Hollywood’s Conservative Pivot

“King of the Hill,” the animated sitcom that first ran for thirteen Americana-powered seasons between 1997 and 2010, had a deceptively simple premise. The family at its heart collectively represented the median of their suburban Texas milieu: the middle-aged Hank Hill was an uptight fusspot who clung to old-fashioned virtues; his sparkplug wife, Peggy, balked at being labelled a feminist; and their preteen son, Bobby, searched for alternatives to his parents’ cultural inertia. Hank’s passion for the propane business was mirrored by Bobby’s prop-comedy aspirations—one of many quirks that prompted Hank to mutter, “That boy ain’t right.” But the show was full of sly reminders that it’s easier to spout traditional values than to live by them.

At the time, “King of the Hill” was widely praised—the critic James Poniewozik declared it “the most acutely observed, realistic sitcom about regional American life bar none”—but its return to Hulu, this week, has been met with an unusual amount of hand-wringing. The series’ co-creator Mike Judge, whose wide-ranging credits include “Office Space,” “Idiocracy,” “Silicon Valley,” and “Beavis and Butt-head,” strenuously avoids discussing his political alignment. But the question has become more charged amid current existential anxieties in Hollywood. Battling competition from the internet and a bustling conservative-media ecosystem, many in the industry have concluded that they have to win back audiences by producing more content that represents the working class, red-state values, and religious sensibilities. The new season of “King of the Hill” nods at the dearth of such programming when a channel-changing Hank expresses dissatisfaction with what’s on offer: “I’ll wait until Hollywood makes something for us again, like ‘Forrest Gump.’ ”

The original series often found a way to satirize both sides of an argument, and its depiction of Republicans was scarcely an endorsement: in the Season 5 première, set shortly before the 2000 Presidential election, Hank’s support of George W. Bush is eroded by the candidate’s weak handshake. But, in our polarized times, for every left-leaning fan comforted by Hank’s fundamental decency, another might see his brand of conservatism as a nostalgic gloss on an increasingly ugly movement.

This soft-pedalling impulse is evident in the revival’s treatment of Hank’s next-door neighbor Dale, a conspiracy nut who blames the U.N., the U.S. military, and the Cuban government for life’s inconveniences. Since “King of the Hill” went off the air, in the late aughts, real-world events like the Capitol riot have revealed the hazards of such alternative facts. The new episodes acknowledge that there are now a lot more people like Dale, but they’re presented as essentially harmless. Dale, who’s elected mayor after running on an anti-mask platform at the height of the pandemic, talks himself out of the position after thirty-six hours. As he puts it, “Any democratic process that would put me in office doesn’t deserve the title ‘fair.’ ”

Hank’s fuddy-duddiness arose from his conviction that the world was veering off course—a sentiment that many liberals now share. The series’ new showrunner, Saladin K. Patterson, makes the most of this common ground, relying more on character-based comedy than on political commentary: the season’s strongest elements are the shifting relationship between Hank and Bobby, now a twenty-one-year-old food-world prodigy, and Hank’s ongoing frustration with a culture in decline. His disdain for the Walmartesque Mega Lo Mart, his horror at oversharing influencers, and his dismay that too many people today opt to give credence to the most entertaining version of reality—all components of this season—allow a viewer to believe, just for a moment, that most of this country can still agree on something.

The red-state audience that Hollywood is chasing isn’t a monolith, and there’s an experimental energy in the crop of shows catering to this newly prized demographic. There are Bible stories translated for the screen, including the independently funded phenomenon “The Chosen” and the Amazon series “House of David,” made in collaboration with a faith-based production company. The head of the talent agency U.T.A.’s Nashville office told Business Insider that the streamers are “heartland-curious,” which helps explain Netflix’s spate of family-friendly small-town dramas, such as “Virgin River” and “Ginny & Georgia,” as well as its partnerships with comedians who’ve long since alienated the left. More sinister is the sense that entire corporations are bowing to powerful right-wing actors: Disney recently renounced “woke” values, with the company’s C.E.O., Bob Iger, declaring that its mandate is to “entertain” rather than to advance “any kind of agenda.” A long-planned merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, which required the Trump Administration’s blessing, appears to have led to the cancellation of the resistance comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night show.

Such pandering is a harbinger of further media fragmentation, but it doesn’t have to be. I watched every episode of the “Roseanne” revival and its matriarch-free spinoff, “The Conners,” which ABC commissioned explicitly to represent more blue-collar families. And Taylor Sheridan, whose ranching drama “Yellowstone” is now a multibillion-dollar franchise, seems to have mastered the art of crossover appeal. The showrunner has flaunted his distaste for mainstream Hollywood, and the feeling may be mutual: this summer, his six ongoing series were once again snubbed by the Emmys. But his latest project, “Landman,” demonstrates better than most how conservative shows might be a damn good time even for a liberal viewer.

The drama, which streams on Paramount+, follows the sixty-year-old Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), a fixer at an oil company in West Texas. Tommy, who distrusts the news and has no patience for the government, describes himself as “a divorced alcoholic with five hundred thousand in debt.” But that wealth of experience has made him the sage of the Patch, the site of his company’s rigs and of rampant drug-cartel activity. The show’s rural setting and its lopsided gender dynamics stand out in a TV landscape where “quality” programming has calcified into a fatal sameness. HBO and the like are chockablock with wealthy families mired in dysfunction, well-heeled white women harboring secrets, and the world falling apart in artful tableaux. There’s so much crime that the transgressions seldom register. “Landman” ’s cartel subplots are as hokily violent as anything else on TV, but the change of scenery offers different stakes—and a different look. The cold blue lighting that’s become a visual shorthand for prestige is replaced by beautiful outdoor shots of dawn and dusk, usually populated by men at work. Sheridan struck gold with the decision to set the series in the Patch, which he presents as a Wild West: a place where every hole drilled is an expensive gamble and any day can be a laborer’s last. Tommy ping-pongs from crisis to crisis, taking the chaos in stride. When his citified boss, Monty (Jon Hamm), tries to alert him to a fresh catastrophe, Tommy sighs, “An airplane full of drugs being run over by an oil tanker ain’t news. That’s just another Monday.”

Unlike “King of the Hill,” “Landman” doesn’t distance itself from its protagonist, who can seem like a mouthpiece for Sheridan’s views. In an early episode, Tommy delivers an extended lecture to a newcomer to the Patch about how “clean energy” is far from clean. His argument is muddled, decrying our reliance on fossil fuels while dismissing efforts to devise alternatives. He gives voice to his industry’s aggrievement at being attacked by the left: “Getting oil out of the ground’s the most dangerous job in the world. We don’t do it because we like it. We do it because we run out of options. . . . There ain’t nobody to blame but the demand that we keep pumping it.” I came away from the scene unconvinced by his fatalism but also invigorated by a mass-market drama challenging me to think about energy policy. If I’m not necessarily Sheridan’s target audience, it’s still fun to debate his hero in my head.

The show’s regressiveness is most evident in its core female characters: a pair of proud bimbos—Tommy’s ex-wife, Angela (Ali Larter), and their teen-age daughter, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph)—and a huffy young attorney named Rebecca (Kayla Wallace), who’s eternally eager to take offense. It’s Rebecca whom Tommy lectures about clean energy; after his monologue, he saves her from a rattlesnake on the verge of attack. She responds by crying, “You didn’t have to kill it!” Her impracticality and ingratitude, it’s implied, are classic lib behavior. (Naturally, the scene went viral.) I wouldn’t blame a female viewer if she found these overripe portrayals to be a deal-breaker. As the sex-obsessed Angela, Larter has the thankless task of flaunting her body for the camera even as her character is ridiculed for it. At one point, her crankiness about being underappreciated for her domestic efforts is blamed, without irony, on her period.

Angela explains to Ainsley that the easiest route in life is to please a rich man so that he’ll buy her things. Ainsley, in turn, tells an N.F.L.-aspirant love interest that she intends to major in philanthropy in college—so that she can assist her wealthy husband by reducing his tax burden. The admission is meant to illustrate her savvy, even if she can conceive of herself only as a helpmeet. Her world view is reactionary, but, as a critic craving departures from the now rote girlboss archetype, I discovered I didn’t mind; young women like Ainsley exist, however rare they may be onscreen. By the end of the season, her transactional approach to romance yields some modest form of progress: getting her hunky new boyfriend interested in community service.

A series like “Landman,” retrograde and occasionally nonsensical as it is, might be less compelling in a different era. (One could say the same about the year’s big hit, the winsomely formulaic “The Pitt.”) But, if conservative media has blossomed by offering alternatives to the same old fare, there’s nothing that says progressive projects can’t do the same. And there’s much to be mined from our cultural and political disconnect. In the new season of “King of the Hill,” Hank insists that “America is still the best got-dang country on Earth”—but even he prefers a version of it that never was. ♦