How Hard Is Dale to Watch in the ‘King of the Hill’ Revival?

King of the Hill premiered in January of 1997. In all kinds of ways, that was a different world: before 9/11; before the forever wars in the Middle East; before smartphones; before birtherism; before QAnon; before COVID; before January 6th; before a lot of other world events that became red meat for conspiracy theorists. When viewers first met Dale Gribble (voice of Johnny Hardwick), his anti-government beliefs were so quaint they were easy to laugh at, but many may now be wondering how he plays in Season 14. 

The short answer: generally not too unbearable!

The worst of Dale — like the worst of the season — is in the premiere. (Following Hardwick’s death midway through taping, Toby Huss takes over the role later in the season.) Hopes that electoral politics might not come up at all are dashed as we learn about Dale’s successful mayoral run, standing out from the 10 other candidates by opposing all masks. (Korean sheet masks aren’t among the ones he mentions; perhaps Nancy convinced him to make an exception so she could stay camera-ready for her YouTube real estate show, Selling Arlen.) If I never have to hear about election deniers as though they espouse a cogent political philosophy, I’ll be all set, so the joke about Dale invalidating his own election as an “election denier denier” wasn’t a winner for me.

Dale also pops off in the third episode, revolving around a trip to Dallas’s George W. Bush Library. While Hank (Mike Judge) is enthralled by exhibits featuring baseballs, pens and “invasive cedar,” Dale finds an enthusiastic audience for his utter bullshit, like Bush letting MS-13 secretly invade through tunnels from Acapulco to the Denver airport and William Rehnquist being a double agent for the Vatican. At least a performance like Dale’s is nothing new to their tour guide (Jack McBrayer), as we hear when Hank apologizes for Dale. 

For the rest of the season, though, Dale and his absurd theories are as easy to laugh at as they ever were. Hearing him declare that dinosaurs were killed by “the virus the dinosaur government created that made them go extinct” or enlist Bill (Stephen Root) in his investigation into whether Hank’s new appreciation for soccer means he’s a Saudi sleeper agent won’t, or shouldn’t, interrupt your enjoyment of an escapist sitcom by uncomfortably reminding you of real current events. 

Better still, Season 14 gives Dale lots of chances to use his skills — including the ones that are normally antisocial — in heroic ways. When Hank and his much younger half-brother, Good Hank (Finn Wolfhard), attend a weekend-long seminar from ManMade vlogger Eli (Diedrich Bader), Hank is alarmed by the misogynist lessons Eli is teaching and suspects there’s more to his story than he’s publicly sharing. After calling Dale to “find out about a person,” Hank is able to confront Eli in front of the group with Dale’s findings: Eli doesn’t own his ManMade business, Eli’s mother does. Then she bursts in herself to say that she expects him to update his curriculum or she’ll withdraw her investment. Dale might not have helped had he known he’d be helping Hank show Eli’s acolytes they need to look to themselves if they’re not getting support from the women in their lives, but Hank still couldn’t have gotten there without him.

Dale is also there for Peggy (Kathy Najimy) when Rainey Street is the site of a vicious bedbug outbreak. Exterminator Dale points out that all the victims also borrowed books from Peggy’s just-erected Book Nook, a little community library she’s stocked with books from a garage sale. Peggy gasps that bedbugs seem to be attracted to readers, so Dale has to tell her the books themselves must have been infested. Horrified that her community-building good deed has come to ruin, Peggy tells Dale the outbreak must not be traced back to the Book Nook, and to Peggy herself. Dale has no compunction about using his professional rounds to spread misinformation about the source: claiming bedbugs thrive in cold climates throws suspicion on a family that just got back from New York; telling another client they thrive in hot climates seems to damn a neighbor recently returned from Fort Worth; mentioning a thrift store implicates local vintage shoppers. 

The ruse can’t be sustained, and the episode ends in a cleansing book fire, but Dale’s support for Peggy is still briefly valuable.

Dale’s finest moment comes when Bobby (Pamela Adlon) spots a rat in the kitchen at his restaurant, Robota Chane. Leaving aside the alarming revelation that Bobby’s business partner Chane (Ki Hong Lee) and his father Ted (Kenneth Choi) are exploiting Bobby’s labor and would expect him to shoulder the cost of an exterminator, Bobby reaches out to Dale for a discount job. Dale has unconventional schemes to trick the rat — a robot rat, Judas rat and sexy rat are all involved — but as outlandish as they sound coming out of Dale, they do end up working and saving both Bobby’s money and the restaurant’s rating with the Health Department.

With reality having lapped even Dale’s most absurd ideas from the show’s first run, watching Dale could have easily become an uncomfortable if not outright painful exercise. Fortunately, the show’s writers have kept him on the right side of crazy — mostly.