King of the Hill

King of the Hill
Genre	Animated sitcom Comedy-drama Slice of Life
Created by	Mike Judge Greg Daniels
Voices of	Mike Judge Kathy Najimy Pamela Segall Adlon Brittany Murphy Johnny Hardwick Stephen Root Toby Huss
Opening theme	"Yahoos and Triangles" by The Refreshments
Ending theme	"Yahoos and Triangles" (Reprise)
Composer(s)	Roger Neill John O'Connor Greg Edmonson John Frizzel
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	13
No. of episodes	259 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Mike Judge Greg Daniels Richard Appel Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger John Altschuler Dave Krinsky
Producer(s)	Mark McJimsey
Editor(s)	Lee Harting Kirk Benson Don Barrozo Mark Seymour Mark McJimsey Leo Papin Louis Russel
Running time	21–23 minutes
Production company(s)	Anivision Film Roman 3 Arts Entertainment Deedle-Dee Productions Judgemental Films 20th Century Fox Television
Distributor	20th Television
Release
Original network	Fox Syndication (episodes 255–258)
Picture format	480i (4:3 SDTV) (1997–2008) 720p (16:9 HDTV) (2009, 2010)
Audio format	Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Original release	January 12, 1997 (1997-01-12) – May 6, 2010 (2010-05-06)
Chronology
Related shows	Beavis and Butt-head The Goode Family

King of the Hill is an American adult animated sitcom created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010 on Fox. It centers on the Hills, a middle-class American family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas. It attempts to retain a realistic approach, seeking humor in the conventional and mundane aspects of everyday life.^[1][2][3]

Judge and Daniels conceived the series after a run with Judge's Beavis and Butt-head on MTV, and the series debuted on the Fox network as a mid-season replacement on January 12, 1997, quickly becoming a hit. The series' popularity led to worldwide syndication, and reruns aired nightly on Adult Swim. The show became one of Fox's longest-running series, third-longest as an animated series. In 2007, it was named by Time magazine as one of the top 100 greatest television shows of all time.^[4] The title theme was written and performed by The Refreshments. King of the Hill won two Emmy Awards and was nominated for seven.

The series had a total of 259 episodes over the course of its 13 seasons, briefly making it the second-longest running American based animated series of all time behind The Simpsons. The series finale aired on the Fox Network on September 13, 2009. Four episodes from the final season were to have aired on Fox, but later aired in syndication on local stations from May 3 to 6, 2010, and on Adult Swim from May 17 to 20, 2010. King of the Hill was a joint production by 3 Arts Entertainment, Deedle-Dee Productions, Judgemental Films, and 20th Century Fox Television and syndicated by 20th Television.

In 2013, TV Guide ranked King of the Hill as one of the top 60 Greatest TV Cartoons of All Time.^[5]

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). Hank is employed as an assistant manager at Strickland Propane, selling "propane and propane accessories". He is very traditional and moralized, 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 on the language; she has also found employment as a freelance author, Boggle champion, notary public, softball pitcher and real estate agent.

Hank and Peggy's only child, Bobby Hill (voiced by Pamela Adlon), is a husky teenager 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).

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. He 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. 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, later anchor woman, for the Channel 84 news. The only Gribble child, Joseph (voiced by Brittany Murphy; later Breckin Meyer), one of Bobby's best friends, has obvious Native American features, but neither Dale nor he seem to realize his appearance is different from other "Caucasians". For more than 15 years, Nancy had an affair with John Redcorn (voiced by Victor Aaron; later Jonathan Joss), a Native American healer, who is the biological father of Joseph. Dale never realizes that Redcorn is having an affair with his wife; Dale considers Redcorn to be one of his best friends.

Jeffrey Dexter Boomhauer, III (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; it was hinted, early in the series, that he worked as a electrician, but in the series finale, he is said to be 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. He is attracted to Peggy, and despite his popularity in high school, he is now seen as a loser. Bill is employed as a barber for the United States Army.

Early in the series, a Laotian family moves in next-door to the Hills, the Souphanousinphones, consisting of the materialistic Kahn (voiced by Toby Huss), his wife Minh (voiced by Lauren Tom), and their teenage daughter, Kahn, Jr., or "Connie" (voiced by Lauren Tom). Kahn is often at odds with his neighbors, believing them to be hillbillies and rednecks.

Other minor characters include Buck Strickland (voiced by Stephen Root), Hank's overweight and careless boss at Strickland Propane; Joe Jack (voiced by Toby Huss), Hank's co-employee 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 and a smoker.

History

Conception

The design of King of the Hill was based on Texas suburbs from the 1950s like Richardson.

In early 1995, after the successful first run of Beavis and Butt-head on MTV, Mike Judge co-created the show King of the Hill with former Simpsons writer Greg Daniels.^[6] Judge was a former resident of Garland, Texas, upon which the fictional community of Arlen was loosely based, but as Judge stated in a later interview, the show was based more specifically on the Dallas suburb Richardson.^[7][8] Mike Judge conceived the idea for the show, drew the main characters, and wrote a pilot script.

Fox teamed the cartoonist with Greg Daniels, an experienced prime-time TV writer.^[7] Daniels rewrote the pilot script and created several important characters who did not appear in Judge's first draft (including Luanne and Cotton), as well as some characterization ideas (e.g., making Dale Gribble a conspiracy theorist).^[9] 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 culture clashes. 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.^[9]

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.^[10] For the 1997–1998 season, the series became one of Fox's highest-rated programs and even briefly outperformed The Simpsons in ratings.^[11] During the fifth and sixth seasons, Mike Judge and Greg Daniels became less involved with the show.^[9] They eventually refocused on it, even while Daniels became involved with more and more projects.^[9]

Format change

Over time, series co-creator Mike Judge took a reduced role in the production of episodes.

Judge and Daniels' lessening involvement with the show resulted in the series' format turning more episodic and formulaic.^[9] 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.^[9] 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),^[9] 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, also how her character changed from the beginning seasons to the later season, and the aging of characters being acknowledged (a rare narrative occurrence for an animated series).^[9] 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.

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,^[12] 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.^[13]

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. This was coupled with the announcement that Cleveland would be taking over King of the Hill's time slot.^[14]

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,^[15] but in January 2009, ABC president Steve McPherson said he had "no plans to pick up the animated comedy."^[16]

On April 30, 2009, it was announced that Fox ordered at least two more episodes to give the show a proper finale.^[17] The show's 14th season was supposed to air sometime in the 2009–2010 season,^[18] but Fox later announced that it would not air the episodes, opting instead for syndication.^[19] 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.^[20]

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.^[21]

Television ratings

*Includes the four unaired episodes that eventually aired from May 3, 2010, to May 6, 2010, on local TV stations.

King of the Hill is rated TV-PG with sub ratings. The series is rated PG for Parental Guidance in North America. It is rated PG for Parental Guidance in Australia and PG in New Zealand for sexual references, with the exception of the season four episode "High Anxiety", which was rated TV-14 due to the episode's references to marijuana smoking, murder, and irresponsible gun use.

Setting and characters

Opening theme

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. The intro is a montage of Hank, Bill, Dale, and Boomhauer drinking, starting at dawn; the recycling bin fills with their beer cans while other main characters are doing daily activities all around them. Although the opening was reanimated when the show began using high definition, the content never changes throughout the series as Buckley, who died in season two, is still shown picking up Luanne on his motorcycle.

Setting

King of the Hill has explicit parodies of local Texas staples, like restaurant Luby's (corporate headquarters pictured)

The Hill family. From the left: Peggy (back), Bobby, Hank, and their dog, Ladybird.

King of the Hill is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, which is comparable to Arlington and Allen.^[35] As seen in the episode, "Hank's Cowboy Movie" the town has a population of 145,300 people. Though the location is never really defined in the show, Arlen is supposed to be located just north of the Brazos River in central Texas.^[6] Yet, the show constantly puts Arlen at various places like three hours from Houston or a couple of hours from Dallas, while showing a 409 area code on the trucks of Strickland Propane (Area Code 409 is in southeast Texas covering Galveston and the Beaumont-Port Arthur area), thus never really defining Arlen's location. 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. In the episode "Hank's Choice" the ZIP code was 78104 which is actually Beeville, Tx. In a 1995 interview prior to the show's debut, Judge described the setting as "a town like Humble" (a suburb of Houston).^[36] In a more recent interview, Judge has cited Richardson, Texas, a Dallas suburb, as the specific inspiration for Arlen.^[37] Time magazine praised the authentic portrayal as the "most acutely observed, realistic sitcom about regional American life bar none".^[4]

Arlen includes settings such as Rainey Street, where the Hills and other major characters reside, which is an allusion to Rainey Street in Austin, TX, home of several popular bars,^[6] 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.^[6] As an animated sitcom, however, King of the Hill's scope is generally larger than that of a regular sitcom.

Main Article: List of guest stars on King of the Hill

King of the Hill also featured numerous celebrity guests during its run, including Alan Rickman, Bonnie Wright, Burt Reynolds, Michael Keaton, George Strait, Andy Dick, Dale Earnhardt, Trace Adkins, John Force, Renée Zellweger, Owen Wilson, Topher Grace, Brad Pitt, Johnny Knoxville, Nathan Fillion, Lindsay Lohan, Lucy Liu, Reese Witherspoon, Jeff Goldblum, John Ritter, Jerry Lambert, Lisa Kudrow Matthew Corbett Tim Westwood, Laura Linney, Johnny Depp, Ben Stiller, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard, Meryl Streep, Debra Messing, Jennifer Aniston, Maura Tierney, Brendan Fraser, Kid Rock, Snoop Dogg, Christina Applegate, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bernie Mac, Wyatt Cenac, David Cross, Kelly Clarkson, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Rue McClanahan, Drew Carey, Danny Trejo, Matthew McConaughey, Don Meredith, Green Day, No Doubt, Willie Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chuck Mangione, Stephanie Hodge, Milla Jovovich, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon, Alyson Hannigan, Jamie Kennedy, Randy Travis, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, George Foreman, Marg Helgenberger, Tone Lōc, the Dixie Chicks, Christopher Lloyd, Randy Savage, Dusty Hill (playing himself as Hank's cousin), Sir Trevor McDonald, Carlos Alazraqui, David Herman, Michael Shulman and Jason Bateman. In the later seasons, Tom Petty had a recurring guest role as Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt, who married Luanne and had a daughter with her.

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, and seasons seven and eight were released on November 18, 2014, with nine and ten released on April 7, 2015,^[44][45] 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.

Reception

King of the Hill received critical acclaim over its 13-year run. King of the Hill is currently ranked #27 on IGN's "Top 100 Animated TV Series".^[46] It currently has a solid 7.2 rating on IMDb and an 8.5 rating on TV.com. Common Sense Media called King of the Hill "[w]ickedly funny at times, but not for all tastes".^[47] Critics praised it for being relatable and down-to-earth, more in the vein of conventional sitcoms than its more cartoonish counterparts such as The Simpsons and Family Guy.^[4][48][49] Alan Sepinwall described it as "sweeter and more human than the great majority of live-action sitcoms that overlapped its run."^[48]

Awards and nominations

See also

• Television in the United States
• List of animated television series
• King of the Hill (soundtrack)
• List of King of the Hill episodes

References

Archival Sources

• The King of the Hill Production Archive 1995-2006 (75 linear feet) is housed at the Wittliff Collections, Texas State University in San Marcos.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: King of the Hill

• King of the Hill at the Internet Movie Database
• King of the Hill at TV.com
• King of the Hill at the Big Cartoon DataBase