Having wrapped up King of the Hill‘s 13th season, series co-creator Mike Judge reflects on what it’s like to work on over 200 episodes of the series. While it looks like the Arlen, Texas-based animated comedy has reached its end, there are a couple installments left to air. No dates have been released about that, but there’s hope for return this September or October. However, Mike Judge believes the time really has come for the end.
“I actually think it’s probably a good time to stop,” he said on an interview with the New York Times. “Then again, I kind of wanted to stop six or seven years ago, and I felt like it got really good after that. At the same time I would prefer to quit while we’re ahead rather than run it into the ground.”
He also believes that there won’t be much need for an actual King of the Hill finale. “Actually I’m not sure there will be a final episode this time around,” Mike Judge announced. “We did a final episode back in the first year we thought we were canceled. I was really proud of that last episode, and then when we didn’t get canceled, we had to kind of tweak it and do these different things to make it not seem so final. And I’m not sure there will be any kind of story arc.”
Despite the impending conclusion of King of the Hill, Mike Judge has kept himself busy with numerous other projects. There’s the highly publicized The Goode Family on ABC, as well as his own movie, Extract.
“My movie, “Extract,” is coming out in September. It’s kind of like “Office Space,” another workplace comedy, except that “Office Space” was told from the point of view of employees, and the managers were the bad guys,” he revealed. “This is from the point of view of the owner [played by Jason Bateman], and it’s sympathetic to him, and the employees are the bad guys. It’s kind of like he’s in a midlife crisis and thinks he’s going — uh, I’m really bad at pitching, really bad at describing. I almost never have to pitch a movie.”
Meanwhile, there’s his other work: The Goode Family. While he voices the main character for the series, Judge says it really is “John Altschuler’s baby” instead of his.
“I didn’t want to do another animated show, but John had this idea from when he was talking to a friend of his, and he bought a hybrid and found out that hybrids are bad because of the battery. So it’s a show about trying hard to be green and good, and how the rules keep changing.”
Even though Mike Judge will be finishing up King of the Hill, there are still a number of other treats he has in store for fans. Catch his work on The Goode Family on ABC.
-Maria Gonzalez, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: FOX, The New York Times
(Image Courtesy of Daylife.com)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
