Friday, March 1, 2013
Hill Climbing
King of the Hill:
Bobby Slam, Season 2, Episode 10
Dia-BILL-ic Shock, Season 13, Episode 1
Mike writes:
I'm doing some writing with KOH on in the background. The episode with Bobby wrestling Kahn Jr. was just on, not so good. But now the episode with Bill in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with diabetes is on. A classic.
Andy responds:
That's a great episode. Lot's going on and I'Ll need to re-watch it to comment. I will offer an overall observation on the structure of KOH. In the early seasons, Judge made a decision that the characters would age. Hence we have Bobby, Kahn-jr, and starting off pre-pubcent and winding up as teenagers, Bobby/Connie good friends -> boyfriend/girlfriend -> breaking-up. Then after Judge left the series for a while the decision was made to freeze the characters, a la Peanuts/Simpson, most-likely for commercial reasons, I.E., to give syndicators more of an option on the order in which they can run the episodes (ironically, they same to run them in chronological order). This was an unfortunate decision and the classic KOH episodes come before this period, which is 1997-1998/9 and those are the ones we are watching now. So taken in that context, the Bobby/Kahn Jr episode is actually more interesting that you might think, if you focus on their relationship which is a pretty good model of friendship. Of course this gets all screwed up when they "grow up" ! The Bill character, who I love, is an example of KOH's Seinfeld-like, "no-hugging, no-learning" mentality. The KOH post-Mike Judge era characters never really change for episode to episode. They do something stupid, learn from it, and then do it again in another form. I guess it has to be this way or the series would eventually extinguish itself and it is probably the secret to most successful sitcoms. However, Judge, actually was breaking this formula in the early years as you can see the Hank character mature in his relationship with Bobby, Luanne, Peggy. However, it would be fair to say that in real life the adults tend to be stagnant as well!
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3 comments:
An insightful take into an underrated show.
The characters have depth and evolve.
The "king" Hank is flawed, limited, and makes his share of
mistakes.
His wife Peggy is delusional about her intellect
- easily convinced that she is a "genius" -
but comes thru for her family when the chips are down.
She's a perfect "liberal" counterpart to Hank.
The Gang of 4 who hang around drinking beers
and saying "yep" are more interesting than they first appear,
except for maybe Dale Dribble, who is over the top
but he has the best one liners.
One of the regular "villians," a Laotian social climber who
calls them "hillbillies" and "rednecks", is a sympathetic and
complex figure in some episodes and
Hank gradually understands him a little better,
to the point of a borderline friendship.
There are many classic episodes,
I look forward to reviews of some of those from this reviewer.
It's good to be the king (of the hill)!
How about when Peggy held the
substitute teacher of the year trophy
over her head, snd said: "I'm king of
the world !" Her trophy was tainted,
both by her ruthless scheming for it
and by the obvious fact that Hank
would have won, as the enormously
popular substitute shop teacher,
but funding for shop class was dropped.
Hank's reaction, that shop is an
essential part of education and
should not just be an elective,
says a lot about his core values.
Best quote of that episode came
from Bobby, when a desparate Peggy
asks him which of them is favored by the kids.
Bobby: "Dad's got a buzz going,
while you're thought of as one of the suits."
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