10 episodes that made King Of The Hill one of the most human cartoons ever
With so many new series popping up on streaming services and DVD every day, it gets harder and harder to keep up with new shows, much less the all-time classics. With TV Club 10, we point you toward the 10 episodes that best represent a TV series, classic or modern. If you watch these 10, you’ll have a better idea of what that series was about, without having to watch the whole thing. These are not meant to be the 10 best episodes, but rather the 10 most representative episodes.
The definitive moment in King Of The Hill’s 13-year history didn’t even occur on the show itself. It happened in 2006, in “Cartoon Wars Part II,” South Park’s landmark evisceration of Family Guy. Toward the end of the episode, Cartman and Kyle slap-fight their way through the Fox studios, eventually making their way through the King Of The Hill offices as the staff keeps quietly working, heads down, while a banner celebrating the show’s 11th season hangs above their heads. In an episode that sees long-running, revolutionary animated series—South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons—pitted against each other in high-concept, ultra-cartoony fashion, King Of The Hill is the unobtrusive outsider, disinterested in participating in or commenting on the current trends in animated comedy.
King Of The Hill has discipline, humility, and steadiness hardwired into its foundation—they’re among the defining features of series patriarch Hank Hill—and is consequently remembered as the low-key introvert among its loud, colorful, in-your-face animated brethren. In fact, one of the most common observations/criticisms leveled at the series is that it doesn’t even need to be animated; its characters are decidedly un-cartoony, right down to their muted colors and lack of animated energy (though the show’s animation would get increasingly dynamic as the years went on), and the situations they find themselves in are no different or more fantastical than would be found on any given live-action family sitcom.
But while King Of The Hill’s reputation as a steadfast, down-to-earth series rightly reflects the heart and humanity at the show’s center, it belies how uproariously funny the series can be, often because of that very humanity. It’s the exact intersection of the comic sensibilities of its two creators: Mike Judge’s ability to find the bizarrely hilarious in the mundane (as seen in Beavis And Butt-head, Office Space, and many others) meets Greg Daniels’ character- and relationship-based humor (as seen in The Office and such Daniels-penned Simpsons episodes as “Lisa’s Wedding,” “Bart Sells His Soul,” and “Secrets Of A Successful Marriage”). King Of The Hill’s characters aren’t funny because they tell perfectly crafted jokes or make pop-culture references or constantly get themselves into ridiculous situations; they’re funny because they have real hopes, flaws, and limitations that satirize the absurdity of everyday life while simultaneously celebrating it.
Granted, over the course of 13 seasons and 250-plus episodes, the show saw its fair share of silly conceits and contrived setups—and got fairly repetitive in the final seasons—but the best, most memorable episodes were those that explored the conflicts and bonds that defined the Hill family and their neighbors on Rainey Street in the suburban oasis of Arlen, Texas. Hank Hill (Mike Judge) is a perfectly conceived central character, a staunch traditionalist whose deep humanity and pragmatic wisdom keeps him from being a conservative caricature. He’s the anti-Homer Simpson, a clenched, steady-as-she-goes figure striving to make as few waves as possible as he makes his way through life, and failing in the face of family, friends, and liberal giblet-heads who test his stoicism over and over. Hank’s spirited, strong-willed wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) pushes against him with her high ideals and even higher self-regard, and his dreamy, sensitive son Bobby (Pamela Adlon) constantly challenges his conceptions of manhood and father-son relationships. His war-hero father, Cotton (Toby Huss), does this as well, from a decidedly different angle. (Figuratively, that is; literally, he’s about the same height as Bobby, since the Japanese blew off his shins in WWII.) His niece-by-marriage Luanne, brilliantly voiced by the late Brittany Murphy, is a flibbertigibbet who makes Hank deeply uncomfortable while simultaneously tapping into his repressed fatherly affection. And his childhood friends-turned-neighbors—conspiracy-minded gun-nut Dale, sad-sack slob Bill, and tranquil fast-talker Boomhauer—are just the right level of incompetent to allow Hank to repeatedly play the hero/voice of reason without being a complete spoilsport all the time.
“Hank fixes everything” would become one of King Of The Hill’s most overused story templates, but it paid great dividends, especially in the series’ early going, when it could still lead to new character revelations and growth. Similarly, King Of The Hill went back to the “Hank versus society” well over and over, eventually becoming too predictable; but at its best, it found unexpected angles on the tension between conservative and liberal ideals, and remained admirably levelheaded in its political leanings throughout its run. These are quintessential King Of The Hill episode types and must be considered in any list of the show’s most representative episodes, but the series’ many charms are more readily found in the episodes focusing on the relationships and conflicts between its core characters. These 10 episodes survey the ties that bind King Of The Hill’s characters, and make them some of the most quietly funny, human cartoons ever.
“Keeping Up With Our Joneses” (season one, episode 10)
When Hank catches Bobby trying a cigarette, the ol’ “Make him smoke an entire carton to teach him a lesson” trick backfires wildly. Not only does Bobby get addicted, the episode causes reformed smokers Hank and Peggy to backslide, providing a nice glimpse at the early, smoke-saturated years of their relationship in the process. Soon the nicotine-addled family members are at each other’s throats as they try to kick the habit together. Their collective withdrawal and the petty sniping it induces provides a great spotlight for Luanne, who finds herself in the unusual position of being the voice of reason as her adopted family threatens to tear itself apart. (“I am sick of dysfunctional families. I came from one and I’m not gonna let it happen to you. Function! Function, damn you!”) Her ultimate solution is straight out of the sitcom playbook, but it works beautifully, leading to a sweet, almost cinematic conclusion.
“Hilloween” (season two, episode four)
The Hills are a churchgoing, God-fearing family, and while King Of The Hill occasionally played this for laughs, it tended to be better when pitting Hank’s no-nonsense belief structure against religious hypocrisy and zealotry. (See the great season-eight episode “Reborn To Be Wild” for another classic example of this.) “Hilloween” puts Hank in the unusual position of being anti-religion—the hysterical, evangelical version of it, anyway—when it threatens his beloved Halloween, in the form of Bible-thumping Junie Harper (Sally Field), who accuses Hank of being a Satanist for supporting the Devil’s Holiday. This is a prototypical “Hank-versus-the-idiots” plotline, but it gets extra mileage out of the template by putting the impressionable Bobby and Luanne on the side of Junie Harper. Hank’s eventual reconciliation with his son is much more satisfying than his saving Halloween, and the fact that he does both while wearing a child-sized devil costume makes it even better.
“And They Call It Bobby Love” (season three, episode two)
Bobby has a solid claim on the title of King Of The Hill’s flat-out funniest character (much of which can be attributed to Pamela Adlon’s Emmy-winning performance, a highlight in a series full of top-shelf voice acting), but he may never be funnier than when he’s heartbroken. Bobby’s fanciful, sensitive nature makes his first foray into puppy love endearingly awkward—as when he woos his lady love by imitating a crotchety Jewish man—and makes his heartbreak, well, heartbreaking. But his eventual triumph over that sorrow is where Bobby really shines, consuming a 72-ounce steak in front of the vegetarian older girl who dumped him. It’s a perfectly King Of The Hill-style victory, and remains one of the best scenes in the show’s history. Rightly so, “And They Call It Bobby Love” netted King Of The Hill its sole Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.