After waiting 15 years for the return of King of the Hill, Mike Judge’s legendary animated series centered around a Texas family, its arrival is finally nigh. New episodes are set to make their debut on Hulu on August 4, and I’m struggling to patiently wait that long to catch up with my favorite characters after all that time. But I’m surviving thanks to the reboot’s first trailer, in which we get our first glimpse of grown-up Bobby Hill working as a big-city chef.
For those who are unfamiliar with King of the Hill, the series follows Hank and Peggy Hill, a couple living in the fictional Texas suburb of Arlen with their son Bobby, a kid who pretty obviously marches to the beat of his own drummer. Peggy’s a substitute teacher and Hank’s a propane salesman who regularly preaches the gospel of what he views as the purest possible grilling fuel. In their Arlen neighborhood, the Hills live alongside a diverse cast of neighbors and friends, which range from Dale Gribble, the conspiracy theorist and proprietor of Dale’s Dead Bug, to the prickly “Kahn” Souphanousinphone, a Lao immigrant who moved to Texas after falling out with his neighbors in California.
In the show’s initial 13-season run, Bobby was a kid, but now he’s all grown up and working as a chef in Dallas. Fans keeping track have known for a long while that Bobby would work as an “up-and-coming chef” in the reboot, but now we’ve finally got some details on what that will actually look like. In the first trailer for the series, we learn that Bobby is working at a Japanese restaurant called Robata Chane. This update makes total sense for Bobby, a man who always displayed his love for food and cooking throughout the show’s 13-season run.
Even as a kid, Bobby was always experimenting in the kitchen and, of course, eating. Remember, this is the kid who once ate so many cured deli meats that he ended up with gout, and downed an entire 72-ounce steak just to spite his ex. In the show’s final episode before its cancellation in 2009, titled “To Sirloin With Love,” we see Bobby and Hank finally begin to understand each other as Bobby throws himself into elaborately cooking a hibachi meal for his friends and neighbors. Of course, this lifelong fruit pie fan ended up in a kitchen, especially a robata grill, where he can marry his love of food — and the love of grilling that he learned in part from his father — in the same place.
Grown-up Bobby is also a beer enthusiast, crafting his own brews and trying to convince Hank to try some good stuff instead of continuing to swill his cans of Alamo. He tries to explain that beer can be so much more — it can be complex, interesting, even fruity. “I have been drinking beer for 40 years, and I never wished once that it tasted more like fruit,” Hank says in response, offering the most Hank Hill reaction to microbrewing imaginable. I really can’t wait to see Bobby explain the concept of yakitori to his parents, and watch them try to support his career choices in the way that only a couple of worried Texas parents can. (That is, awkwardly and definitely with a few hilarious bumbles along the way.)
