The fictional city from King of the Hill stands in for Anytown, Texas, but I think there are WAY more clues to decipher its location than the hometown of the Simpsons!
Is Arlen supposed to be a stand in for a real city? Comic books use that approach (Metropolis, Gotham City, Coast City, etc.)
Or is Arlen just a new city that is somewhere in the vast, unoccupied landscape of Texas?
Here are some facts:
Arlen is a good sized town. It has a two-level mall, a comedy club, a community college a movie theater and many chain resteraunts.
Most importantly, it is a given that Arlen is a firm three hours from Houston. When Kahn got fired for bragging about government secrets to Hank. His new job, in Houston was a three hour drive. Everything else is a vague distance. However, we’ve seen the guys take a day trip to Mexico, San Antonio, Witchita Falls and Dallas. But the three hours to Houston in the only certainty we’ve seen.
Peggie shops for shoes (she has freakishly large feet) in Lubbock.
Once when Nancy was doing the weather, she seemed to gesture at a location east of DFW.
Arlen’s area code was actually revealed. It shares a zip code with Beeville, TX. Beeville is approximately 3-4 hours South of Houston. I think we can discredit this as the producers simply picking a Texas zip code and using it. I’ve been through Beeville many times. They don’t even have a Super Walmart. They JUST got a small movie theater! Plus, it is WAY too far from Dallas or Witchita Falls.
All of this leaves me with three suggestions.
Tyler- An area East of Dallas. It would fit with Nancy’s weather report.
Lukin- North of Houston and SE of Dallas.
Killeen or Temple- My personal favorites. You have to ignore Nancy’s weather report, which was general, but I always felt Arlen was further West than the major population centers of Texas.
I used to like Abilene but it is too far from Houston.
If it is a smaller town, put me down for Stephenville. That is about the location that I’d put it.
Anyone else have a theory or able to provide any clues?
Cool post Marley23. Good to see I had most of the relevant facts.
But, I can’t see it being Garland. That is a true suburb of Dallas. Hank wouldn’t be afraid of Bobby “moving off to Witchita Fall” AKA “the big city” when they lived in Garlen.
Ditto for Arlington.
Arlen feels like it has some country around it.
I do recall that Dale got his exterminator’s certification in my home town of Humble.
I’m not saying Arlen is located where Garland is, just that I’ve been told it’s named for it and somewhat based on it. The location is obviously supposed to be nebulous, although despite what IMDb says it’s much more concrete than Springfield.
Landry is beloved by all Texans. Even us Oiler fans. But you’re right. If he were in the Houston realm, it would be Bum Phillips Middle School (not high school).
I’d always heard it was Garland, but it could be anywhere. What part of the state doesn’t matter; I’ve met every single character on that show since I moved down here a year and a half ago. (Longview in the Piney Woods, and now Greenville north of Dallas on the plains.)
Well, I won’t claim that Arlen IS Austin, but Mike Judge has lived in Austin off and on for many years, and he’s regularly included scenes and in-jokes in both the “Beavis and Butthead” cartoons and on “King of the Hill” that I’m sure he fully expects Austinites to recognize.
For example, the airport that Beavis and Butthead take off from in the movie “B & B Do America” was unmistakeably Austin’s Robert Mueller Airport (which has since been shut down).
I think Judge wants Arlen to be a generic middle-class Texas town… but there are just enough Austin in-jokes that I’d say Arlen is just a BIT more like Austin than anyplace else.
But just a bit. To give you an idea of how Judge thinks, he filmed “Office Space” here in Austin, but he went out of his way to AVOID showing any obvious Austin landmarks because he didn’t WANT people to look at the movie and think “That’s Austin.” He wanted them to look and see a soul-less, character-less high-tech Anytown.
Similarly, I don’t think he wants us to look at Arlen and say “That must be Austin (though, again, occasional in-jokes lead me to think it is).” He wants us to think Arlen is just like any of fifty Texas towns filled with ordinary rednecks.
I’m from Austin originally. Lived there for 26 or 27 years. I don’t think I’ve noticed any in-jokes, but maybe I’m not watching the right episodes. Can you give any examples?
The alleys give it away - somewhere in the Dallas metro, if not the sphere if influence. Suburban areas of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso and most other small and medoum-sized Texas cities don’t have alleys. They’re common in suburban Dallas, though.
In a “Making of” piece from one of the show DVDs, Judge describes how he and the original showrunner spent time scouting around the city of Austin. They were looking for locations and secondary characters to use in the inital presentation of the show to the FOX suits.
It’s pretty obviously NOT Garland. Arlen flat-out isn’t a suburban Dallas town. Like others have said, the D/FW area is way too far away for a day trip to Mexico, is about 4-5 hours from Houston, even if you drive 80 mph.
Plus, Arlen just isn’t suburban enough to be Garland. And if you’re going to assume that since the name is close, how about Marlin, TX? The name is just as similar as Garland, and at least Marlin is in the right part of the state.
It’s pretty obvious that Arlen is a generic small to mid-sized Texas city, and seems to me to be placed somewhere out by Waco or Killeen somewhere. There really isn’t a city of the right size in the right place anywhere in the state.
