King of the Hill

Series synopsis

King of the Hill is set in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas. The show centers around the Hill family, whose head is the ever-responsible, hard-working, loyal, disciplined, and honest Hank Hill (voiced by Mike Judge). The pun title refers to Hank as the head of the family as well as metaphorically to the children's game King of the Hill. Hank is employed as an assistant manager at Strickland Propane, selling "propane and propane accessories". He is very traditional and moral, and he takes exceptionally good care of his dog, Ladybird, which he treats, more often than not, as a member of the family and as a human. Hank is married to Peggy Hill (née Platter) (voiced by Kathy Najimy), a native of Montana, who is a substitute Spanish teacher, although she has little grasp of the language; she has also found employment as a freelance author, Boggle champion, notary public, softball pitcher and real estate agent. Her overconfidence and trusting nature often leads her into getting involved in complex schemes that Peggy doesn't recognize as criminal or irresponsible until it's too late.

Hank and Peggy's only child, Bobby Hill (voiced by Pamela Adlon), is a husky pre-pubescent boy who is generally friendly and well-liked, but not very bright, and often prone to making bad decisions. Throughout the series, Peggy's niece, Luanne Platter (voiced by Brittany Murphy), the daughter of her scheming brother Hoyt (guest voiced by MTV stuntman Johnny Knoxville in "Life: A Loser's Manual", the 12th season finale) and his alcoholic ex-wife Leanne (voiced by Adlon in "Leanne's Saga"), lives with the Hill family. Naïve and very emotional, Luanne was originally encouraged to move out by her Uncle Hank, but over time, he accepts her as a member of the family. Over the course of the series, Luanne works as a beauty technician and puppeteer at a local cable access TV station. Luanne later marries Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt (voiced by Tom Petty), an independently wealthy layabout who lives on the settlements he earns from frivolous lawsuits.

Hank has a healthy relationship with his mother, Tillie (voiced by Tammy Wynette, later Beth Grant and K Callan), a kind woman who lives in Arizona. Hank is, at first, uncomfortable with his mother dating Gary (voiced by Carl Reiner), a Jewish man, but he is more reasonable when she marries Chuck (voiced by William Devane). In contrast, Hank has a love/hate relationship with his shin-less father, Col. Cotton Hill (voiced by Toby Huss), a hateful veteran of World War II who verbally abused Tillie during their marriage, leading to their divorce. Cotton, who spends most of his time at strip joints, later marries the much younger Didi (voiced by Ashley Gardner), a candy striper who attended kindergarten with Hank. Together, Cotton and Didi have a son, "G.H." ("Good Hank"), who bears a striking resemblance to Bobby.

Other main characters include Hank's friends and their families. Dale Gribble (voiced by Johnny Hardwick) is the Hills' chain-smoking and paranoid next-door neighbor and Hank's best friend. He owns his own pest control business, Dale's Dead Bug, and he is also a licensed bounty hunter and president of the Arlen Gun Club. Dale is married to Nancy Hicks-Gribble (voiced by Ashley Gardner), a weather girl—and later anchor woman—for the Channel 84 news. The only Gribble child, Joseph (voiced by Brittany Murphy; later Breckin Meyer) is the result of Nancy's 15-year-long affair with John Redcorn (voiced by Victor Aaron; later Jonathan Joss), a Native American healer. Dale never realizes that Redcorn is having an affair with his wife, nor does he ever question Joseph's obvious Native American features; rather, Dale considers Redcorn to be one of his best friends. Despite his biological parentage, Joseph is more influenced in temperament by Dale's personality. Joseph is Bobby's best friend, and the two often get into trouble as the result of their combined enthusiasm and naivety.

Early in the series, the Souphanousinphones, an upper-middle class Laotian family, move in next-door to the Hills. The family consists of the materialistic Kahn (voiced by Toby Huss), his social-climber wife Minh (voiced by Lauren Tom), and their teenage daughter, Kahn, Jr., or "Connie" (voiced by Lauren Tom). Kahn—who fled poverty in Laos to become a successful businessman in America—is often at odds with his neighbors, believing them to be hillbillies and rednecks due to their lower socioeconomic status. Minhn often becomes involved in activities with Peggy and Nancy, whom she looks down on as uncivilized and ignorant, despite still considering them her best friends. Connie has been pushed by her father to become a child prodigy and excels at a variety of things from academics to music, though she rejects her father's materialism and judgmental nature. She develops a relationship with Bobby that blossoms into romance over the first half of the series before the two decide to remain friends. Connie often accompanies Bobby and Joseph on their misadventures as a neglected voice of reason.

Jeff Boomhauer (voiced by Mike Judge), known simply as "Boomhauer", lives across from the Hills. Boomhauer is a slim womanizer whose mutterings are hard to understand to the audience, but easily understood by his friends and most other characters. Despite his gibberish speech, he can sing clearly; he can also speak fluent Spanish and French. His occupation is not explicitly stated; a single line early in the series indicates he's an electrician living on worker's comp. The series finale reveals that he is a Texas Ranger. His given name, "Jeff", was not revealed until the 13th and final season. Also living across from the Hills is Bill Dauterive (voiced by Stephen Root), an overweight, divorced, and clinically depressed man. Bill is unlucky in love, though he finds near-success with several women, including former Texas Governor Ann Richards. The series briefly depicts him entering into a long-term relationship with Khan's mother, though later format changes would retcon this. Throughout the series, he often expresses an unrequited attraction to Peggy, which she occasionally uses to rope him into her schemes. Despite his popularity in high school, he is now seen as a loser. Bill is a Sergeant in the United States Army, where he gives haircuts to soldiers.

Other minor characters include Buck Strickland (voiced by Stephen Root), Hank's licentious boss at Strickland Propane; Joe Jack (voiced by Toby Huss) and Enrique (Danny Trejo), Hank's co-workers at Strickland; Carl Moss (voiced by Dennis Burkley), Bobby's principal at Tom Landry Middle School; and Reverend Karen Stroup (voiced by Mary Tyler Moore, later Ashley Gardner), the female minister of Arlen First Methodist.

Following the show's slice of life format, which was consistently present throughout its run, the show presented itself as being more down to earth than other competing animated sitcoms, e.g. The Simpsons, due to the way the show applied realism and often derived its plots and humor from mundane topics. Critics also noted the great deal of humanity shown throughout the show.

Conception

In early 1995, after the successful first run of Beavis and Butt-head on MTV, Mike Judge decided to create another animated series, this one set in a small Texas town based on an amalgamation of Dallas suburbs, including Garland, Texas, where he had lived, and Richardson. Judge conceived the idea for the show, drew the main characters, and wrote a pilot script.

Fox was uncertain of the viability of Judge's concept for an animated sitcom based in reality and set in the American South, so the network teamed the cartoonist with Greg Daniels, an experienced prime-time TV writer who had previously worked on The Simpsons. Daniels rewrote the pilot script and created several important characters who did not appear in Judge's first draft, including Luanne and Cotton. Daniels also reworked some of the supporting characters (whom the pair characterized as originally having been generic, "snaggle-toothed hillbillies"), such as making Dale Gribble a conspiracy theorist. While Judge's writing tended to emphasize political humor, specifically the clash of Hank Hill's social conservatism and interlopers' liberalism, Daniels focused on character development to provide an emotional context for the series' numerous cultural conflicts. Judge was ultimately so pleased with Daniels' contributions, he chose to credit him as a co-creator, rather than give him the "developer" credit usually reserved for individuals brought onto a pilot written by someone else.

Initial success

After its debut, the series became a large success for Fox and was named one of the best television series of the year by various publications, including Entertainment Weekly, Time, and TV Guide. For the 1997–1998 season, the series became one of Fox's highest-rated programs and even briefly outperformed The Simpsons in ratings. During the fifth and sixth seasons, Mike Judge and Greg Daniels became less involved with the show. They eventually refocused on it, even while Daniels became involved with more and more projects.

Format change

Judge and Daniels' reduced involvement with the show resulted in the series' format turning more episodic and formulaic. Beginning in season seven, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, who had worked on the series since season two, took it over completely, tending to emphasize Judge's concept that the series was built around sociopolitical humor rather than character-driven humor. Although Fox insisted that the series lack character development or story arcs (a demand made of the network's other animated series, so that they can be shown out of order in syndication), Judge and Daniels had managed to develop several minor arcs and story elements throughout the early years of the series, such as Luanne's becoming more independent and educated after Buckley's death, and the aging of characters being acknowledged (a rare narrative occurrence for an animated series). Lacking Judge and Daniels' supervision, the series ceased aging its characters and even began retconning character backstories; in the episode "A Rover Runs Through It", Peggy's mother was abruptly changed from a neurotic housewife with whom Peggy shared a competitive relationship to a bitter rancher from whom Peggy had been estranged for several years. The format change also resulted in at least one minor character—Laoma, Khan's mother—being written out of the show completely, and her relationship with Bill ignored in all future episodes.

Facing cancellation

Because it was scheduled to lead off Fox's Sunday-night animated programming lineup, portions of King of the Hill episodes were often pre-empted by sporting events that ran into overtime; in season nine especially, whole episodes were pre-empted. Ultimately, enough episodes were pre-empted that the majority of the series' 10th season—initially intended to be the final season, consisted of unaired ninth-season episodes.

The 13th-season episode "Lucky See, Monkey Do" became the first episode of the series to be produced in widescreen high definition when it aired on February 8, 2009.

Cancellation

Although ratings remained consistent through the 10th through 12th seasons and had begun to rise in the overall Nielsen ratings (up to the 105th most watched series on television, from 118 in season 8), Fox abruptly announced in 2008 that King of the Hill had been cancelled. The cancellation coincided with the announcement that Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad!, would be creating a Family Guy spin-off called The Cleveland Show, which would take over King of the Hill's time slot.

Hopes to keep the show afloat surfaced as sources indicated that ABC (which was already airing Judge's new animated comedy, The Goode Family) was interested in securing the rights to the show, but in January 2009, ABC president Steve McPherson said he had "no plans to pick up the animated comedy."

On April 30, 2009, it was announced that Fox ordered at least two more episodes to give the show a proper finale. The show's 14th season was supposed to air sometime in the 2009–2010 season, but Fox later announced that it would not air the episodes, opting instead for syndication. On August 10, 2009, however, Fox released a statement that the network would air a one-hour series finale (which consisted of a regular 30-minute episode followed by a 30-minute finale) on September 13, 2009.

The four remaining episodes of the series aired in syndication the week of May 3, 2010, and again on Adult Swim during the week of May 17, 2010.

During the panel discussion for the return of Beavis and Butt-head at Comic-Con 2011, Mike Judge said that no current plans exist to revive King of the Hill, although he would not rule out the possibility of it returning.

Television ratings

*Twenty-four episodes were produced for season 13, but four remained unaired until 2010 when they were broadcast on local TV stations from May 3 to May 6.

Opening sequence

In the opening sequence, Hank joins Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer at the curb outside his house in the morning. When he opens his can of beer, the playback speed increases greatly and depicts other main and secondary characters carrying out various daily activities around them. Meanwhile, the four continue drinking beer and a nearby recycling bin fills with their empty cans. When Peggy brings a bag of garbage out to Hank, the other three leave and the playback returns to normal speed as he takes it to the trash can and gathers with Peggy and Bobby.

The opening theme is "Yahoos and Triangles" by the Arizona rock band The Refreshments. For season finales there is a slight variation for seasons 1–12. Season one's finale featured an opening guitar riff one octave higher. Season two's finale added a "yeehaw" to the beginning and the 3–12 finales accompanied the "yeehaw" with a dinner triangle. Season 13 and the series finale used the regular theme song. Some Christmas episodes also featured jingle bells in the background.

Although the opening was reanimated when the show began using high definition, the content never changes throughout the series; even after Buckley's death in the second season, he is still shown picking up Luanne on his motorcycle.

Setting

King of the Hill is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, an amalgamation of numerous Dallas suburbs including Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Allen. In addition to drawing inspiration from the DFW Metroplex, Judge has described Arlen as "a town like Humble" (a suburb of Houston). Time magazine praised the authentic portrayal as the "most acutely observed, realistic sitcom about regional American life bar none". As seen in the episode, "Hank's Cowboy Movie" the town has a population of 145,300 people.

Though the location is based on suburbs of the DFW Metroplex, the physical location of Arlen is never specified in the series, other than it is in Texas. Similar to the location of Springfield on The Simpsons, the location of Arlen within Texas is arbitrary based on the needs of a particular episode's plot, and multiple episodes give mutually exclusive information as to Arlen's geographic location within the state. For example, one episode indicates that it is just north of the Brazos River in central Texas. Other episodes place it near Houston or Dallas, while others feature trips to Mexico and back taking place within a matter of hours. The area codes on the Strickland Propane trucks is "409," indicating a setting of Galveston, Port Arthur, or Beaumont. Three episodes give conflicting zip codes for the Hill residence: In the Season 12 episode "Raise the Steaks" Hank receives a letter with his ZIP code 74301 which in real life is the town of Vinita, Oklahoma, while in the episode "Hank's Choice" the ZIP code is 78104, indicating that the Hills live in Beeville, Tx. In Season 7 episode "Goodbye Normal Jeans" Bill writes Dale a check for a million dollars. Bill's checks has his address with ZIP code 71304, an unassigned Arkansas ZIP. The address of the First National Bank of Arlen is different but illegible (7?1?? possibly, 72196 which would also be an unassigned Arkansas ZIP).

Arlen includes settings such as Rainey Street, where the Hills and other major characters reside, and Strickland Propane, Hank's employer. Also included are parodies of well-known businesses, such as Mega-Lo Mart (a parody of Walmart), Luly's (a parody of Luby's), Want-A-Burger (a parody of Whataburger), Bazooms (a parody of Hooters), 61 Flavors (a parody of Baskin-Robbins) and Pancho's Mexican Buffet. Hank's friend and neighbor Bill Dauterive is a barber at Fort Blanda, an army post (similar to Fort Hood) near Arlen. Most of the children in the show attend Tom Landry Middle School (named after the former Dallas Cowboys coach). Not long before the series premiered, an elementary school named after Tom Landry opened in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, where the Dallas Cowboys have played. Likewise, the local elementary school is named after Roger Staubach. Early in the series, the school is referred to as being in the Heimlich County School District (according to markings on the school buses), though in later seasons this is changed to Arlen Independent School District. The school's mascot is a longhorn steer. The local country club is the Nine Rivers Country Club, though this club's membership is almost exclusively made up of Asian-Americans. The "Devil's Bowl", where Lucky races his truck, is actually a race track in Mesquite, TX, a suburb of Dallas. When Bobby tries to impress Connie's delinquent relative Tid Pao in "Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?", he takes her to The Pioneer Woman's Museum, a parody of the real-life Women's Collection Archive permanently housed at Texas Woman's University whose flagship campus is in Denton, Texas. In Season One, Hank plays golf with Willie Nelson, who is from Abbott, Texas, at the Pedernales Golf Course, which is a reference to the Pedernales River in the Texas Hill Country in Central Texas.

Characters

King of the Hill depicts an average middle-class family and their lives in a typical American town. It documents the Hills' day-to-day-lives in the small Texas town of Arlen, exploring modern themes such as parent-child relationships, friendship, loyalty, and justice. As an animated sitcom, however, King of the Hill's scope is generally larger than that of a regular sitcom.

Home media

The first six seasons were released on DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment from 2003 to 2006. The seventh season was originally going to be released in late 2006, but, most likely due to poor sales of the DVDs, the release was cancelled. However, in 2014, Olive Films got the sub-license to release future seasons of the show, seasons seven and eight were released on November 18, 2014, with nine and ten released on April 7, 2015, eleven released on August 25, 2015, twelve released on September 22, 2015, and thirteen released (also Blu-ray) on October 20, 2015.

The complete series is available for streaming on Amazon Video in the United States. Netflix also streamed all episodes, but stopped streaming on October 1, 2013. In November 2011, all seasons became available for download on the iTunes Store. In February 2017, all seasons were removed from iTunes, Amazon Video, Google Play, and other similar services.

Reception

King of the Hill received critical acclaim over its 13-year run. Early reviews of the show were positive. Diane Holloway at the Chicago Tribune considered it the "most Texan television series since Dallas," and praised the show's "sly sense of humor and subversive sensibility." At the Los Angeles Times, writer Howard Rosenberg suggested that the show "totes a few smiles, but [there's] little to bowl you over, and it takes a spell getting used to."

At the show's conclusion, James Poniewozik at Time opined that it had "quietly been the best family comedy on TV," calling the show's ending "one of the most moving things I've seen on TV this year." Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger described it as "sweeter and more human than the great majority of live-action sitcoms that overlapped its run." Genevieve Koski of The A.V. Club described the program as a "steadfast, down-to-earth series," while noting "the show saw its fair share of silly conceits and contrived setups—and got fairly repetitive in the final seasons."

Many writers have examined the show through a political lens. "It's not a political show," said Mike Judge in 1997. "It's more a populist, common sense point of view." In 2005, Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine called it "the most subtle and complex portrayal of small-town voters on television." A 2016 reappraisal from The Atlantic dubbed it the "last bipartisan TV comedy," with writer Bert Clere noting the program "imbued all of its characters with a rich humanity that made their foibles deeply sympathetic. In this, King of the Hill was far ahead of its time, and the broader TV landscape has yet to catch up."

King of the Hill is currently ranked #27 on IGN's "Top 100 Animated TV Series". In 2013, TV Guide ranked King of the Hill as one of the top 60 Greatest TV Cartoons of All Time.