Mimicking Real Life, ‘Hill’ Takes Comedic High Ground

What is life, really, without a pickup truck, a backyard grill and the Bible? It’s life on prime-time TV, that’s what, where everybody’s hip enough to live in New York, Los Angeles or Boston. Or maybe, if they’re really wild, Cleveland. Few tubers live in the ‘burbs. And if they do, they’re “Everybody Loves Raymond,” set on Long Island in the nation’s largest TV market. You can forget the country, unless you’re Faith Hill rockin’ onstage in skin-tight leather.

Here’s a shocker. Americans live in places other than TV’s urban world. Not the rube-land of “Green Acres” or “The Andy Griffith Show,” but modern, mid-sized American towns--the kind of quiet, safe, forested, family-lovin’ places (Montana? Idaho?) that worldly folk are moving to as fast as their dot-com millions can take them.

Ever since “Roseanne” resided 10 years ago in the small-city Midwest--close enough to Chicago for network comfort--few series have bravely gone where one of TV’s most unsung gems now dares to dwell each week.

The animated “King of the Hill” quietly celebrates its 100th episode Sunday on Fox at 7:30 p.m., a too-early time slot for such a smart, sassy, sweet and satisfying piece of work. Those four S’s don’t often go together. And they’re assembled here by animator Mike Judge’s crew in such a subtle way (OK, add a fifth S), most viewers look right past this simple treasure (that’s six).

Following the ordinary Texas lives of bespectacled propane salesman Hank Hill, his respectful teacher wife, Peggy, and their chubby ‘tween son, Bobby, “King of the Hill” is about adult men wading awkwardly through relationships with their crabby dads, independent wives and clueless sons. It’s about teaching your kid not to smoke by making him puff the whole pack. It’s your old friends getting jealous when you make a new one. It’s an ex-exterminator suffering withdrawal from bug-killing. It’s the mall. It’s shop class.

It’s about real life, in ways that too many sitcoms peopled by human actors really aren’t anymore. “Most of us on the show have had previous jobs on live-action sitcoms,” says Glenn Berger, recently promoted to executive producer for the already-in-production fall season. He’s been with “King of the Hill” since its debut (Jan. 12, 1997), and he recalls an early review calling it “more alive and three-dimensional than most live-action shows, where people are just walking punch lines. Here, there’s a slower pace, and no laugh track.”

“I’ve worked on live-action shows that are far less smart than ‘King of the Hill’ in their level of observational comedy.”

By now, you are probably thinking “The Simpsons.” That Matt Groening cartoon helped make prime time safe for adult-aimed animation that also spoke to kids with its family stories. But even in their ostensibly realistic setting, the Simpsons are yellow people doing outlandish things. “Homer Simpson went into space,” Berger says. “That’s very funny, and that can work on that show,” but it isn’t what Judge wanted “King of the Hill” to be about.

Judge, the “Beavis and Butt-head” creator, arrived at Fox amid expectations of trailer-trash jerks close to MTV’s dim rude boys--and delivered a warm and perceptive portrait of average folks with common sense. You want quirks? They got those too. Hank’s cantankerous dad, Cotton, often plots to kill Castro. Motor-mouth-neighbor Boomhauer rarely says an intelligible word. But their outward oddities are just flavor for their behavioral confusions and emotional baggage.

When Bobby Hill accidentally sees his cousin Luanne naked, it’s no leering farce; it’s an authentic view of adolescent embarrassment and curiosity, as well as adult discomfort. When Hank gets teary saying goodbye to his beloved old pickup, he’s actually upset about the distance between him and his dad, and him and his son. Of course, high jinks happen along the way. (This Sunday features guest voices Renee Zellweger and Snoop Dogg as a prostitute and her pimp, respectively, with whom Hank unwittingly gets embroiled.) But the personal reality underlying the lunacy is as solid as Texas itself.

“King of the Hill” is blissfully free of tired irony and sarcasm, while still sharp and contemporary. Young viewers are especially lovin’ it, landing the show in prime time’s top 20 among teens and adults 18 to 34.

To say this plain-spoken show from the provinces is smarter than most “sophisticated” sitcoms isn’t even a slam on urbanites. Notes Berger: “My writing partner and I are both Ivy League-educated Jewish guys from the New York area.” They take a yearly Texas trip for texture. They have stuck with “King of the Hill” from the beginning, as has much of the production staff, happy to work on something simultaneously genuine, goofy and gonzo. “For most of the country, it’s a really cool, smart show about people they know. For New York and L.A., it’s like an anthropological study.” Hey, city slickers: Get with the program.

* “King of the Hill” can be seen Sundays at 7:30 p.m. on Fox.