‘King of the Hill’ Just Hit Joe Rogan-Types Below the Belt

The Manosphere believes that America is facing a masculinity crisis, and the day will come when only the manliest, strongest, most successful and most misogynistic men will survive. For their sakes, let’s just hope that day isn’t leg day.

In the newly released revival season of King of the Hill, Hank and Peggy have the unenviable task of adjusting to the new norms of life in a red state in 2025 America after an extended stay outside the country. While Hank is still the same red-blooded Republican Texan that he was before he went to Saudi Arabia, he came back to Arlen to find the rest of the Right to be very different from how he left them. A Bush Republican like Hank may believe that America’s men need to return to traditional values to bring about a revival in masculinity, but in the age of President Donald Trump and his podcaster buddies, all those words have very different, politically charged meanings, and the Joe Rogan definition of masculinity doesn’t have the legs to pass the Hill test.

The penultimate episode of King of the Hill Season 14, “No Hank Left Behind,” tells the story of Hank’s run-in with a Rogan-esque, Andrew Tate-inspired, right-wing masculinity grifter who teaches men to take out all of their problems and frustrations on women instead of the squat rack.

In “No Hank Left Behind,” Hank accompanies his troubled teenaged nephew, Good Hank, on a masculinity bootcamp that he mistakenly believes will be a character-building experience. Unaware of the entire podcast-based industry that’s designed to exploit underachieving men’s insecurities about their masculinity, Hank initially buys into the teachings of one Eli Selwick, a bald-headed, tight-T-shirt-wearing manhood coach who teaches his paying disciples about family, faith, finances, fitness and cargo shorts that go so far below the knees that they’re basically baggy capris.

Seriously, looking at this Eli Selwick and his business partner, you can tell that they’re hitting the bench press on a daily basis and recovering with ample podcast-endorsed supplements, but the little twigs supporting their throbbing upper bodies are basically toothpicks holding up bricks. When Hank inevitably exposes Eli as a sexist con artist who got all of his start-up money from his disappointed mother, he trips over a chair trying to stop his partner from jumping ship and those baggy shorts briefly ride up to show the kind of quads that would befit a waifish Victorian noblewoman, not a man who makes a living by teaching untalented teenagers how to invest in cryptocurrency.

After Eli urges the boys of the bootcamp to blame the women in their lives for emasculating them, Hank teaches the crowd that real men like him value and appreciate the women who help them succeed. Because, ultimately, being a man is about respecting, protecting and supporting the people you love the most, and all the kettle bells and Patreon subscriptions in the world can’t change that. Guys like Tate and Rogan prey on men’s insecurities to push their profitable and bicep-focused concept of masculinity, but being a supportive person like Hank is what actually earns men their respect, and lower-body support is more important to physical strength than elk meat and DMT.

Besides, it’s not like Hank is anything to write home about below the midsection — but diminished glutes can’t stop him from being Texas’ manliest ass-kicker.