‘King of the Hill’s Showrunner Reveals the One Thing Hulu Forced the Show to Change

Hank Hill’s gottdang catchphrase isn’t going anywhere any time soon. 

Despite King of the Hill’s upcoming 14th season appearing on Hulu instead of the family friend network TV confines of FOX, the show’s approach to cursing won’t be all that different. 

King of the Hill showrunner Saladin Patterson got candid about the show’s newly permitted use of foul language during a recent sitdown with IGN, revealing that despite treating their license to cuss with caution anyway — “We certainly talked about that creatively — how much do we want to push it?” he maintained — Hulu eventually drew the line for them in pursuit of a slightly more teen-friendly tone. 

“We did take advantage of being able to say a few more curse words, but not gratuitous(ly),” Patterson explained of the show’s move from Fox to the streamer, clarifying that even with their ability to use more colorful language, the team still took care to prioritize “staying within the tone and character of the original show.” 

Part of this, per Patterson, involved playing around with which characters would willingly spew profanities versus those who wouldn’t. “We have fun with the fact that other characters can curse, but Hank doesn’t,” he continued. “It creates some opportunities for some jokes there.”

But even as the writers’ room appreciated these gags, the same couldn’t be said of their network overlords, who told them to wash their figurative mouths out with soap as they pursued the highly coveted TV-14 status. “Hulu may have made us go back and take out some curse words because they want to make sure that we don’t get that TV-MA rating,” Patterson explained. 

We’re sure Hank would be pretty happy about the show’s slightly cleaned-up tone. After all, those bad words ain’t right.