Eye on Prime Time

King of the Hill
By Joe Humphrey (Guest Writer)
 
There are few shows currently in production that I love more than King of the Hill. Sure, there are funnier prime time animated shows. I laugh out loud more often at Family Guy and South Park and The Simpsons, but there's a major difference between King of the Hill and those programs. King of the Hill is, at it's core, a human drama with humor laced through it. It's funny enough to keep you entertained on a base level, but then when you're finished laughing, there's a meat to it that none of the other animated shows can touch. Hell, other shows period.

I guess, technically, it's a sitcom. It's weird because King of the Hill could easily be a live action show. It's not reliant on the animation for it's humor. In fact, I can't think of a single episode that wouldn't have worked just as well with live actors. Not that I think it should be live action. The characters are perfect just as they are.

The only show I can think to compare it to is Rosanne (before Tom Arnold left the show and Rosanne went insane) as far as the mixture of human drama and comedy. Like Rosanne, the characters in King of the Hill start off as almost classic sitcom cliches. The well meaning (but often misguided) father, the over confident mother, the dopey friends, ditzy teenage girl, awkward young son and annoying neighbor. But what King of the Hill does is take those cliched characters and explore them as people. They don't stay 2 dimensional for long, which is ironic considering that it's a cartoon. More so than any other show I can think of, these seemingly typical comedy archetypes become not only relatable and sympathetic, but genuinely flawed and dealing with their problems like real people. What was initially simply a standard comedy character becomes a human being, and it's the very things that make them funny that haunt them. 

Take the annoying Laotian next door neighbor, Kahn Souphanousinphone and his family. In what starts as a seemingly borderline racist portrayal of the typical overachieving Asian family, we find these unexplored layers. We find out WHY Kahn is so arrogant and judgement. We find out why they push their teenage daughter Connie so hard. We come to understand this family with a depth that I've never seen given to a secondary character on a sitcom before. Entire episodes are devoted to exploring this stereotype.

In fact, I'd say that maybe half of the episodes of King of the Hill are actually devoted to the Hill family specifically. It seems that every other episode is devoted to exploring what's behind the comedy that makes up the American sitcom.
 
Take for instance Joseph, the son of Nancy and Dale Gribble, Hank's neighbors on the other side. There was a long running gag that Nancy was having an affair with John Redcorn, a Native American "licensed new age healer" and that Joseph was actually John Redcorn's biological son. This is something that was alluded (rather blatantly given Joseph's darker skin and resemblance to Redcorn) to for years and played simply for comedy. Then, out of no where, it became an issue. It got serious. We delved into the morality play that has been building for twelve years (the length of the affair, according to the show) and finally peeked in this episode. John Redcorn desperately wants to be involved in his son's life, but he knows the consequences of coming forward as his father. He's not looking to destroy a family, but he still knows that he has a son that he can never really know. It brings a plethora of moral dilemmas to the surface of what was once simply a joke.

In fact, the entire ongoing storyline of Nancy's affair with John Redcorn is treated with such an unjudgemental, respectful air. It's highly unexpected. Rather than looking at the relationship as scandalous and sleazy, it's simply treated as a fact of life. Everyone is aware of it (except, of course, Dale) and have accepted it as none of their business. Hank could tell his friend what's going on (as could anyone else... except Peggy, who was also unaware until a few seasons later and then tried to convince Nancy to break it off) but he holds back. He doesn't want to get mixed up in someone else's family life and understands that it's not his place to bring that drama to the surface. That's a very bold stance for a TV show to make. Typically, sitcoms try to take the most obvious moral high ground. The first reaction most characters (and people) would have to a situation like this is to let their friend know what's going on, believing that that's what their friend would want. It's what the average person would feel when they see their friend being taken advantage of. But Hank sees that telling Dale this would destroy the Gribble family and crush his friend. Besides, it's easier to let things play out as they will rather than being the instigator of someone else's family drama.

Hank thrives on normality and consistency. This is one of the cornerstones of his character. Take, for instance, his love of propane (and propane accessories.) Hank sells propane and treats it almost like a religion. He has to. He would do that with anything he sold. He has to believe that what he's doing is important, even when the average person couldn't care less. Even more so, he has to have something that he can be proud of. It's what he bases his self esteem on. Not just propane but everything around him. Hank has to believe that what he's doing is bettering the world around him. It falls into that need to maintain the status quo. It's his job, and it sustains his family. If he's able to put food on the table and keep his life in order, then he's going to take it extremely seriously. Selling propane is what keeps his life "normal" so it becomes more than just a job. It becomes his reason for being. It keeps him sane.

Most stories about Hank start in a foundation of his need for things to stay exactly the same. It makes for a fairly easy launching point for many King of the Hill storylines. They can throw changes in Hank's perception of his "normal" life and show Hank trying to deal with it. The tricky part is coming up with a way to resolve it while being able to return that reality to something relatively close to what it was. For instance, the episode where Bobby joins up with a skateboarding rock and roll Christian youth group. It throws Hank's world into turmoil because it directly conflicts with the way he perceives religion. Even though Bobby is embracing the same principals and beliefs that Hank himself has, it's in such a radically different way that Hank rejects it. In the end, Hank wins. Not because he's right, but because he convinces Bobby that he's going through a fad and that he doesn't want Bobby's love of God to fall the way of his Beanie Babies and Karate uniform. This resolution seems to have a lot more to do with Hank's desire to stick with the status quo than a genuine concern for Bobby's relationship with God.

One of my favorite King of the Hill quotes comes from that episode by the way. Hank says this about Christian Rock: "Can't you see you're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse?" 

Another good example of the humanity of the characters on King of the Hill is my favorite character, Bill Dauterive, Hank's neighbor from across the ally. Initially, Bill is a fairly classic example of the sitcom loser. He's a sad, overweight, balding man who's the butt most of the physical comedy gags on the show. A pathetic example of middle age at it's worst. Everything we know about Bill screams emasculation. He's highly depressed and extremely lonely. He borderline stalks Hank's wife Peggy and sits in his house, drinking alone at nights. He has no social life outside of the beers he shares with his neighbors in the ally separating their houses.

But as the show progresses, we learn more and more about Bill. We learn that as a young man, Bill was the polar opposite of what he is today. He was confident, strong and popular, with a mane of flowing curly brown hair. At first this seems like a stab at ironic humor, but as we learn more, it becomes simply a tragedy. After highschool, Bill enlisted with the US Army, possibly serving in Vietnam, though I don't think it's ever been implicitly said if he went to Nam or not... one would have to assume so given that he enlisted in the early 70s. We learn that his marriage to Lenore was extremely volatile and dysfunctional, eventually prompting her to leave. The implication (as told by Hank) is that the dysfunction in their relationship was entirely mutual. Bill and Lenore had constant screaming fights, loud enough that Hank and Peggy had to turn up their TVs across the ally to tune them out. By the time Lenore left, there was so little of Bill left that what remained was the pathetic lump that exists today.

What the Army started in emasculating Bill and taking away his faith in himself was finished when his marriage fell apart. He's been trained to rely entirely on the instructions and will of others and is completely incapable of functioning on his own power. Living by himself, all he knows how to do now is go to work (he is still in the Army, working as the base barber) and come home and drink.

It's assumed in the beginning that the friendship the guys share with Bill has more to do with location than a genuine interest in his company. But over the course of the show we come to learn that they've watched Bill's decline from the beginning, and even though he's a bumbling, pathetic fool now, they've seen him at his best, and they respect the man he was. Their relationship with Bill now is almost like the relationship one shares with a person weak and dying from an illness. It's not pity... it's a desire to do what you can to keep that person afloat. It's a respect for that person when they were at their best. Even though Bill is almost intolerable now, they still love the former alpha male of their group of friends, and they do their best to look out for him.

In my favorite episode of King of the Hill, Bill has a complete nervous breakdown. It's a Christmas episode. We learn that Lenore left Bill at Christmas, and that every year for the past seven years since she left, Bill sets up the tree and brings out the presents he was never able to give her and puts them under the tree. Bill eventually snaps entirely and his personality splits. Bill starts dressing up in Lenore's clothes and believes that Lenore has come back, all the while his brain is convinced that the second personality is, in fact, Lenore. Hank does his best to ignore this fact, because it goes against his perception of "normal" and he finds it easier to pretend it's not a problem (as he does with Nancy's relationship with John Redcorn) than to actually deal with it. It all comes to a head when Bill shows up at Hank's Christmas party in a dress and is almost lynched by some of the guests. Hank defuses the situation by putting on one of Peggy's dresses and pretending that it's "that kind of party." What comes next is a scene that I never would have expected to see on a sitcom. Hank goes out to the street, still wearing the dress, and finds Bill broken and confused. He then takes on the role of Lenore and firmly tells Bill that he/she isn't coming back, and will never come back and that he/she doesn't love him anymore, forcing Bill to confront the reality of his situation. It's an extremely dramatic and well delivered scene, and it solidified my view that King of the Hill is one of the best shows on TV.

The characters on King of the Hill aren't particularly bright. Hank included. While Hank has a certain degree of wisdom, the majority of the characters are only passably intelligent. Take Peggy for instance. She starts off as another sitcom cliche... the confident wife and mother who always has the right answer for everything... except in Peggy's case, she rarely has the right answer. She falsely confident. She says that she has an IQ of over 160, but that's only her own estimation. She prides herself on her ability to speak Spanish (even teaching it at times as a substitute teacher) but it turns out that she can barely speak it at all. This is another example of deconstructing sitcom archetypes, and I love it.

King of the Hill is the only TV series I'd ever want to adapt into a movie. The only thing that even comes close would be an Andy Griffith show movie (and that would be only because I want to see Steve Buscemi play Barney Fife) but I'd never actually DO that. I want to do a King of the Hill movie because, well, it has everything I love in a story. It has flawed people trying desperately hold onto some semblance of their own perceived normality. It has humor, but with an edge of desperation and darkness lurking beneath. Best of all, it holds a mirror up to America and asks us to look at ourselves and to question why we are the way we are. Not just all of the "bad" things that America is known for, but the things that we hold sacred and the lifestyle we so desperately try to maintain. And it does this without judgement or critique.