TVSquad

One of TV's most underrated animated shows reached a milestone that has been more ignored than the girl with face herpes at the high school prom.

Mike Judge's brilliant King of the Hill surpassed 250 episodes this past week with barely a mention from the network that kept on the air for 13 seasons.

And it seems a little mean, even for Fox, a network so mean that they run their cars on the tears of crying babies.

The show didn't have the kind of ratings success that makes the world stop on its axis so everyone can watch it. In fact, it's been threatened with cancellation so many times that it deserves some kind of recognition from the U.S. Health Department for learning how to cheat death with such frequency.

Instead, it accomplished something much greater than just ratings or ad dollars. It gave TV cartoons and animation a serious edge. Creator Mike Judge and his team of writers turned the tiny fictional town of Arlen into something very real and genuine and relied on strong characters and vivid settings to create some very funny and heartfelt moments of American television. It even picked up the torch that The Simpsons dropped when it stopped being so serious and started relying more on sillier fare to fill their time slot.

Now it looks as though the show is definitely entering its final few episodes and Fox doesn't seem happy that the show has survived so long or accomplished so much. Ignoring its most major milestone feels as though they are ready to be rid of the thing so they can stuff their Sunday night block with another Family Guy spinoff. They can stuff it all right.