Posted on 01/28/2007 3:12:12 PM PST by LdSentinal
“I’ll have a normal orange juice, please,” says Hank Hill. “And make it normal.” He wishes! Hank, plaintive hero of Fox’s comedy “King of the Hill,” is joining someone at a dang ol’ prissy juice bar. Not by his choice. This is not Hank’s kind of place. Nor are these his kind of times.
Never were. After a decade on the air, “King of the Hill” finds Hank pretty much where he was in January 1997: a Texas good ol’ boy in a world bent on serving up things that, in his mind, just aren’t normal. Hank’s a regular guy in a world that’s always redefining “regular.”
Hank doesn’t smile much. He’s sad-eyed, with fretful little furrows etched into his brow.
Even so, he loves his job as a propane salesman, and also “loves barbecue, pickup trucks, edging the lawn, both kinds of music (country and western), and lamenting how a lack of common sense and a crush of meddling bureaucrats in today’s society make life all that much harder for the working man.”
At least, that’s how I described him 10 years ago, when reviewing the premiere of this animated yet staunchly uncartoonish sitcom.
I could’ve added that Hank’s a churchgoer and a family man (sturdy wife Peggy; slothful 13-year-old son Bobby; coquettish niece Luanne, 18) who, with his high school football days long gone, plays a new team sport: posting himself with buddies Dale, Bill and Boomhauer out by the street, standing side by side, saying little, beers in hand.
Hank was a remarkable invention 10 years ago. That “King of the Hill” carries on to this day, still funny and savvy, is even more notable.
Sunday’s 11th-season premiere focuses on Peggy. She is feeling unfeminine (her size-16 feet and all the great shoes that don’t fit them are to blame).
“YOU think I’m feminine, doncha, Hank?” she presses.
“Sure y’ar,” says Hank, who, unequipped with a silver tongue, elaborates: “You’re a wife, and a mother.”
But then Peggy makes a new gal-pal, Carolyn, someone with whom she can comfortably share female concerns — and female tips.
Accounting for her square-rimmed eyeglasses, Peggy tells Carolyn they “hide thin brows, frown lines and wrinkles. People do not say it, but they make me look 10 years younger.”
But there’s a problem. Turns out Carolyn is a drag queen who, while shopping for plus-size ladies’ shoes, mistook Peggy for a fellow drag queen.
Distraught at having been taken for a man, Peggy orders Hank not to answer the phone when Carolyn calls. But he’s obliged to object: “Well, Peggy, that’s just like telling a lie.”
It’s a revealing exchange: Not for the first time, Hank has argued for following the rules, however much society prefers to rewrite them. The world may be shifting under his feet, but Hank is taking a stand on his piece of turf.
Dang it, Hank is getting by OK. On TV The 11th-season premiere of “King of the Hill” airs 8:30 p.m EST/7:30PM CST. today on Fox.
Thought the show had ceased new episodes...guess not...
It's amazing how consistantly funny King of the Hill is, while the Simpsons bash the war and talk about global warming every other show. The torch has been passed...
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