Media: Two spectacles America really didn't need

Some things make no sense.  For instance?  KING OF THE HILL on HULU or Donald Chump back in the White House.

 

 

Both are flaming out. Valentina Kraljik (FICTION HORIZON) reported:

According to Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics data, King of the Hill has brought in nearly $100 million in streaming revenue since the first quarter of 2020.

That puts it on the same level as “American Dad!,” which is still producing new episodes, and far ahead of Mike Judge’s earlier hit, “Beavis and Butt-Head,” which has earned just over $50 million for Paramount+ since 2020, including its reboot.

For Hulu, these numbers show why it made sense to revive “King of the Hill.” Bringing Arlen, Texas, into the modern world is a smart move for a platform looking for proven shows that keep viewers coming back. “Fans have been waiting for years for new episodes, and that creates a huge initial spike in interest,” industry analysts say.

But they didn't bring back KING OF THE HILL.

Brittany Murphy is dead as is Tom Petty.  Singer-songwriter Petty had played Lucky, husband to Luanne.  Luanne, a character with the show from the first season back in 1997 was very important to the show.  She was Peggy's niece but she was more than that, she was the show's voice of hope.  Brittany Murphy played her and when the talk of a KING OF THE HILL revival first started, many wondered how they could do the show without Brittany Murphy.

Spoiler: They can't.

The revival already suffers bad word of mouth over the animation.  

That's not a minor thing for an animated show.  And Mike Judd whining that they aren't able to do the art the way they once were?  Really doesn't cut it.  

But nothing about the show cuts it.

Supposedly, it's the return of the Hill family.  They've tried to make Bobby look a little cuter but you've got Peggy talking and forcing you to wonder what's wrong with Kathy Najimy's voice?  Is she trying to make Peggy sound older?  Hank?  Did he come back with the revival?

Yes, there's a character named Hank Hill but he makes no sense.

In the first scene, he's now the angry grandpa trying to navigate a world with Uber.  But far worse than the world having past Hank by is this character voiced by Mike Judge that seems nothing at all like Hank.  We cringed over Hank having to defend himself for watching CNN -- didn't really seem like an issue that should matter to his friends Boomhauer and Bill.  It might matter to Dale Gribble, it might not.  But Bill and Boomhauer?

What would matter to them -- and should have matted to Hank -- was leaving the United States.  Forget the US, in what world does Hank leave Texas?

Mike Judge thinks it's a great move (plot device) but heavy pot smokers often think something's far out when it's really nothing.

Hank Hill would not move to Saudi Arabia.  Hank Hill would not live there for years, finally return to the US and think about returning to Saudi Arabia.

Judge likes to insist that many people leave Texas for Saudi Arabia.  

We're sure a few do each year.  We're also sure that they aren't the super-patriots Hank is.  

Judge thinks it's a great move (plot device) because it's let's you see Arlen, Texas through the eyes of the returning Hank.  

He really is that stupid.

And we blame Austin.

Austin, Texas has many things going for it.  The creative community really isn't one of those things.  Remember ROOSTER TEETH?  That Austin based 'content creator' burned through millions for 20 years before finally shutting down in 2023.  It was so great, so wonderful, so this and so that.

At least if you were White.  And straight.  And male.

They created a lot of crap and a few tolerable programs as well.  However, the content-creators never seemed to be living in the same time as the rest of us and they weren't interested in the voices of anyone who wasn't a straight, White male.  For the 21st century, that was embarrassing.

KING OF THE HILL returns with a similar problem.  All these years later, they finally find a Black character who can appear on more than one episode. Black people might make up over 15% of the population of Garland, Texas (one of three cities that Judge has cited for the fictional town of Arlin, Texas); however, they just didn't exist during the 13 seasons KING OF THE HILL originally aired. 

Women -- of any race -- barely existed.  

Having lost one of the major character -- LuAnn -- and her having been a her, you might think that they worked hard to create a new female character.

You would be wrong.

A long with the new Black male character (who lived in Hank and Peggy's house while they were in Saudi Arabia), you've also got Bobby's boss and Bobby's boss' son.  And you've got Bobby's co-worker.  

But no real effort has been made to create a replacement for LuAnn.  In the fall of 2023, Johnny Hardwick passed away.  He had voiced Dale Gribble.  Dale's one of the worst characters on the show -- we'll get to why in a second -- but they hired a replacement (Toby Huss) so that the character could continue.

Why is Dale so awful?  A storyline that's not really cute and should have been wrapped up long ago.  Dale is married to Nancy (Ashley Gardner) who has a child Joseph (voiced by an Anglo White actor until the revival and now the character's voiced by Tai Leclaire who actually is Native American).  Why does that matter?  Dale is not the boy's father, Native American John Redcorn is the child's father and for 13 seasons, the joke has been that Dale doesn't know.  

How is that funny?

Dale still doesn't know in the revival (season 14) and, worse, neither does Joseph. 

Jonathan Joss took over the role in season two when the original voice actor Victor Aaron passed away.  Problem is, Joss was murdered back in June.  So the voice actors for John Redcorn and Dale Gribble are dead.  Dale's recast for the revival.  As is Joseph.  

But this storyline should have been cleared up long, long ago.  

When you watch, you mainly grasp that Judge doesn't know how to be a show runner -- not a good one.

Here's one example.  Unlike in the original show, Bobby no longer lives at home with his parents.  He has an apartment with Joseph. The show did not need to be more spread out.  And are we all forgetting season three of HAPPY DAYS?  Episode one?  "Fonzie Moves In"?  The whole point was to get Fonzie closer to the Cunninghams and make the action tighter so Fonzie moves in with the Cunninghams.  It probably would have been smarter to have moved Bobby back in with the Hills.  It would have made the show move smother and work better.  

KING OF THE HILL didn't do send up and spoofs the way Seth MacFarlane's programs so often do.  They generally had a main story and supporting story.  And they followed them through in the manner that THE SIMPSONS and BOB'S BUGERS do.  Unlike those shows -- or AMERICAN DAD -- KING OF THE HILL did not produce many classic episodes.  There's "A Beer Can Named Desire" and that may be it.  The writing was never bad but it was never focused.  With Bobby living in an apartment, the show becomes even more scatter shot.

Back to HAPPY DAYS, season five, episode three was entitled "Hollywood: Part 3."  But it's remembered as the episode where water skiing Fonzie jumps a tiger shark with the phrase "jumping the shark" deriving from that episode -- it's the moment that's supposed to kick off a decline.

We bring that up because of Friday when Convicted Felon Donald Chump had his jump the shark moment in Alaska as he met with War Criminal Vladimir Putin.

Chump, based on his statements repeatedly last week, thought he was going to Russia.  As Ruth noted Saturday, "" -- so clearly Chump had many things on his mind going into that date.  Still, give him props for going blonder with his hair color -- we're guessing it was his equivalent of Marinly Monroe's platinum blond look for when she sang "Happy Birthday" to President JFK.  He might not have known where the plane was dropping him off but he knew he wanted to look pretty for his man.  Giddy might have been the reason for Donald repeatedly misspeaking (lying) in the lead-up to the meet-up.

This might also explain how documents got left unattended and forgotten.  Naomi LaChance (ROLLING STONE) explained:

 

Guests at a hotel in Alaska found eight pages of documents from President Donald Trump's meetings Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a printer, NPR reported Saturday.

The documents show the schedule of the summit with times and locations. They also show the lunch menu, the lunch seating chart, and the phone numbers of three of Trump administration staffers. The documents were found in a printer at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel in Anchorage that is near the military base where the summit took place. 

Trump and Putin have had a hot and cold relationship, with Trump alternately taunting him and praising him. On Friday, the two leaders walked a red carpet together, as they met to discuss a potential end to Russia's war in Ukraine. The meeting ended abruptly without a Ukraine ceasefire deal. Trump told reporters it was "an extremely productive meeting," but they "didn't get there."

 

Tom Boggioni added:

According to Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA who lectures about national security, a government official leaving the documents laying around is a massive security breach.

"It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration," he told NPR. "You just don't leave things in printers. It's that simple."

Love was on the brain but there were also egos involved as Daniel Hampton reminds:

 

A New York Times reporter flagged what she called one "unusual" element of a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — it was awfully quiet.

Trump and Putin participated in a bizarre standoff, with each trying to outwait the other on deplaning in Alaska. As the two walked down the tarmac and shook hands, Times reporter Katie Rogers, who is traveling with Trump, flagged a notable facet of their meeting.

It was like a moment in 1939 on the MGM lot when Laszlo Willinger needed photographs of the three primary stars of THE WOMEN for poster art.  Rosalind Russell shows up late to make a big entrance as she apologizes for being late.  Though late, she's actually the first to arrive because Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer are both circling around the building in their cars, each refusing to go in before the other.  Laszlo has to go outside and flag the cars down to stop the diva behavior. 

 

Divas.

Between  Chump and Putin's sexual tensions, the need to sparkle and, most of all, the incompetence, it's no wonder that Chump embarrassed himself on the world stage and accomplished nothing.  Andrew O'Hehir (SALON) notes:

Donald Trump’s supposed strength lies in showmanship and stagecraft, or at least in shamelessly whoring for attention, which is not exactly the same thing. The fact that “we” — meaning the entire ecosystem of media and public opinion, including you and me — keep giving him attention, like a bunch of aging addicts chasing an unachievable high, says more about us than about him.

But while Trump’s second administration is undeniably nastier and more destructive than his first, it’s not entirely clear who’s driving the bus to dystopia. Because it ain’t him. Trump has always seemed more like a sump pump of received wisdom and reprocessed opinions than an actual human adult, but even by those standards he now appears enormously diminished. His so-called summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday was an abject failure (for everyone but Putin), making clear that the president’s performance skills have degraded nearly as much as his already-damaged cognitive abilities.

It seems almost beside the point to report that Trump and Putin failed to achieve a breakthrough in resolving the Ukraine conflict, and that Trump appears to have pivoted back to Putin’s view of the war, at least for the moment, after a brief personal flirtation with the orthodox pro-Ukraine position of other Western leaders. Did anyone genuinely expect a different outcome? It’s not entirely a rhetorical question; a lot of people at least pretended to.

The endlessly disproven notion that Trump is a master negotiator, uniquely skilled at making “deals” (whatever that even means), is like a fading folk belief or sectarian doctrine. For MAGA believers, it’s a received truth that requires no evidence and can never be contradicted by facts. For mainstream journalists, it’s an aspect of the Trump legend that must be treated with reverence, and demands the perpetual suspension of disbelief. Even after all these years, they remain mystified and mesmerized by the Trump phenomenon, and follow him around like a flock of children hoping to learn Harry Houdini’s secrets: Maybe this time, the magic will be real!

It wasn’t real this time either, and the consensus view that Trump was thoroughly pantsed by the Russian leader is correct, or close enough. Putin was welcomed back to the Western world with a literal red carpet, while giving nothing away and making no concessions. Amid the baffled and disgruntled commentary coming in from all directions, I was especially struck by New York Times fashion reporter Vanessa Friedman, who goes straight to the heart of the matter in far more economical fashion than most of her peers. The point of the whole show, she writes, was the photo op depicting Putin and Trump

in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties … giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.

Both men, Friedman continues, understand “the power of the image” and “have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.” What she does not say, perhaps to avoid throwing shade on her colleagues from the supposed grown-up desks, is that Trump’s image-making fell flat during this particular spectacle, and the whole world was watching.

Bobby Ghosh (TIME)  graded Chump similarly:

The Alaska meeting, which concluded without the Ukraine ceasefire Trump had promised, represents the latest chapter in a troubling pattern: the 45th and 47th president’s persistent confusion of stagecraft for statecraft. Where Reagan walked away from Reykjavik rather than accept a bad deal, Trump seems perpetually seduced by the optics of the moment, the handshake photo, the joint press conference that suggests progress where none exists.

Putin emerged from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson having achieved precisely what he came for: legitimacy on American soil, the erosion of Western unity, and a platform to present his territorial demands as reasonable “agreements.” Trump, meanwhile, offered the unconvincing assurance that they had made “many, many points that we agreed on”—diplomatic speak for admitting you’ve been played.

The choice of venue itself revealed Trump’s weakness for symbolism over substance. Alaska, purchased from Russia 158 years ago for $7.2 million, was supposed to be a clever metaphor for American strength. Instead, it became the stage for Putin to pitch his own “land deal of the century”—demanding Ukraine surrender the very territories his forces have failed to fully capture. The irony was lost on Trump, but certainly not on Putin, who understands better than most that in diplomacy, symbols matter only when backed by resolve.

Retired US Army Lt General Mark Hertling graded just as harshly but was a bit more succinct, "This whole thing is despicable."