blonde lady she's the silver surfer in first steps and also the lead uh miss candy in weapons yes she uh this is uh julia garner julia garner see i saying julia garner no julia garner she's great yeah and yes i had to be told that she played silver surfer and that people were mad about it yes i know a hot basically nude woman is playing silver surfer how dare we like but yeah the naked gun it had to

settle for like what's the number one comedy in America but that also was the whole thing of like go to see this movie comedies aren't released in theaters anymore it was part of the the ad campaign yeah and speaking so we we both saw weapons Henry and this just shows how much I know some modern actors in that you referenced a role one of the actors and weapons played previously I had no idea what you were talking about and I don't know why you couldn't have just said Han Solo Well, to be, I was trying to be like zero spoilers, even naming actors in the movie. That's not a spoiler. That's a cast list. I, well, people, letterbox especially, people can be sensitive about you saying things that aren't even in a trailer.

And like, I don't know, that Alden-Iken-Rigold guy is barely even in the trailer. Yeah, but I mean, it's, I mean, maybe like Kevin Spacey showing up in seven, that could be a spoiler. But somebody who is one of the principal cast of the movie being a spoiler, if you get upset by that being spoiled for you, you need to be institutionalized. Okay. Well, I don't review, I don't letterbox

too many horror films. So I, I go probably, probably overly sensitive about spoiling even cast members in a movie.

I think you're fine. You just confused the shit out of me. Well, apologies. Yeah. No, young Hans Solo,

he did awesome, just like an Oppenheimer. He has these roles that make you go like, oh, that movie really sucked to make this good actor seem so boring

in the Han Solo movie. Yeah, Alden Aaron Reich, I believe his name is. And also Benedict Wong, great in that movie, weapons as well. I mean, the whole cast rules, the whole cast. Yes, everybody goes to see weapons. It might still be playing. And actually, unlike Zach Krieger's last movie, Barbarian, they're already advertising a physical release of weapons.

So you can probably buy it at some point within the next few months. And we both enjoy The Naked Gun. That was a great movie. Yes, yes. I'm sure we will have talked about it on, a recent talk to the audience. So this could all be just a rerun of a conversation you've heard in late August. Well, I'm sure we didn't talk about ordinary back then. Oh, no, absolutely not. Absolutely. Just the movie chat may be, but hey, it's been a month. You might have forgotten

our thoughts on it. It's very important to keep those in mind. And Skydance buying Paramount, from what I know, this stinks, and it's bad. It is a bad thing and it sucks. Well, like every no good person owns a trillion dollar media company. So it's like, oh, another different evil guy bought it. But the new evil guy, like every new generation of evil conservative, I'll liken it to King of the Hill. Like it's basically Buck

Strickland is now selling it to like a younger, more sociopathic, non-good old boy. They're both evil, but this is like a young 40-something billionaire who just is I don't know, more pure in his white nationalism, I'd say. I see. Yeah, I've only been following this when it came to the Colbert News because

I mean, it's no shock that Colbert is not really for us anymore and we love his older work. So it's like the bittersweetness of seeing a show I don't like it canceled but then it being canceled for the worst possible reason. Exactly, yes.

Yeah. And same with I wouldn't be surprised if the Daily Show is on the chopping block next to which also I big time fell off of around the same time too. And both I felt did not meet the challenge of this fucking decade of Trump the way you would have wanted them to.

so that that was but but also when colbert and the daily show go away it will be replaced with something far far worse and horrible yes they're going to bring back the news hour half hour or whatever that conservative answer to the daily show was on fox news for a hot minute fucking phallin had on great gutfeld now we're getting really ripped from the headlines here but like they this is they know like the spineless ones like jimmy phallon know know who to suck up to for sure that he knows what hair to household to get ahead in this business. It's also funny how this connects to King of the Hill in that I feel like right around when this was about done was when South Park did their episode and I had a lot of thoughts on that, but that the first place that Matt and Trey appeared to discuss it was on a panel with Mike Judge and Andy Sandberg talking about Paramount or a new animated series.

Okay. Awkward. Yeah, I, this will not bring back Duckman in any way. So I'm also against it for that reason. Paramount is sitting on Duckman, won't even put it on Paramount Plus. So, I mean, I'm really scared. What would they possibly do with Star Trek likes?

But also, Star Trek has been in a bad place for a while too, but I can't imagine this new evil monster owning it. Like, the best thing that Skydance did and this guy at Skydance did is he's like the producer of Top Gun Maverick, Maverick, which I thought was a great piece of propaganda. like amazing American propaganda, the kind do you want from Top Gun but that's the best that kind of the shit this asshole can make.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just happy that King of the Hills with a great company like Walt Disney Corporation. Never did anything wrong. If anything, it's contracting. It doesn't want to buy anything else. So, so yes, I mean, the Skydance buying Paramount and of course, like what Colbert was saying

also is true, it was essentially a bribe. They paid Trump to let them by settling a court case with him and then he or his you know the government approves this giant merger like it it was a it's a bribe they bribed trump and got what they wanted i'm really starting to miss news from the late 90s and early 2000s that we've been covering on this series yeah hey look i could have said even a hundred more horrible things that happened in the week that this happened like this was all the things related to cartoons i prefer like fight

club is released metal gear solid hits the playstation and you're a teenager with no problems. Those are the new stories I like to hear. So, but that's everything that happened two weeks ago when we recorded this. Yeah, so up front, hello to everybody on the free feed. We're dropping this little slice of our Patreon series Talking to the Hill into the free feed as a sample because I know all of you talking Simpsons listeners probably want to know what we think of the new King of the Hill. So you're going to hear a bit of this podcast.

It will cut off at some point. But if you want to hear the rest of this podcast and all of Talking of the Hill and all our other miniseries, please go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. You get all of our podcast ad-free. And again, access to over 200 mini-series episodes. We've covered four and a half seasons of King of the Hill so far. So if you enjoy us talking about this series, that's the place to find it. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Now on to the real matter at hand here. We are covering the King of the Hill reboot. Henry and I have seen all of it. And you'll hear an episode after this where we haven't seen some of it, but we're going back to when we have seen it. And I think

it's safe to say that we're both big fans of what's been going on in these last 10 episodes, right, Henry? I love this new season. It's great. I have almost like no complaints. It's what it's what you wanted to imagine a King of the Hill reboot would be addressing the things you'd want to address. But then also, I think it surprises you by doing things you wouldn't have expected them to do. And then when they do it, you're like, this totally fits for the feel of the series that I expect while taking me in its string directions, which is exactly what you want. want out of a nostalgia reboot for sure. And everyone who said they can't make King of the Hill today or Hank would have voted

for Trump, they need to surrender themselves to the police because we're not going to go through every beat of the series, but in episode one, episode one is basically about let's reintroduce you to the entire cast. And there's a moment in episode one in which it shows you that, okay, despite how conservative everything has become in America compared to when King of the Hill was thriving on Fox, Hank deep down remains a. stubborn but good person. And that's the moment where he is okay with them renaming the cookies from Samoas to whatever they're called, like caramelel twists or whatever. Caramel delights. There's a moment,

oh, sorry, what is it? Caramel Delights. So there's a moment where you think, okay, this is, this could be the jumping off point. Could Hank embrace being conservative more than ever before? But no, that's what I feel the series really drawing a line in the stand. Hank, still conservative, but he is not loony. He's not loony tunes. It's, it's, that is such a, beautiful moment to make the like the key resolution of the very first episode that takes you back in because like I think a lot of our parents or the Hank's generation get faced with the that moment of being told you need to call this thing another thing now and they hate that so much that they become a reactionary like they can't and it is something as simple as a

cookie and Hank reacting with to it's nice to be nice he's like oh yeah it is nice to be nice you should just do that that's respectful yeah it like i said but really the series drawing a line in the sand it's like if you don't understand king of the hill uh it's about how despite how stubborn he can be and how close mind he can be ultimately hank is a good person tries to do the right thing and it's fun to see him being taken out of his element to see how he reacts though uh they don't say if he voted for trump or not but we do find out at least one time he did not vote for obama we do learn that in the season yes yes which is i'm sure it was for John McCain or Mitt Romney.

Absolutely. He would of course, I could absolutely see him voting for John McCain. Come on. Like, yeah. Completely. Now, we could talk a little bit about different elements of the new series, but first I want to mention the history of the reboot. So important to note, and it's a bit of serendipity, that Henry and I were in on the ground floor of this reboot eight years before it happened, more than eight years before it happened, because on January 19th, 2017, we attended the King of the Hill 20th anniversary panel at Sketchfest in San Francisco and that is where

Mike Judge and Greg Daniels really got the ball rolling for the reboot. They credit this specific event and we've joked about that time where oh it felt like they really wanted to make something happen again and you could feel the sparks in the air but it turns out that's really what went down

that gathering of all the cast members. It validated every time in the future where I'll be like oh these two I think what they're really thinking in this scene is this Because at that table read, they had all seemed to have enjoyed a lot of wowie sauce at dinner. And they were just like, boy, this is fun, right? We should do this some more, shouldn't we?

Like, that was so the vibe of the, of everybody there. Like, and it was everybody of the, I mean, Jonathan Joss wasn't there, I don't think. But basically, every living person was there at that 2017 panel. Yeah, John Radicor did not have a line in Husky Bobby, which was that episode that they read for the audience. But it was also another case of us going to a live read. And Kevin Pollock is there for some reason. So he was the host of that live reading at Scotch Fest. And he was also the moderator or like the special guest at the Simpsons table read we attended in 2019. So Kevin Pollock is like a constant in our lives in some capacity.

That was so funny that one. Yeah, it was like that James L. Brooks is called in a favor of like, well, we can't just have anybody do Skinner for this episode. You do Skinner. at the table read, Kevin, please. And it was, yes, I did not expect out of all the people we'd see that day that Kevin Pollock would be part of it. And that we'd talk to him more than any of the other cast members. Yes, yeah, they've amused, and I understand why. But yeah, Kevin Pollock seems like a nice guy.

So, yes, we were there when it happened. I find that amazing that I didn't even know if Henry liked King of the Hill because I don't think it really came up in our podcast that much. We had never covered it for What a Cartoon. what a cartoon didn't even exist. The Patreon didn't exist. And I was like, oh, I really want to see this. And Henry was game, and we had a great time there.

And it got me excited about King of the Hill all over again. And then we do our podcast miniseries. And as that's happening, the reboot is announced. And it takes forever because of strikes and people dying and various other things. But we're finally living with it now. But I do want to recap how it came together by covering the end of King of the Hill's first run. So let's go back to the year 2008. So despite consistent ratings, King of the Hill is.

canceled and it's announced that a spinoff of Family Guy will soon take its time slots. So yes, it wasn't canceled for the Cleveland show but the Cleveland Show replaced King of the Hill. That's how old the cancellation was. And the Cleveland Show's been off the air for it feels like

I think a decade or more at this point. Yeah, I think it is more than a decade. I was just thinking about the Cleveland show because our palis on gayest episode ever covered it for one of its an episode about Bay Eurasia where a character who clearly is a bisexual man

everybody just keeps calling him gay and the TV show treats him as a gay man it's very strange. Yeah I believe so Cleveland Show went off the air in 2013 so it's been a very long time but yeah Cleveland Show did replace King of the Hill in its time slot and King of the Hill comes to an end

at the end of its 13th production season and it's a pretty hefty season at 24 episodes so 20 of these air throughout the 2008 2009 TV season on Fox and then four are held over for syndication those I believe will premiere on Adult Swim in May of 2010. But the true series finale airs in September of 2009.

So that is when everybody says goodbye to King of the Hill, even though there's four random episodes still on the way. September of 2009 is the end. And this is very bad timing because 2009 is when King of the Hill finds a new audience on Adult Swim. So King of the Hill starts airing on Adult Swim in January of 2009. And my own belief is that this is when, this adult swim run convinced everybody that King of the Hill

was not just that boring show that's often on Fox on Sunday nights. They saw the value in it. That's why so many memes come out of that post-2009 era. That's why so many screenshots you see King of the Hill have the adult swim bug in the corner. It really got a lot of young people who are now in their mid to late 30s

into a show they previously assumed wasn't for them. I think a big reason we see the connection of anime to King of the Hill in a lot of the online fandom too. I do think is that it's adult swim viewers who are seeing anime at the same time or view it in the same spectrum with the comedy they're watching on adult swim, then see King of the Hill on Adult Swim. And it's very easy to associate, you know, Sailor Moon and Adult Swim comedy mashups or all of the, sorry, Sailor Moon and King of the Hill, you know, cartoon mashups, stuff like that. Yeah, like with Futurama

and Family Guy, I think the key to getting anything back is just putting reruns on Adult Swim and waiting many, many years. Hoping people get it and having faith in it. And now, obviously, that's not going to happen anymore because adult swim's basically dead, cables like dead. Actually, around the same time that Paramount thing happened, it was also announced that Warner Discovery has now become Warner and now Discovery will be its own thing that's in charge of the cable channels that it will slowly bleed to death. I don't like any of this. And honestly, the death of Adult Swim, it really messes me up because I feel like we were

born in 82, so we were too young to be the first MTV generation, the kids who discovered MTV as young adults. but I feel like Adult Swim kind of was our MTV and we were there as people in our late teens, early 20s as it was doing the weirdest stuff you would see on television. To see it kind of die, this whimpering death is really upsetting to me. And it saves so many shows and it could have saved King of the Hill. I think you've made the great point before that like if it had just been like two years later,

King of the Hill would never have ended. Like they never would have canceled it. We'd be instead of season 14, we'd be in season 29. of King of the Hill right now probably. Yeah, it probably still just would have kept running like the Simpsons. And yeah, King of the Hill was nearly canceled in its 11th season. Then Fox ordered two more. So there is like a season finale in season. That feels like it could be the series finale. But then the proper series finale is in season. Sorry, I'm thinking about Red Dwarf and the series season thing is messing me up. So what's going on in the late odds? Around this time, Mike Judge starts working with ABC because he makes the good family. which is his follow-up to King of the Hill only last one season and when that is in production there are rumors

the network could also pick up King of the Hill but in January of 2009 the president of ABC states that there's no plans to pick up King of the Hill and run it on ABC and of course the Good Family doesn't bring in the ratings they want

it feels like from Capital Critters to Clerks the animated series to the Good Family to the critic late night's animated program does not work on ABC period Wow yeah I don't think Now that you said it, it is a decades-long graveyard of original adult animation on ABC.

Like, it might be the worst place of networks to sell your animated series to. And I feel like we do need to cover the good family because we love Mike Judge. And also, I assumed it wasn't great, but then I believe gayest episode ever covered one of them. And I thought, oh, there's something here to this. It's Mike Judge. It's some King of the Hill writers. It can't totally be trash and bad. There's got to be something worthwhile.

And there's only 13 episodes. I need to crack open the DVDs as well. Yeah, I do know that a podcaster I enjoy Howard Kramer, he was a writer on it, I believe, too. Yeah, he might have been a writer on the 2011 Beavis and Buttheads as well. Okay. All right. I might be, that's, yeah, maybe he was both or maybe I'm getting it mixed up. But yes, okay.

So in the passing near decade, Mike Judge is busy with a lot of stuff. There is the first Beavis and Butthead reboot in 2011. We've covered that on What a Cartoon. there's the TV series Silicon Valley there's his final movie to date which is extract that was 2009 as well but the talks truly begin in August of 2017

so seven months after that fable live show that's when Mike Judge Greg Daniels and other folks sit down and say how can we make this happen and it's also worth noting that in 2022 this is when Mike Judge and Greg Daniels joined forces to create Bandera Entertainment which to date has produced

four other animated shows only one of them I can name and that is common side effects. Oh, right. I forgot that one. I was thinking that NPR one they did that I've only seen the name of, that that animated series. I believe also exploding kittens based on the card game. That is something they made.

I've never seen a frame of that. I think it was only one season, but that they have a lot of stuff in development. And they've already put out a lot of stuff for being a new production company. I guess, too, in the in-between years, like Greg Daniels, like he, when King the Hill ended, he was still deep on the office, like the office and American workplace hadn't ended yet. And he's, Greg Daniels has spent the more than a decade since that series ended

by like making, executive producing so many shows probably like bathing in money every day. And like, well, and then this fucking year there is going to be that. The new office spinoff the paper. Is there something that Miguel's on it? I know that.

Yeah, his other show upload for Amazon. That's having its last season. Actually, the last season premiered in August of this year. And he's created a ton of shows outside of that. Greg Daniels also very busy. And Mike Judge has had that outlaw country show for a while. I think I was on Showtime, maybe. They are extremely busy producers of television, highly in demand.

And from looking at the credits on most of their shows, they are good at finding creators and empowering them to, like, show, like basically a Greg Daniels or a Mike Judge will sell a show. and then they hire somebody like, say, Lou Morton on Beavs and Butthead, and trust them to run the show. And so, like, good creatives are handed shows to work on. And something else that's a very important piece of the puzzle. And I could not actually find the date on this, although we definitely podcasted about it. But at some point in the late 2010s or early 2020s, King of the Hill hit Hulu. So for a very long time, for most of the 2010s, it was completely off streaming networks.

I remember it being on Netflix in the late 2000s, early 2010s, but then it was just gone for a very long time. But then it came back on Hulu. And of course, now it's on Disney Plus. So, yeah, it being available also helped boost its popularity. It's not just on Adult Swim. You can also dial it up and watch whatever you want. So it being made very available is creating a desire to see more of it for people. Yeah, I watched a few interviews out of like Comic Con and other press.

And a thing that kept popping up was people talking. about how it became like their lockdown watch or a thing they binged in lockdown big time and that and people who definitely like similar to the adult swim situation people who had assumed the show was one

thing like a conservative show a show about rednecks all of the things that the show has always been trying to counter and it was when they realized it wasn't that and they fell in love with the show and that's probably why it had the I think one of the highest premieres on Disney

Plus are the highest premiere for original programming. Yeah, yeah, I saw that too. I think I'm very hopeful that's a good news for the future of the show. So, yes, we get some very small teases. So in 2020, Greg Daniel announces they have a plan for a reboot. Then in 2021, writer Brent Forrester tweets that this proposed reboot is actually underway. And then in January of 2023, the reboot is officially announced, though I'm sure we didn't think we'd be rating over two years to watch it because, of course, there is

a couple of strikes in that time period. There's the death of Johnny Hardwick, and then the sudden death of Jonathan Joss, which happened after production. But a lot of misfortunes befell this production, to put it lightly. So we had to wait a very, very long time. Yeah, I think at some point in the last four years was when we interviewed Wes Archer as he was still working on Rick and Morty. And we had to put it as like a maybe, like, well, if they did bring it back, that you should be there. And it's like he, looking back on it, he was, I have to think Mike Judge and Greg Daniels had called him to be

like, keep your schedule open Wes. Yeah, and if you followed his Instagram, you would see him posting a lot of King of the Hill stuff. So you felt like something was brewing. Totally. So yes, before we talk about just the season as a whole, I did want to talk about one key figure. So we have, of course, Greg

Daniels and we have Mike Judge. We know who those guys are. But one of the newer developers and one of the showrunners for this season is Saladin K. Patterson, who developed this reboot with Judge and Daniels. So he's the showrunner, like I said, and his role on King of the Hill is part of an overall deal with Fox, if you want to know the Hollywood Dirt on Saladin. So he has the created by credit on the reboot of the Wonder Years, which lasted for a few seasons. So that's why he's working on this. He still has a

contract with Fox, and they found a place for him on this King of the Hill reboot. And I think, based on what I've seen in this past season, he is a very good fit. yeah now his uh i think he really brought a lot of fresh takes to the show he's one of my seeing his interview him involved in the interviews he definitely feels like uh he was a very active member of the it doesn't just seem like he like let gregg and and and judge do whatever they want i i saw a funny interview where he's like he said that when he when he interviewed with judge and daniels that they said something like oh and we want this to be your show. And then he said, and I should have realized that was a lie. But he joked that they were always

involved and always why. But he did feel like he was making a lot of his own choices, too. And just a little bit of background information on him because I don't believe we talked about him before. But Saladin, he actually wrote for some Simpsons adjacent shows. So he started his career writing three episodes of Teen Angel. Don't hold that against him. And he also wrote four episodes of the PJs. And then he moved on to being a writer and producer on late era Frazier. And then after that, he has a ton of credits on standard sitcoms, like he wrote for a lot of psych, the Bernie Mac show, two and a half men, and the Big Bang Theory. So he has like 20 years worth of experience in the sitcom trenches, writing for things that are great like Frasier, things are not so great like two and a half men. But hey, it pays the bills.

Yeah, I think when I saw his name, it reminded me that I clocked him and didn't say his. name correctly when I maybe mentioned him in the Teen Angel one just because I was like oh and they actually did have a black writer on staff which is not always the case on sitcoms back in the 90s like which and I mean how many shows like the King of the Hill stature have a black showrunner like that is that is still pretty rare in in US animation I'd say especially for a very very white show like King of the Hill in terms of who the character are in this world. And yeah, I do want to cover the writer and directors of this episode, but I want to talk about the season in general first. Not to go on too long because I think

we could spend three hours talking about like, we like this, we didn't like this, or this is a nice change. But it's important to note that this reboot takes place roughly nine years in the future of where we left the King of the Hill clan before. And the timeline doesn't make sense in ways you really shouldn't think about. But it's been 15 years since we last saw the family, but it's been nine years in their timeline. That's how much has passed. But Bobby is 21, but Good Hank is like 14 or 15. Things like that don't really shake out.

And some part of me wishes they would have actually made it a 15 year time jump. But I think ultimately they didn't want to have to change the character designs too much. They still wanted them to be recognizable as Hank and the guys. So they stuck with nine. But the only thing that nags at me is like, wow, Bobby is 21 years old. And he is the co-owner of a restaurant. on. He lives in Dallas. Maybe I'm just thinking of what an undeveloped mess I was at 21, but I feel like, oh, I wish Bobby was in his late 20s. But I'm willing to buy it for the sake of the time jump they wanted to make. I think they find several explanations throughout the season of like, well, this is really kind of a hairbrain. He convinced Chain Wasanasan to finance it. And he's doing this in spite of college. And, you know, it's, they, and also he's not he isn't highly paid he's actually does very he doesn't make much money at all like they they come up with those excuses but yes it is it is strange to go from when the show premiered you and i were about three year two to three years older than bobby in early 1997 and now we're uh bobby is half hour age instead yeah it's it's i mean it's not as crazy as a simpson's timeline but it takes them getting used to but it does get

give the opportunity for more stories because we can't have the workplace sitcom jokes where Peggy's doing substitute teaching or she's working for a real estate agency or she's working for a newspaper. And we can't have Hank working for Buck Strickland. So we need an avenue, a platform for workplace jokes. And it is Bobby working at Robata Chain, which is the Robata restaurant he owns with Chain Wasana Song, who we have not met in our King of the Hill timeline, but he will be coming up as Bobby starts dating Connie like Chain is the the rival suitor, the hot shot Laotian boy. Now, I, yeah, I wonder if they felt that a Bobby who was like in his late 20s or early 30s like that, it would also make, they want Peggy and Hank to be like newly retired mid-50s.

If they're in their 60s and everybody are in their 60s instead of their 50s, I guess it changes dynamics more than they wanted it to. but that like in the very first episode a character uh the girl i think bobby hooks up with is like really you're only 21 like she she's assuming what we're assuming he's like 30 right yeah yeah they they do they do like hang a lantern on the fact that bobby might be a little too young to be in this role and honestly king of the hill is a is a nice fantasy because it's the fantasy of what if this conservative texas guy was good natured and one of the best for everybody and it's also the fantasy of what if this wayward millennial phil son actually got his shit together because honestly as much as i love bobby he would be living at home until he was like 32 he would be trying to

like start a bunch of businesses he'd be a honestly he'd be a podcaster if anything like a comedy improv podcaster i feel they chose they chose a less depressing route for him and i and i do enjoy that because it would suck to have all the jokes about bobby being a loser all of his old friends not wanting to associate with him he is as a success but he's also kind of killing himself by trying to get this restaurant off the ground and make it profitable. That was such an interesting, like that was me marveling at that first episode, just seeing every choice they made with Bobby because it definitely felt like a reset of Bobby in a way, or at least like telling the audience, you know, Bobby is almost, I read one interview

where they said, like, Bobby is almost the lead of this because he can actually like grow and change. Like Hank is retired. It makes it harder for him to be like the lead as much in stories while Bobby has a ton of growing and changing or like his life's ahead of him. And so for that, Bobby can't just be a guy who like smells today's garbage or just says a weird thing. He actually needs to be like our kind of regular guy who also isn't a virgin. Like he needs to like hook up in the first episode just to tell you like Bobby's not a virgin. He can talk to women and have sex.

He's not a loser. Bobby drinks and has sex. And despite the fact that he's still voiced by a woman, Pamela Adlon's voice has gotten a little husky over time as all over. voices age and unlike Nancy Cartwright she's not asked to do the same little boy voice so I feel like the voice you're doing for Bobby it doesn't seem too high pitch for a guy

it just seems perfect for what he would have aged into naturally yeah I like I also like the bit that he like still has sex with his shirt on there's little things that he is slightly sensitive about his body in comparison like I

I should also say like this isn't me just jumping to conclusions multiple times while watching the show my husband, my hubby said like, oh, you're Bobby, you do that. This thing Bobby does is you. He looks like you. He kept comparing me to, and he said the second he saw current Peggy, he's like, that's your mom. He said that to me. Well, yeah, we could talk about Hank and Peggy. And I like this because it does seem like Saladin is probably like Gen X, but I felt like a real millennial point of view on aging parents. It's just like looking at retired parents from the outside because

my parents just retired. And I'm seeing this thing. like, okay, how did they pass the time? What do they do all day? What are they trying to do to keep themselves from going insane or senile? And like, what are the challenges of being retired? I like how they're tackling that with Peggy and Hank. And I'm also now thinking, like, oh, retirement sounds nice. I like the idea of, like, having a whole day in front of you and being presented with, how will you fill it? It's sort of like the old summer vacation problem when you were a kid. Well, now we're only, you know, 11-ish, 10, 11 years younger than the mid-50s generalization of Hank and Peggy in this series. So we're definitely closer to living

the life of Hank and Peggy than what the lives of Bobby and Connie are in this season. Oh, definitely, definitely. But yeah, I just dealing with your retired parents, being away, living far from your retired parents, I did connect with that. It's like, well, how do I spend time with them, like when it comes to like a birthday or another celebration? Like, what kind of gift should I buy that? I'm dealing with all of this stuff right now. And I like that very specific angle on just you've moved away from your parents, they've gotten older, they're retired, how does that dynamic change everything? Yeah, the episode of Bobby feeling, you know, pressure about calling his mom or if he's

ignoring her or not, and the MRI machine episode that's two after this, like that one is that also likewise, like, wow, that really reminds me and me and my mom too. Like, there's a million things in the season. I should also say, like, when Bobby is bad at doing texts and people like say no write this or whatever my husband said the same thing to me he's like you're just like bobby and being bad at texting people too much punctuation it makes you seem very severe it does it does that's uh i should remember emojis are for that they're to say in emotion that's what emojis are for or start your sentence with l-o l-l and end it with l-m-a-o you well you you've seen my text a lot you know i like ha h-e-h that's uh that's my favorite

I would just do the sideways laughing emoji instead. Okay. All right. I'll work on that. We're learning and we're growing even in our old age. But yes, I mean, we're just like throwing darts at the season here, seeing what sticks in terms of our conversation. But, yeah, Hank and Peggy have changed. Bobby has changed.

What hasn't really changed are Bill, Dale, and Boomhauer, which is nice. Because I feel like they'd have to do a lot of work to figure out entirely new stories for all of them. Of course, Boomhauer has a lot of. a stepson now, which does change that dynamic. He's a little more responsible, less of a ladies' man. But Bill and Dale have not changed at all. Dale has successfully run for mayor and successfully was deposed as mayor, but you get all the same jokes with them, which I like. They're reliable joke vessels. Bill is still depressed, kind of gross, still into Peggy. Dale is even more of a conspiracy theorist and still doing the extermination thing. So I like that there

are some rocks in this world as everything is changing around us like bill is a little fatter you know and he uh they i mean in the first episode they almost tease if you didn't see trailers you wouldn't know this but they almost tease like bill's dead like because obviously he'd be dead bill the life bill leads in the show is a man who dies of a heart attack at 49 like that's that's bill's life yeah heart attack if he's lucky that's that well god that joke about like Bill's the only one who knows what a gun tastes like. I was like, holy fuck. Yeah, yeah, they're still going there.

I guess in some ways it is strange that Bobby is so successful, I guess. But in another way, they did keep the depressing jokes where Bill and Dale have not changed. And they are still just as sad and pathetic as they always were. I mean, that's something too I love in the third episode. They deal with the reality that Dale is mainstream now. And people, a lot of people agree with Dale. He's surrounded by people who, like, they're at the George W. Bush Museum where Hank is like, yeah, remember George W. Bush? Same conservatism. Obviously that fuck that guy. But that's what Hank thinks.

And everybody else is like just believing Dale's conspiracy theories of that are not even as crazy as Facebook conspiracy theories really are. Yeah, everything has risen to meet Dale. So he feels more at home, which is I guess why he was able to win the mayor, the office of mayor. So maybe we'll find more about that in the future And yeah, they do They do tackle more modern topics As the show is always done Like the show is always looking at like Here's this very

Like specific thing happening now In pop culture or culture in general Let's explore it like dancing with dogs Or like the ice cream shops Or they like sing to you When they make you your ice cream They're always like finding these tiny tiny things In culture to make fun of

And yeah they do tackle current things Like the Manosphere Although that's something I toyed with the idea of covering because that's a fascinating world but honestly like in order to make it a palatable and funny episode they could not portray the manosphere as depressing and violence and just poisonous as it really is in real life because in that episode it's like the manosphere camp they go to eventually gets around the idea of hating women when that is presented up front and in much uglier ways than that episode gets into and i understand again they have to make a funny sitcom episode

they don't want to depress you but that's something where it's like that is uh just so ugly and poisonous that you have to be careful with how you deal with it. Yeah, I mean, it fit a thing people imagined of like, boy, what would Hank say to a guy like these? And the people, men, young men today need a Hank in their lives, not the character, Dietrich Bader, plays so well in that episode. My favorite turn in that episode is the revelation that when good Hank is starting to say Manusphere things, it's cotton reborn and that terrifies Hank.

like that was I never saw that coming and that hit me like that really got me that moment yes that I think that did salvage the episode for me not that I didn't enjoy it but it was revealing that like okay all this Manosphere stuff is just the opinions of an old World War II event this is nothing new it's like just it's the toxic masculinity from the past resurfacing in the present you know another thing I really like in this season meta wise and I've I've made when we've done multiple episodes like the Drew Carey episode I like tried to find like extra meta readings about like oh this is about how sitcoms or what type of sitcom the show is i do feel like in a meta textual way with keith david's character or brian robertson they're joking that in

universe there was already a king of the hill reboot where they recast hank with a black lead and now this is hank returning to the show and taking back over for the black led show that starred keith david yeah yeah that was their own version of the cleveland show which we didn't get to see and uh yeah the keith david character does not come up enough for me i want i want to learn more about him he does he really has roles in like two episodes but uh again that's the problem when we have 10 episodes i guess that's my one complaint about the series is the how stingy they are with these orders because like i said season 13 and king of the hill 24 episodes insane and that's why we can get side stories about bill and dale and bobby and connie but i feel like because

they're rebooting the show and because they only get 10 right now uh they have to stay focused on the family so i'm missing some of the versions of the side characters which is why this episode is entertaining because it's kind of the most dail we get in this season. So we're getting 10 more, of course. Those are coming next year. It is an order of 20, but I wish we were getting more than 10 of the time because of the whole lack of avenues for other characters. Yeah, they wrap up some storylines earlier than I thought to, mainly the over, well, they don't wrap it up. Obviously, they're going to keep going with it. But the end of Connie and Bobby in the season, I was like, I thought it was going to be like an episode 20 kind of approach there, but they decided, seemingly they decided they wanted the back half of their real order of 20 to be 10 episodes where Bobby and Connie are in a relationship instead of will, they, won't they kind of deal.

Yeah, yeah. And I was honestly expecting them to not pursue that at all. So it was a surprise for me. I guess spoilers. We're talking about the entire season. We said that up front. But yeah, Bobby and Connie kind of getting back together. They are adding what I feel like is a can't fail. element to a sitcom, which is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, what are the, what are the, what are the, the, okay, sorry, Tim and Don, but it's Jim and Pam, right? Yes. Okay, there we go. The Jim and Pam, Sam and Diane angle, it's a constant in popular sitcoms. And now it's like, throughout this, we have the Bobby and Connie, will they want they, and it does work. And it does play off of their past relationship. And it does reflect a lot of, okay, catching up with an old friend, there's some sparks flying, what's going on here. I do like how that is explored. With this very serial I see, season. And I think that Greg Daniels and Mike Judge and Saladin are really taking advantage of this because in the past, Fox let them do serialization up to a point, but they really frowned on having continuity because it's all about selling these episodes and syndication, showing them in any order. But now they are embracing the serialization because that's just the format of today. Yeah, I like the King of the Hill can finally get back to where it was so far ahead of the game with the story. Like they did a will, they won't they, of puppy

love with Bobby and Connie and now they get to do it again with them reconnecting. And I think it's in a natural, we, I know we both have expressed in the past that, you know, there was some fan art out there or fanfic or whatever of what people would think of Connie and Bobby as adults' relationship would be. And it always seemed either too cute or just sad. But I think they, especially because they have to grow up Bobby so much in this season, I think it's to justify, you won't feel bad for Connie if she ends up with Bobby. Yeah, yeah, and it was clear in the show that they had fallen out of touch for years and years.

It's not like, oh, yes, while off screen, we got back together and we've been dating for a very long time. That would have been kind of sad or just not very interesting, ultimately, if they were just a couple from the very beginning. You know, there's so many, like, this is, it reminds me of like Greg Daniel style storytelling that I feel like he did a lot in the office, though maybe, Maybe I'm wrong, and this was one of Patterson's pitches. But the way this season slowly unfolds with what a viewer expected, and then they reveal, like, there was multiple seasons of the office where at the end of the episode, they'd be like, no, Jim still lives here, or actually these characters are dating now, or things like that,

that they would let you jump to a conclusion and then undercut it. And same this season, they're like, well, you assume, say, again, I'm assuming listeners you've seen the whole season, I assume the entire season, Buck Strickland was dead. And they weren't going to talk about it. Yes, that was a surprise. Thank you for bringing that up. When it's like, wow, he's in bad shape.

But I guess if only nine years have passed, there is a chance Buck could survive. Who knows what heart he's on? Like what other baboon heart they had to install? Well, and these old assholes do live to 100. So I'm not at all surprised. Like the guy mentioned this episode, Jerry Jones, like that piece of shit still, he'll live forever. That is what Texas good old boys do, unfortunately. Yeah, and we mentioned Buck Strickland and, you know, how we're surprised he's not dead.

Who isn't mentioned in the series is Luann and Lucky. And I don't know the right way to handle this really because the most we see of Luane and Lucky is like a photo of them in one of the backgrounds in one episode. Just to acknowledge, like, yes, we respect these characters. They're kind of quietly retired because we don't want to recast them. And we also don't want to let this world know that they can never come back. because that would be very depressing. So I don't really know what the best way to handle it is because we know that Pamela Adlin can do a great Luan.

And she often tempt for Britney Murphy when she was busy or unable to make it to the recording studio. But I'm not sure how that would feel in practice if we saw animated Luan on the screen. It seemed like at the 2017 Sketchfest thing we were at that they almost were showing like, well, Adlin could do Luan if we brought it back. Does this feel weird to anybody here?

like it almost felt like a test case but I also well maybe I'm not right about this but I think Tom Petty was still alive when we were at that so the expectation could have been well Pamela Adlin can do Luan but Tom Petty will be back as lucky and now Tom Petty is past but now as I say this maybe I'm wrong he maybe no yeah he was still alive okay he would be alive until October of 2017 so maybe that too is the expectation then and once he's gone then it like it's like no we can't that you And I agree. Like, they should be treated like, um, uh, they should be treated like character that the character in Fast and the Furious who's played by, whose actor died.

They're just like, he moved away and we don't call him. Is that Paul Walker? Paul Walker, yes. Canada's own Paul Walker. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess maybe if Britney Murphy had died during production, they, they would not have been as cheapish about recasting or like they did with Dale, uh, and Johnny Hardwick. But it happened, uh, like in 2000.

nine. It happened to very, like, right, literally right after the show finished airing, its finale, Brittany and Harvey passes away at way too young of an age. So they've been living with that for a while. And I'm sure they've, they had in mind, like, here's how we want to handle it. So I really miss Luann, ultimately. But I don't think you can capture that again, even with Adlin doing the voice. No, I think it's, you know, you can, they, they, characters can say, oh, we just saw the way in for Christmas or whatever, like, but never. Make it. Make it. You know, you can. They, they, they, characters can say, oh, oh, we just saw the way in for Christmas or whatever, like, but never. Like, make, make it. Like, make it. Like, make it clear. Like nobody expects it. We don't want to recasting. Like there is, there is a difference. And unfortunately, as time goes on, this will always be a thing to address of people. Nobody lives forever. They're lucky so much of the cast is still alive, honestly. Yeah, really. I'm just, I'm really feeling like it's, okay, number one, Brittany Murphy should still be alive. But number two, I'm also thinking like, oh, all of the opportunities we're missing of Luann being like a young mother because we only just saw that her that story beginning as king of the hill was ending initially she had her baby and everything uh so i i really want to see more of luann in that role maybe

growing up a little bit becoming more mature uh maybe having to you know get lucky to catch up with her but those stories can't be told unfortunately yeah it seems like their only outlet for the show they create well it's like boomhauer is a stepdad in it but he's not it's an unseen girlfriend except in the intro that's the parent of the of his stepson but like that kid is their outlet for stories about 10 year old boys now or like little kid like elementary school age kids

yeah yeah they found a vessel for that kind of humor and those kind of characters but yeah I mean anything else we want to hit upon before I move on to the writer and directors of this episode oh well only other thing I want to say is I want to see I want to see a whole episode a pitch for a spin

of just Bill at the Barbershop. That by a Barbershop show starring Bill at the Black Barbershop. That would be great. Yeah. And if there was more time this season, I would have really loved to see them cut back to Bill at the Barbershop

to see what he's up to. But again, they really have to stay focused. Even though these episodes are longer than your typical TV episodes, they're not, they don't feel designed to air on TV to me because they are about 24 minutes long. And thank God they include act breaks because we know that you don't need

them in TV when it's shown like this, but there's something just like satisfying about seeing an act come to an end and a new act beginning with the fade to black. It is also funny that they just, they say unbleeped shit now in the show, but they do bleep fuck. There's like four shits in this

and like they get a little filthy. You hear the term side dick in an episode? Yes. Yeah, that's, yeah. But then, but hearing in the second episode, Peggy scream, are you bleeping? kidding me in reaction to something that I was like oh this is uh it's a dirtier time now i'm king of the hill so yeah actually before i move on to the the writers and directors of this

episode i want to talk more about just the animation info in general and just like what's going on so yes west archer is back as the supervising director so he was supervising director on king of the hill for everything but a chunk in the middle so around seasons four through seven he was working on other projects he had developed a what a cartoon short for cartoon network called Fungus Among Us at that time. That's when he directed a few Futuramas. So there was a portion where he wasn't working on the show, but he worked on most of the original King of the Hill, and now he's back. Yeah, yeah, I think he brings with him. I'd love to chat with him again, but I think he's bringing with him to this new all-digital production of King of the Hill.

A lot of the lessons he learned from Rick and Morty being an all-digital show. I think this moves well for an all-digital production. Yeah, yeah, I know people were bagging on the animation based on the trailer. I understand why they were not really showing their best work in that trailer. But you have to understand by this point, these kind of shows are going to move a certain way, and they really can't break from that too much. But in terms of shows made with these kind of tools, I think this is one of the better-looking ones. And you'll see, like, it's not all puppety.

There are a lot of, like, original, like, poses and animations, and it all starts with, like, pencils on paper. So, yeah, when people were kind of upset about how it looked based on the trailer, I saw some of the animators working on the show saying, this is traditional animation. We are traditionally animating these characters. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Yeah. Even though, yes, it does look not how you're expecting it to look. That's just the tools that they're using today. So, yeah, film Roman no longer exists, as they say.

And it went out of business or a bit shut down in like 2018 or something like that. I forget. but it hasn't been around for a while. So this season is produced by 20th television animation, but they're also outsourcing to the same Korean studio that animated a ton of the old series. So that studio is Yeson Entertainment. They're a South Korean studio,

and I think we talked about them a bit in season three when I wanted to call out their great work on the series. So they're back, I believe they're animating all of these first ten. And one of the most recent Yeson episodes that we covered was not in my backhoe. So that's just an example of their work in the past. They're still around and they're still on King of the Hill. I assume that they really like their work on the old series because they are really taking charge on this chunk.

That's great that even on the animation production side, even on the overseas side, they're keeping as much of the same people as they can. That's really great. And also we have music for the season composed by John Frizzle, who composed music for the old series, typically just a few episodes per season. So on King of the Hill, it's not like they had their own Elf Klossin. They rotated through five different composers. So one guy wasn't doing everything for every episode. And it looks like Roger Neal composed the most at 117 episodes total. But this John Frizzell guy is up there.

He's like number three or four in terms of one of the people they use the most on the show. So another legacy King of the Hill talent on the reboot. Oh, man. Sorry. In my notes, I just saw one thing I wanted to say about Patterson. I saw, he told a funny story that he wrote a King of the Hill spec back in his teen angel days and then submitted it to Daniels. And then when Daniels offered him the job, he had already been offered a job at Frazier.

And he says, Greg Daniels still makes fun of him. He's like, oh, you wanted a Frazier over us. But now we're good enough for you. Honestly, I mean, I would have taken the Frazier money. Yeah, I mean, it had to be a bigger payday at Frazier than on a cartoon, even if it was probably WGA by then. I think so. So, yeah, John Frizzle doing the music, and then there is a great bluegrass arrangement of the King of the Hill theme by Billy Strings. He won the Grammy for, wait for it, best bluegrass album in 2021 and 2025. So I love that rearrangement of the theme. I leave it on every time we were watching the show. Also, I left on the intro every time. It's just great to have that back, too, by the refreshments.

Yeah, both new versions of the music of the opening and outro are great. I think they, they have to extend them because credits are longer now or also because they have to say Hulu presents. Like, same with the Futurama show. HuluRama episodes of Futurama have to say Hulu presentation and then the intro begin. Even though Hulu is soon to not exist, right? Oh yeah, I made that note too. It was just days after this episode premiered on Hulu. Like two days after, Bob Iger announced that Hulu was sunsetting and all the Hulu content would just be part of

of Disney Plus going forward in 2026 as part of a unified app experience according to USA Today. Well, that's the way we've been living in Canada for years and it works. I just love having everything on Disney Plus. It's very nice. But yeah, Hulu. Goodbye, Hulu. You were a weird name and you entertain me for a few years. But I guess

let Disney eat everything. It's fine. And the refreshments, yes, they wrote the original theme. It's called Yahoo's and Triangles. Yes, they broke up in 1998. They're still broken up today. But you can watch them play a lot of their old music under their new 27-year-old name,

Roger Klein and the Peacemakers, though I'm sure they get a nice chunk of change for the continued use of Yahoo's and Triangles in this series. Oh, good for that. I had forgotten this break. This must have come up another time before in the show, but I had forgotten they have been broken up

for the entire run of the show, almost. Yes, yes. I think we probably talked about it in like the pilot episode when we covered that a long time ago. But yeah, Greg Daniels thought there were this up-and-coming rock band. They were going to go on to do great things.

and they break up almost immediately after King of the Hill goes on the air. So before we move on to the episode in question here, that's any given Hill Day, by the way. We are covering a specific episode, so we're going to move on to that. But let's talk about the writer and directors for this episode. So the writer is a newcomer of King of the Hill, Erica Rosby, and she is a co-executive producer this season. And as of this recording, she's only written one of the 10 new episodes that are currently available on Hulu or Disney Plus. So she got her start in a strange place that is writing for video games or at least one video game because notably she is a writer on 2009's Grey's Anatomy, the video game.

And you can find a video of her sitting down with the game grumps for a playthrough of the game. And she mostly makes fun of how bad everything is. And it's a very long video. It's like three or four hours long. I watch some of it. She actually does not yet get around to describing how she fell into that project. But I assume if you watch the entire three to four hour video, she will explain why she, why she first wrote for a wee

Grey's Anatomy game. That's so funny. You know, our pal Nick Weiger, he just also did a whole, he did a whole solo podcast where I heard him for about an hour talk about how he wrote for two fantastic four video games

in the mid-aughts, and that was some of his, or early odds, and that was some of his first professional writing jobs. I guess they were just giving chances to new writers, so that seems like it must have been pretty cool. So in terms of television, though,

she's a writer with about a decade's worth of credit under her belt. So she started as a writer on the Amazon Prime series, Just Add Magic, which is not for us. It's a family show based on a 2010 book of the same name. So she was a writer on that. And then she enters the Dan Harmonverse as a writer for Starburn's industry's YouTube Red original series. Good game. And in case you don't know what I'm talking about, YouTube Red does not exist anymore. It's now YouTube premium. YouTube's paid service launch with original shows. Cobra Kai was one of those before it went elsewhere. So another one of those was called Good Game. I believe Dan Harmon had a development deal with YouTube Red, and she wrote for this. And for some reason, you can watch all of the episodes of Good Game via the Game Grumps YouTube channel. So second mention of Game Grumps on this podcast. I don't know why they're there. They're just there. This is all news to me.

Man, see, now that I, like, this is below the Starburn's productions of things I had heard about, like, the adapting of his. Harmontown D&D thing is an animated series, or also the one that his girlfriend wrote about the sex doll he had in his attic that starred in Anna Kendrick. Was that a quibby show? It was a quibby, yes. Yeah, yeah, I mean, YouTube Red had original programming, and I think a lot of it is still available

to watch other places, or at least on YouTube, but not a lot. It was a filled venture, and they realized, oh, you just want to add for YouTube stuff. We can do that. We don't need to actually make shows. More businesses need to figure this out. You don't need to make TV shows.

Wasn't it? It was, now it feels like 14 years ago or something where it was like Xbox, talk more about video games, Xbox and PlayStation were like, we're launching our new systems. And of course, those have original TV shows that you're going to pay us for. Yes. You guys want to see Powers, right? Anybody want to see some powers? It stars the guy from District 9.

I'm sure it's a fine comic book. Henry, is it? Yeah, that's pretty good. honestly it was made to be an animated series like it basically the the the brian uncle ben this name and michael oving uh if i'm mispronouncing the name sorry they created like a procedural that a cop procedural in a superhero world that looks like batman the animated series it was made to be an animated show and it uh it being a tv show was such a strange pick but i wonder how if i can even watch it right now if i wanted to i wonder yeah i don't know where it is is it on

my Vita somewhere. Did it hide? Hide on my Vita with a... It's probably in my Vita as the battery is about to explode in my closet. So, stay tuned for more information about that. So yes, Erica Rosby, back to her, writing for Dan Harmon stuff. She gets her foot in the door, writing for a YouTube Red show

that I'm sure was fine, but nobody cares about YouTube Red. But following this, she was a writer and story editor on season 3 of Rick and Morty, the last season I watched. And she wrote the episode that introduced their Avengers parody, The Vindicators. So she wrote this episode with her former writing part of Sarah Carbiner

Carbiner. So yeah, Erica and Sarah invented the Vindicators, which would go on to have its own spinoff series. So The Vindicators was a bunch of YouTube shorts. They had their own YouTube short series for Adult Swim and then a few comics. So I

had no idea there was this other spinoff of Rick and Morty. There's the Keith David president thing happening soon, but they already did their own spinoff with the Vindicators. Wow. I, you know, I missed this as well. I have I watched all of season four of Rick and Morty and then I've popped in every now and then

and every time I watch an episode I'm like oh this is great but yeah I don't I mean having Elon Musk on which they've I think apologized for in spirit but they Nate Simpsons did it too but that was a little bit of a turnoff Yeah hey they took out the trash by getting rid of Justin Royland and honestly it was just the season three finale

that really I thought was a bummer and it's like well I don't want to see you pursue this I'm kind of done but you know in my old age when I'm wheeled in front of a TV, I'll say, put on Rick and Morty, please. And they'll put the VR helmet on my head, and I'll be wobble-up dubbing it until I die. I think the next season is the Vat of Asset episode. I think that's season four, which, like, rules.

I love the Vat of Ascent episode. I forget things about that. I actually like Pickle Rick. I thought it was the funniest damn thing I'd ever seen in my life. So following this period, Rosby was a writer and producer on You're the Worst, and a writer and executive producer on Gen.

Is it Gen V or Gen 5, the voice spinoff? Gen V. So she was a writer and producer on that. So a lot of different kinds of writing. And she is now on the New King of the Hill reboot. That Gen V show is funny because I haven't watched it. And I've heard good things about it. But I've watched all of the boys. And in season five of the boys, a bunch of Gen V characters just pop up every now and then with the expectation you're supposed to go like, hold for applause.

It's a character from Gen V. And I'm like, I don't know this character. Can I have a pop-up? It's still going on, right? Yes, I think it's going to continue. So the next season of the boys is the last, but I do believe Gen V will continue past it, I think. So I did, yeah, you're the worst, you know.

I wonder if she was a worked at the same time on it as Eva Anderson, who we just recorded a podcast with. Oh, I bet she did. She probably did. So we have two directors on this episode, Molly Holmes and Annie Lee. and they don't have a ton of credits but I do want to go over what they've done so far

so Molly Helms so notably she was a supervising director on Tuka and Bertie and it shouldn't surprise you that she also directed a few episodes of BoJack Horseman they're both in the Lisa Hannah-Walt verse so other directing gigs

from Molly Helms we have Bless the Hearts Inside Job Carol in The End of the World and she also directed episode two The Beer Story with Annie Lee so this is one of two directors on this episode

That's interesting that they well so okay so they were co-directors on two episodes so that's that's interesting i wonder i want i think i didn't see too many co-director credits in this one but uh on helms's part like that's a lot of uh that's a lot of netflix work like that's like a decade of the biggest netflix work so that's it's i guess good for her that she's getting work outside of the netflix sphere of animated shows yeah i like i like their directing on this episode the other director of course is annie lee This is actually her first role as director. Previously, she was a co-director on the series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,

which the animation on that looked really cool. Yeah, it seemed like a good kid show adapting a Marvel comic, and I heard good things about it. And, I mean, the last thing I heard about Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur was how some good person who is involved in the show seemingly, or let's just say an angel out there, released the episode that Disney wouldn't show because it was about

the episode was about how a trans girl being on a sports team wasn't the end of the world and it's a good and it's not bad that of course would not be hosted on Disney Plus

because they're already bowing to the fascists got a higher back Junea Carano they fucking apologize to her oh oh you have to burn all the mouse ears around you Henry

it's over I know it's one hell of a ride it's But yes, back to Annie Lee. I thought that's why that show sounded familiar. I thought there was some kind of scandal behind it or some kind of like non-LGBQ plus friendly thing happening on there.

And so Annie Lee, storyboard artist on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, D.C. League of Super Pets, Kung Fu Panda, the Paws of Destiny, and Big Hero Six, The Series, and The Adventures of Pousin Boots. So a lot of work there behind her. So these are two newish directors. Wes Archer is the old hand, and they have a lot of new talent.

on jumping on board who've gotten their feet wet over the past decade, it seems. And I don't want, I could be wrong, but I believe this is all, all the main credits on this then for writer and director are women, like, but, and that's almost, you know, that's a big deal.

It should, that's, it's almost normal now. Though also on King of the Hill, they, we set it in the classic years, they were better than the Simpsons for having female directors, given opportunities, and female writers too. That's true.

They did hire one, female writer Cheryl Holiday, but she left two seasons in. So it's her fault that the writing staff was all male for a while. It's true. Or maybe they should have paid her more. Who knows? I'm joking, of course. But Wes Archer was very good at that giving opportunities to women on his staff, I would say, like in the classic era. And this just continues here with, not just these two credits. But if you're on the free feed, that's all she wrote for this preview of our Talking to the Hill about this episode. If you want to hear the rest of our chat, probably it's going to go on for a very long time talking about the episode. And you

King of In Hill Day, go to patreon.com.com talking Simpsons and sign up to get a ton of stuff in a lot more episodes about King of the Hill, but see you later. Thank you.