"Mama's in jail. She was saving a quart of beer for before bed, and Daddy threw it out and she went after him with a fork and the trailer flipped over and everything went upside down. And it's all going to be on Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. And the wig I styled for Beauty Academy is ruined." - Brittany Murphy as Luanne Platter
King of the Hill: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
King of the Hill, which premiered on Fox January 12, 1997, has always been overshadowed by the much flashier animated show that ran in the timeslot before it: The Simpsons. Revisiting the show's first season, it is difficult to understand why. Less antic and more grounded in reality than The Simpsons, King of the Hill is consistently funny. Of course, being shuttled to four different time slots in its first two seasons did not help the series to build a loyal fan base.
The series centers on Hank Hill (voiced by Beavis & Butthead creator and Hill co-creator Mike Judge), an uptight propane and propane accessories salesman in Arlen, Texas. Hank is married to Peggy (Kathy Najimy), a Boggle playing, 1996 Substitute Teacher of the Year winning, clown sized shoe wearing dynamo. Their rather eccentric son, Bobby (Pamela Segall), is often a source of consternation for Hank who feels "that boy ain't right." Rounding out the household is Hank's goofball niece Luanne Platter (Brittany Murphy) who aspires to be a beautician.
Hank often talks over his problems with his childhood friends who now live down the street, although they are barely competent to listen to problems, much less help to solve them. Dale Gribble (Johnny Hardwick), the owner of Dale's Dead Bug, is a somewhat paranoid conspiracy theorist, but he somehow misses the fact that his wife Nancy (Ashley Gardner) has been cheating on him for years, and that his son Joseph (Murphy) looks suspiciously like Nancy's "spiritual healer" John Redcorn. Bill Dauterive (Stephen Root) is an unhappily divorced loser who thinks that dressing up is wearing a stained t-shirt WITH sleeves. Boomhauer (Judge) is popular with the ladies, but probably not for his conversational skills since his Texas drawl is so thick it's practically unintelligible.
Halfway through the first season, Hank gets new neighbors when Kahn Souphanousinphone (Toby Huss), his wife Minh (Lauren Tom) and daughter Kahn, Jr. (Tom) move into the house next door. Kahn, a master of bigotry and insults, is like a Laotian update on The Jeffersons' George.
While the show sticks with themes and situations that would be at home on live action sitcoms, it puts an animated spin on these plotlines. In "Single Plastic Female," twelve year old Bobby is worried about attending his first boy/girl party. This has been tackled by sitcoms before, but here Bobby relieves his anxieties by planting kisses on a bewigged mannequin head that is part of Luanne's beauty school exam. His secret courtship of the head is incredibly funny. As their "relationship" progresses, Peggy stumbles upon Bobby necking with his amour, leading her to believe that her son is a mannequin fetishist. All of this would be too broad for a standard sitcom, but, oddly enough, the animation lends it a kind of realism.
Similarly, an episode like "Keeping Up with Our Joneses" could probably never be attempted by a live action sitcom. When Hank catches Bobby and Joseph experimenting with a cigarette they found in a dumpster, he attempts to create an aversion to smoking in Bobby by forcing him to smoke an entire carton. Adult cigarette smoking is verboten on most shows, so to see a child smoking is quite shocking. King of the Hill takes the situation one step further as Hank's plan backfires when Bobby becomes addicted and Hank and Peggy's past nicotine habits are also rekindled. Their attempts to simultaneously hide and fulfill their habits are laugh out loud funny. Animation helps to soften what may be too bold in a standard sitcom, thus allowing somewhat taboo subject matters like this one (and Hank's life altering run in with a silent killer - constipation - in "Hank's Unmentionable Problem") to be broached with less a chance of offending the audience.
As befitting its more realistic approach, King of the Hill is not as bold with visual gags as The Simpsons. In its own low key way, however, it can be just as inventive. Witness Peggy's "office" - her home's hot water heater closet. Or Hank using a leaf blower and shovel to pack up Luanne's room. Or the "Fork Bar: Enjoy Forks From Around the World" at Luly's Cafeteria. Bobby's Mrs. Doubtfire lunchbox is also priceless.
Perhaps the show's comedic masterstroke is the continuing use of musician Chuck Mangione and his song "Feels So Good." In the world of King of the Hill, Mangione is everywhere - shilling for Mega Lo Mart, hosting a fire safety video, providing background music for an aerobics workout - sometimes popping up several times in one episode.
It is interesting to see the subtle ways in which the drawing style, voice characterizations, and even character traits developed over the course of the season. The pilot is especially illuminative in this way. The visuals look slightly different from the episodes that follow, and Bobby is somewhat brattier and more savvy than usual. Even so, the series is funny from the start.
The thirteen episodes that make up the first season of King of the Hill are divided onto three discs. Disc one is introduced by Hank. Bobby introduces disc two. The menu, superimposed on Bobby's video game, features hysterical Bobby-patter. It is definitely worthwhile to watch disc two's menu for its own entertainment value. Dale Gribble introduces disc three, and the menu is set in his bug-filled basement. There is a play all feature, or individual episodes can be chosen. The individual episode screens contain short episode descriptions, the episode production number, and the original airdate. The episodes are in production number order rather than airdate order. The episodes are divided into five chapters.
