Talking Simpsons - TalKing of the Hill - Pilot With Matthew Jay

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

Surprise! Before we begin season 9, we've got a special episode about the major animation debut that happened during season 8! Matthew Jay from [the deep end] podcast joins us to chat about Mike Judge and Greg Daniels' King of the Hill and its very first episode. Is it one of the best first episodes ever made? What characters are similar and which changed greatly by the end? Boy, I tell ya what, this is gonna be a fun time! Get your tickets for our January 16 LIVE podcast in San Francisco with guests Allie Goertz and Julia Prescott!! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

uh hoi hoi everybody we've got some great news about our second year in a row at san francisco's sketch fest that's right we have another live show on january 16th at 8 p.m that's a wednesday night at the gateway theater and boy do we have some special guests joining us that's right julia prescott and ali gertz from the everything's coming up simpsons podcast will be our special guest and we'll be discussing the episode The Principal and the Popper. Is it the worst episode ever? Is it secretly good? We will decide on the stage that night.

So if you're looking for some fun and surprises, even more surprising than Armin Tamzerian's real name, you'll want to join us on Wednesday, January 16th, 8 p.m. at the Gateway Theater in downtown San Francisco. Look up those tickets for yourself or check out the schedule at sfsketchfest.com Tickets are going extremely fast, so if you want to come to this show, please go to sfsketchfest.com

right now, right now and get your tickets soon. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we develop healthy life adaptations. I'm your host, Twig Boy, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today?

Henry Gilbert, and I would have liked to have done more podcasts, but I can't on account of my narrow urethra. And who do we have on the line? of The Simpsons who is here with me today. Henry Gilbert, and I would have liked to have done more podcasts, but I can't on account of my narrow urethra. And who do we have on the line? I'm Matthew J., and the J stands for fix it again, Tony. And today's episode is the King of the Hill episode pilot. Just a show about nothing. That's right.

We are pranking everyone out there for reasons. So previously in the history of Talking Simpsons, when The Critic premiered, we did Talking Critic, you know, our first episode of that. And when Duckman premiered in The Simpsons Chronology, we did Talking Duckman. And now because King of the Hill debuted in season eight of The Simpsons, we are doing Talk King of the Hill, one episode at least. Possibly this could be our mini series in 2019 for the Patreon, patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, because I feel like it will be a front runner in the voting process. TBD. That's only up to you. And I'm pointing at the audience and by you, I refer to me.

By me? You. Okay. We're so bit heavy here already, but we would have done it when it premiered in the Simpsons season, but we honestly just kind of forgot about that tradition of doing Simpsons related animated series at the time. But now when it also fits our schedule better for our upcoming live show, January 16th, get your tickets now, San Francisco, we're doing this one to push season nine just one more week away. And I think some of our fans out there have not heard our other podcast, What a Cartoon. And this could give you a taste of what a cartoon is like.

In fact, we did the episode Peggy's Headache for What a Cartoon. And in case you don't know, What a Cartoon is very similar to Talking Simpsons, but we do another cartoon show and another episode from that show every week. Matt J., our guest here, has been on that many times. Yeah, I love that show. And hey, plugs up front here for Matt J., you have a brand new podcast that fans of this show, I think, would really like, don't you? Oh boy, I wasn't expecting this. Yeah, my buddy Steve Yurko, who is an animation professional and I, he's a storyboard artist who's worked on a bunch of shows, particularly shows for Adult Swim, have launched a new podcast that's all about Adult Swim.

We're going through, in like airing order, every show that Adult Swim. We're going through in like airing order every show that Adult Swim ever aired, which at first was a great idea. We're quickly learning is not that great an idea. Season by season. So season one of Occult Genograforce was an episode. Season one of C-Lab was an episode. So we'll revisit those shows as the seasons come up. We've had all kinds of cool guests like Blair Gorman,

who is the puppet coordinator on Robot Chicken. We're gonna have... We have one very special guest that I can't say, that I'm trying not to say, that hasn't been announced yet. But I will tell you, when you guys look at the podcast feed and see that guest, you're not going to believe it. But we're also doing one tonight with

Alan Denton, who is the writer on Sonic Boom. He's been talking about Harvey Birdman with us. And our Patreon show at patreon.com slash The Deep End, which is the name of the show, The Deep End. We're doing every episode of The Venture in order because that's awesome it's the greatest show of all time so why not infringement there brother that was wrestling terminology sorry this is bad form for a podcaster but i demand to be on your assy mcgee episode when that happens okay sure i mean nobody else has requested that one so sure i kind of secretly love that's been

an issue is we go to people and are like hey hey, we would love to have you on the show. What show do you want to do? And they'll mention a show that's like Rick and Morty or something. We're like, okay, that'll be in like three years. Right. I'll talk to you in 2021 about that. But who wants Minority, huh? Oh, my God.

I just had to recall that. Yes, yeah. We wouldn't do that on What a Cartoon because it's not animated. Minority is not animated? No, I mean, it's just a slideshow that was my yeah oh i see what i mean but i did have dana snyder doing a voice i don't want to hear again oh gee yeah i remember that now let's move on for that unpleasantness so we talked about king of the hill on what a cartoon check out that episode if you want to hear more but we also talked about the history of king of the hill and instead of rehashing that here we will just cut in that segment of What a Cartoon for you to listen to right now.

Like this was Mike Judge 1995 it started working on, right? Yeah, with Greg Daniels of The Simpsons, who wrote episodes like Bart Sells His Soul, I believe Secrets of a Successful Marriage, Homer and Apu. He left The Simpsons, and he probably would have been a showrunner

if not David S. Cohen, if not Mike Scully. Just midway through season seven. They're actually pretty sad on season seven. Like, we lost Greg. He was really great. Like, he was Milhouse. That's who. Greg says, like, he was Milhouse as a kid.

He looks the most like Milhouse of any Simpsons writer. And if you look at King of the Hill and Greg Daniels' other shows that he ran and created, like the American version of the Hill and Greg Daniels, other shows that he ran and created like the American version of The Office and Parks and Rec, he is very good at building very specific places and putting very specific people

that you would not see on shows like Ron Swanson. There's a he's very Hank Hill in some ways, but he's also a very unique character that you would not see on another show. And there's a lot of that

going on in King of the Hill. Like Dale Gribble is like one of the first characters of this type I've ever seen in not in reality i mean my uncle was dale gribble he belonged to a gun club i shot guns with him he always wore a ball cap and sunglasses because he was bald uh he loved conspiracy theories he thought bill clinton killed people uh in fact i think either mike judge or greg daniels said the one accurate thing that we didn't make dale was racist because if dale was all these things he would also have to be racist.

And my uncle was racist. I know that all of his traits in real life are 9,999 times out of 10,000 a racist asshole. So they have to be like, well, but this is the one that isn't. This guy's okay. In real life, I'd be like, hey, Hank, you know about those globalists, right? Those triple parentheses. you heard about these but i'm glad that so dale is my favorite character and i love hank and but a dale i have a dale gripple action figure actually the king of the phil i was working at games stop wait no spot no stop no i was working at game stop when they came out website or store uh it was both. But they were called inaction figures.

I remember those. But it comes with a beer, and he's holding a cigarette. And I love Dale Gribble so much. Well, my favorite who doesn't get much in this episode is Bill. He's got some good lines, but it's not about him. No, I love Bill in that I have struggles with depression as well, so I like that in Bill. But I like that he is the saddest. He is stupid

but not the dumbest he's he's smart enough to know he's at a horrible place and that's why he's sad he's like lenore he's more of a realistic homer where homer should be upset about the state of his life but isn't i know it's just all his and his things like his barely hidden love for peggy is like the time when he thought hank said that Peggy had a twin, he's like, to Peggy? You mean a Peggy that's not married to Hank? Again, that running joke would pay off in an episode where Peggy basically is running a pyramid scheme and forcing Bill to help her.

And they go off together on a trip and it's very awkward. But it all pays off. Like these running jokes, including one of the first jokes in the series that when joseph is revealed he's revealed as a small brown child not white like dale not white like nancy and that is a a gut punch visual joke that they have to stick with as a story element for 255 episodes just for one off joke yeah oh he's your favorite matthew my favorite character in the whole show oh my god it's so hard to pick i go back and forth i one thing that i do really enjoy is, I love when, you know, we're talking about status quo,

I love when characters can evolve. Like Dick Grayson's my favorite comic book character. We've seen him go from an eight-year-old to, he's led the Justice League and the Outsiders. And he has the best butt in comics. I love that canonically he has a great butt. Every artist has to draw. You have, you have to learn how to do it.

And it's always a square, they always know it's a square. But I love that, i i don't consider myself a big fan of uh of uh joseph but the change he makes where he changes from britney murphy to breckin meyer yeah to doing that voice it just kills me every time it's so funny he becomes puberty incarnate yeah a dumb like sex crazed teenager dumb and frustrated, why can't I do this? But in terms of character, I mean, and that's a very, the kids I identify with, because I was literally going through puberty as that character did. And that was an interesting thing for me to experience.

What a perspective. Yeah. And the cartoons, I didn't get to see cartoons do that. Yeah. But I, to this day, as a little kid growing up with my normie-ass family, who was like, I wished I was Jewish and Canadian because I was a little comedy nerd. I identified with Bobby so hard because I wanted to be a performer. Then I eventually, in my early 20s, started taking improv classes and that kind of stuff.

And to this day, every time I pick up a new artistic hobby, I think of Bobby trying to spread his wings and be artistic and his dad just trying to tamp him down to being normal those are the best episodes yeah i well especially what are you talking about yeah or like going to the deli and getting gouts because he eats too much weird fish the bobby is the original fail son like yeah yeah the the he is the guy that is cursed upon the high school football star who's like dreams of when i have his son he's gonna obviously as a pudgy fail son myself i could identify with it sometimes too much but that like that boy ain't right that defines him that

he hank thought he was gonna have a a future star, and he's a weird kid listening to toilet sound. It was a miracle that he was born, because of Hank's narrow urethra. And he just is like, this is the one that we got. But he loves him, because he's his dad, and he's a great son. He's my boy. But yeah, I mean, sorry, I threw us all off track with that. Hank Hill out of nowhere.

Don't stop. Yeah, I mean, that's the great dynamic between them. And you never get a sense that Hank hates Bobby. He's just like trying to understand him, which is why it's a very, very sweet show. So I wanted to talk more about the development of the show. So I think the comic sensibilities of Greg Daniels and Mike Judge are very different. But they like very specific characters. And I think the soft libertarianism of Mike Judge pairs well with the sort of more leftist influences of greg daniels

to sort of make it a show for kind of everybody because you can watch the show and be like oh i'm on board with hank this stuff is weird i'd be like hank or you could be like watching as an overeducated jackass like me and be like yes hank is very naive and the humor is all from him being very naive about things it's like it makes it a show that uh doesn't really look down on the characters i think yeah not really i think that, is when there's stories of when Mike Judge like came back to the show was because he had left the show under other showrunners. And he would come back because he felt they were making Hank the joke too much. Yes. Although I say I love those seasons.

That's five and six, I believe. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with those. So many great episodes, including Alabaster, the one where Hank becomes a p a pimp unwittingly i mean i think that's the one everyone remembers i am the mac daddy of arlen county but i'm pimping the propane ever yeah and well and that mike judge did the amazing thing that he'd never had to do and i wouldn't think anyone in hollywood would do this is that he was working on the show and they, they coupled him with Greg Daniels. And then he was like, Greg,

you've given so much to making the show work. You're the co-creator now. Like my judge had the sole creator credit, which means millions of dollars to then say someone is your co-creator. You are giving them millions of dollars that you could just keep. There's a lot of credits in, in animation and in just regular American TV of created by blank, developed by blank. And those things really just mean someone's getting paid less in residuals than the other person. More money to them, less money for them.

Every time you see an image. I remember learning, oh, wait, Matt Groening didn't draw every image of The Simpsons. His name's just on it. Troy McClure covers that in the clip show actually so I have a clip of the pitch pilot sort of thing they made for Fox and Hank is talking directly to the president of Fox TV at the time John Matoyan

I think his name is and we talked about him a lot on Talking Critic he is the asshole who cancelled the critic and like called Algena Mike Reese into his office and was like tell me why this show is funny you will sit here and watch this show with me and I want you to tell me why you think it's funny. And his job for two years at Fox was to only make NBC

style, must see TV style shows, which failed. Like, then Stacey has good actors on it, but who ever thinks of that show? They're all making like what, Friends likes? Yeah, all Friends likes. Coupling ripoffs. So here is the pitch pilot, whatever you want to call it.

It's all on YouTube, but here is a small portion of it. Well, Mr. Matoi, and I'd say y'all got the makings of a damn good cartoon here. I mean, you got my wife Peggy, and she's real smart. She teaches Spanish. I sure do. Yo hablo espanol. Isn't that something? And I'm real proud of my boy Bobby because he, uh, uh, well, because he's my boy. A bee stung my head.

Put some ice on it, son. And Luanne's living with us now since the tornado. Hello, Hollywood. Love your movies. She'll probably be real good for ratings, the way she dresses. There you have it. He introduces everybody. This seems like maybe just part of the pitch pilot because it feels like there was something before that.

Because he's like, well, there you have it. And that's obviously not Kathy Najimy and all those actors. That's, what's her name from The Simpsons? Oh, boy. It sounded like Pamela, no, Tress tress was the tress uh first i thought tress mcneil but it might be pamela hayden uh i'm gonna have to look this up yeah i don't know if that was kathy and jimmy but obviously it was mike judge and uh in the and there's one commentary that's not done with characters on all the dvds and that's it's very i wish they drives me crazy

like have some fucking care for this. Tell me about it. I could be the King of the Hill historian like I am the Simpsons historian because those Simpsons commentaries are basically where we get all of our knowledge about everything that ever happened. You can read more on it. There's more information out there in interviews, including interviews we've done. But yeah, the King of the Hill is more opaque in that way. I mean, Bob and I got some insight into it too going to the King of the Hill live 20th anniversary show that we watched last year. Last January, they did the live reading of Husky Bobby

and it was amazing. That is a great episode. Every living cast, regular cast member was there to read their parts. And Pamela Adlin was there to read the Brittany Murphy roles andeline was there to read the britney murphy roles and she did an amazing job and someone asked her what's it like to have a dead person that used to work yeah everybody was just like you know these q and a's don't have to ask like make them think about their dead friend who they can't not be thinking about right now maybe

have fun questions but the one thing i wanted to bring up from the the the few the little that we know about the production of the show based on commentaries is that uh mike judge did not want to be hank hill he did not want to voice the the role of hank hill because it's like this is a voice i already do this is a voice people know it's a major character on beavis and butthead i want a different person but they couldn't find anybody and i gotta say even though it was weird being a beavis and butthead fan to hear mr anderson as a new character but it's just like this there is no cartoon voice like hank hills it is like one of the greatest cartoon voices ever because mike judge is not a professional voice actor you get sounds out of that guy that no polished voice actor will be

able to do like beavis and butthead and hank hill are all like no one else is doing those voices and then he would eventually uh make a show that just started as Hippie Teacher as well, The Good Family. I never gave it a chance. I've yet to watch it. It sounded so one note. I expect it to be good. It was supposed to be the hippie version of King of the Hill. It was supposed to be the inverse, the other side of the coin. I've heard

it's better than it got credit for, but I have yet to dig into it. But he also, do you remember when he went on Space Ghosts and he illustrated the difference between those two voices? Yes, yes. And he's like, no, this is Hank Hill. That boy ain't right. No, this is Mr. Anderson. Oh, no, I tell you what.

This is Mr. Anderson. I tell you what. I think over time, Hank Hill would, I mean, everyone would have more energy. That happens with every animated show. People pick up the pace. But I think Hank Hill would eventually become some degree removed from mr anderson over time like he's grown to his own but man seeing mike judge in person at the that thing like yeah oh he sinks his face into his chin to talk like hank hill it's great he is a great watching him do that stuff is a great lesson in voice acting where you see if you watch uh we

we have talked about it on some other show that that movie uh the documentary i know that voice some of the people do show off like okay i have to touch my i've touched my throat like this We have talked about it on some other show, that movie, the documentary, I Know That Voice. Some of the people do show off, like, okay, I have to touch my throat like this to do this, to do that character. And I have to do it a certain way or I might break my voice. That's amazing. Or the way Tom Kenny does SpongeBob's laugh is he slaps his throat over and over again. That's going to injure him one day. But yeah, Mike Judge, he transforms into Beavis and Butthead when he voices them. If you've ever seen those.

He pulls his lip up real high. It's so great. Beautiful. And the rest of the cast is some of my favorite ever. Yeah. Again, not a lot of voice actors in the cast. Like Kathy Najimy and Brittany Murphy before she briefly became a big star. And then came back to the show when that wasn't really working.

Of course, she was the ramen girl. Yes. They moved her across the street. Oh, man. That was sick. Also, Kathy Naj, she was the ramen girl. Yes. They moved her across the street. Oh, man. That's sad. Also, yeah, Kathy Najimy was like fresh off Hocus Pocus. Yeah. She was starring in stuff. She was not.

She was still an actress in things. Not a voice actress. Stephen Root also. Oh, Stephen Root is my favorite. When I watched Get Out again recently, I was like, yeah, Stephen Root. You're so awesome. He is the greatest in everything. Stephen Root, he can be serious.

He can put on a silly voice. Or him as the judge in Idiocracy is the funniest two seconds of that movie. And same with, though I also loved him as Jimmy James on news radio. He fucking rules with that. He's so good at that role. So King of the Hill differs from The Simpsons in that it focuses on smaller, more observational stories, which was what Greg Daniels wanted to do. And his

other goal was to have, like, each character have an emotional epiphany or come to a realization that may change them at the end of each episode. And that really happens here. But I do want to say, what I like about the show compared to The Simpsons, and I love The Simpsons, is that in The Simpsons, a lot of humor comes out of characters

acting inconsistently like Homer suddenly knowing about a Supreme Court judge or Mo reading you know to sick children in a hospital all of the humor in King of the Hill comes from characters acting consistently like it's still a laugh line like when you realize of course Hank has the warranty

for his sander in his wallet but it's like yes of course Hank would do that That's why it's funny. It's not characters acting like against type that where the humor comes from, which I like. Yeah. And Dana Gould, I think in our interview or in some other thing about The Simpsons, he summed up Simpsons comedy style so well in saying that The Simpsons joke begins where the regular joke ends. There's what you would assume the joke would be. And then they go against even that expectation that is the punchline but on king of the hill yeah the i think it goes in the

opposite direction of like it it solidifies your expectation and i mean those are harder jokes to write which is why i think they have to try a lot harder on this show they can't make like hank hank totally does something wacky against type now it It's like, no, we have to. Hank is very rigid. We need to find things that he would do and top ourselves like to add to his rigidity. Yeah. One of my favorite examples of that would be when Hank had to was being told to pay a late fee on pornography. He did not rent. And he was so insulted that that would even happen and instead he was so rigid like i will not pay a late fee

that isn't mine that he then watches hundreds of pornos to then find the his legal reasoning for it couldn't have been a movie he rented that's a great and bill helps him as a master of porno knowledge he was the the uh deep throat for him no pun intended, on that. I love that end where Bill is the guy secretly taking back his form of tape. Let the record show, Mr. Hill, you do know your pornography. And with that consistency thing, have you ever looked at the design notes for the characters? Yeah. Those are incredible because they're covered in notes about, like,

Peggy cannot stand this way because that's not right. She stands this way. And they even explain, like, Peggy is convention conventionally attractive we're fighting that all the time like she needs to have this posture her hair cannot look differently than this and you cannot give her these curves this is not i mean wes archer get should get a ton of oh yeah this here too that west texan yeah a texan too yeah with a name wes archer what else could it be that he wes archer in case you don't, he was one of the original animators on the Simpsons shorts on Tracy fucking Ullman.

He had worked on the Simpsons until season seven, just like Greg Daniels as well. I believe his last directed episode was Two Bad Neighbors, or maybe one right after that. But so he was one of the best directors on the Simpsons, and then they pilfered him for king of the hill to be the series director of the show and so all those notes are from him of like hank's eyes would not go this way his teeth would not go this way there's i was just reading through the steven universe design

docs too like there's tons of cartoon every cartoon i i think has those rules you don't know about because you're not reading the series Bible. But when you see them, you're like, that's why this show, those kinds of rules were invisible but made the show better. There's even like acting notes, like characters do not high five each other unless it's in the script. Like don't make them too like gesticulating

and wacky and stuff like that. They're very rigid, stiff, white people. And another thing about that is Brike, Brian and Mike, the creators of avatar the last airbender they worked on the show and they were they were directors on the show and they you know it might have just been one of them might have just been brian but uh but at least one of them worked on the show and he you know they went on to create the most fantastical crazy show with kung fu elements and stuff and it was almost uh like it was almost cathartic for him

to be like i've been working on king of the hill for years because he would have fights with with mike judge and wes archery and these guys because they'd be like oh you can't fit a camera there and he's like it's a cartoon and they're like yeah but a camera wouldn't fit there so it doesn't make any sense it's not as fun too so there's no uh so futurama has morbotron and uh simpsons has frankiak there is no king of the Hill search engine, but it's a less fun show if you're looking for poses and things like that because they do act like real people. It's a very well-made show, but the acting

is very human-like. If a man is in his 60s and overweight, he's not going to move all that much. He's going to be like, I'm tired. That's why I get a little snippy when people are like, why is this show even animated? There are thousands of reasons why this show should and could only be animated. One of them is it's shot like a Coen Brothers movie.

Like, it's shot beautifully, but they're shooting mundane things. That's the trick. So that was our history of King of the Hill from What a Cartoon. Again, that is a free podcast. Check it out. Look up What a Cartoon wherever you find your podcasts. And it's also available at the Talking Simpsons Network

at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But this episode aired on January 12th, 1997. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day

in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. This aired on the same night as the Springfield Files. So if folks remember on that, that's when the People's Choice Awards happened and Mel Gibson and Tim Allen won big there, as did Sandra Bullock. And my beloved Jacksonville Jaguars lost the AFC Championship game,

keeping them out of the Super Bowl once again. Wow. and chip game the keeping him out of the super bowl once again wow and jackie chan's first strike debuted in theaters a oh pretty good jackie chan movie baseball movie right no no it's uh it's the it's the fourth in it's the unofficial fourth in the cop police story super cop trilogy of films it includes the amazing ladder fight if If you've seen him spinning a ladder around a head, punching through a ladder, that fight, that's from First Strike, as is a scene where Jackie Chan shows his butt. So if you want, you get all kinds of fun in that movie. A little something for mommy.

Well, okay. I've watched two Police Story movies, but I love them dearly, and they're coming to Criterion soon. Ooh, about time. It is so overdue. Police Story is seriously one of the most important films in action movie history like it it completely changed it but the people's choice award that's what the first news item was right yes so mel gibson tim allen and sandra bullock i think sandy b is the only one who came out smelling fresh because mel gibson had some things to say about jewish people and then tim allen says he felt like a jewish person in nazi germany we don't have any comments about Jewish people from Sandra Bullock

yet. I don't believe so. That's good. I think she's been on the good side of things, which- She seems cool. Yeah, I think so. She had bad things happen to her, but then she, as in like public divorce from a dude, but yeah, now she's, I mean, she was just in that popular movie where she's blindfolded. Blindside, no, no. The Bird Box. Blindside was a different Sandra Bullock.

I have not seen Bird Box. I don't know if I ever will, but I just like the name Bird Box. It's just funny. I thought it was, and this is true. Somebody told me a couple months ago, they're making a movie for Netflix called Bird Box. And my first it was, and this is true, somebody told me a couple months ago they're making a movie for Netflix called Bird Box and my first thought was, oh, it's about like,

it's going to be like Black Mirror about Twitter, right? Like that's their dumb name for your phone. Oh, wow. Two of my friends and I will tell, if we're like hanging out and someone's looking at their phone too much, we'll be like, you're looking at your Bird Box too much. Oh my god. I think we're going to keep that going even though we know that's not the truth anymore i i'm gonna steal that matthew i will give you credit

eventually what if your bird box talked about you social commentary well also i guess too this uh with when this episode comes out basically 22 years to the day with when the pilot debuted too. Oh, nice. And it was next to, listeners know, we didn't love the Springfield Files episode. There were some problems with it, but it's a fun episode. But it was definitely one of the ones Fox loved more than just about anyone because it was the most easy to promote for all their stuff. So you have an event like the X-Files crossover, then you follow that right up with

King of the Hill. And King of the Hill was the huge hit Fox was looking for, the huge animated hit, because the critic didn't work. And I don't think there was anything after the critic until King of the Hill, but King of the Hill did work. And then nothing worked after King of the Hill until Family Guy, which had to work eventually. It took a cancellation for it to work. Well, and we all know how Simpsons alum mike reese feels about king of the hill with regards to critic is his big show he co-created yes he's not a fan and his uh comments confuse me yeah i mean hank hill is not homer simpson in glasses but secondly he i mean he should feel here's what i do agree with mike reese on slightly is that the critics moderate success did prove

that an animated show after the simpsons would be a hit. And then Fox wanted to go with a show they created as opposed to a borrowed show from ABC like The Critic in its place. But that does not mean that King of the Hill is a bad show because that was the business reasons behind them wanting another animated show. And also, King of the Hill's first season is better than the second season of The Critic. I mean, the second season of The Critic. I mean, the second season of The Critic takes some wild swings, and it's really funny, but you could also feel like, boy, you're getting tired.

Like, you're running out on this premise here. I don't fault John Matonan at all for going with the King of the Hill over Critic. He seems like an awful man, but I understand that. And I think this first season is very strong. I've been watching it because it's been on Hulu. I also own most of the DVDs.

And watching this pilot again, I expected it to be much slower, to have fewer laughs, to have the characters be much different. But really, honestly, Peggy Hill is the only character they haven't figured out yet. She is, I would say,

moderately different than who she would eventually become. I think this pilot is one of the best pilots I've ever seen because if you compare this to the intended first episode of The Simpsons, that sucks. Some Enchanted Evening sucks compared to this. This has it all figured out. They know who their core characters are, what they're going to use them for. They introduce all these interpersonal relationships that are going to define the show until the last episode. This episode is crammed full of running jokes, characters that would be used extensively.

The only thing that's missing really is Strickland Propane and Buck Strickland. Yes, yeah. Wayne Kahn, Superphone. That's right. But he shows up in a big episode soon. Yes, yeah. But like Kahn's there. He even does mention he loves, he sells propane and propane accessories.

They do mention that, so they know it's there but yeah this is such a fully realized pilot made by such pros who also clearly had a lot of time to work on the pilot like the simpsons pilot this is it's not it's really apple and oranges to compare some enchanted evening to this pilot because they simpsons paved this road for them no one knew how to do that before them the technology was lost and i mean this is so many borrowed people from simpsons like especially wes archer as animation director he was an og on the simpsons so he could show them from the pilot forward how to make this show yeah it's kind of like this episode's even like more ambitious than the show would become, which I guess is a pilot-y thing,

but that intro with showing you the flat suburban Texas landscape really lays the show out and would only be, they mirror it once, which I think is in the last episode. The finale is a similar pan away, yes, yeah. Yeah, but it's so like, it's almost weird because the show becomes about the banality of,

can you believe that we're making a cartoon that looks like this so quickly after that? And I actually, I just did a full rewatch of the show because it's on Hulu and I've watched every episode again. Yeah, I was a lot of like putting it on while doing other things. And I also realized how little of the last couple seasons I had seen seen which i guess

uh you know i was like ready to become an adult at the time and not watching as many primetime cartoons i think fox did not air the last four episodes i think they aired on adult swim oh wow and much later than when they were produced too um but i skipped season one on my rewatch uh and kind of jumped around a bit and then went back and watched season one last. I was amazed by how much it felt like later on in the show, especially like the jokes are like exactly the same jokes that they were making in the last season. Like I feel like some of the characters, like I think it's weird that they all watch Seinfeld.

Like it's stuff like that, that I feel like that's the only thing that's like weird. I feel like Hank hates New York City so much in later episodes, he would never watch Seinfeld. He probably like would block it off the TV or something if he could. Bobby would watch it and tell him to watch it and he would not. Yes. It's funny, Dan.

Closed captioning sponsored in part by... Welcome to The Break, folks. welcome to the break folks hope you're enjoying this week's special talking simpsons installment where we're going through the pilot of king of the hill this was a great episode of tv and i hope you guys are enjoying it too and a special thank you to our guest matthew j for coming on and talking some more about king of the hill with us as he did on our podcast what a cartoon which you should definitely check out and check out all the rest of our cool stuff at patreon.com slash talking simpsons all the subscribers there make doing this podcast possible for me and bob as our full-time job we have tons of supporters and if you were to sign up not only would you be helping us out but you get every episode of talking simpsons and what a cartoon a week ahead of time and ad

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a different animated film in the same what a cartoon style like kiki's delivery service batman mask of the phantasm and in january akira you can check all that out and tons tons more at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. This is your last chance, folks. the san francisco area on january 16th at 8 p.m you can see our live live live podcast at sf sketch fest at the gateway theater at 8 p.m january 16th that's wednesday at 8 p.m gateway theater we'll have special guests ali gertz and julia prescott from everything's coming up simpsons it's a simpsons crossover extravaganza you You'll not want to miss it at SF Sketch Fest. Be sure to check it out on the SF Sketch Fest schedule

or just head on down to the Gateway Theater in downtown San Francisco, 8 p.m. on Wednesday, January 16th. We will see you there. You're watching Nonstop Fox, where the new comedy, King of of the Hill premieres tonight. Presenting a new comedy. I'm a substitute Spanish teacher. About intellectuals.

Los estudiantes son mis amigos. And their gifted offspring. That boy ain't right. About future Hall of Famers. Watch the ball! What? And expert auto care. Ah, my head!

Introducing King of the Hill. Media executive manager I talk about every time y'all come out like you did to put on that dang old Melrose place. Boomhauer ain't right. Premiering next on Fox. one thing that's changed for me since we watched it for what a cartoon that we've done more what cartoons have made me appreciate like the the animation pipeline to make this show work too was figured out by phil roman at film roman that's why they're the animation production company for this too like this compared to beavis and butthead which we loved beavis and butthead when we did that on

a cartoon but this is such an advancement over it and it feels like if if beavis and butthead happened in a realer world there's several scenes in this episode i'm like well this is if Beavis and Butthead happened in a realer world, there's several scenes in this episode. I'm like, well, this is a Beavis and Butthead scene, except reality instead of satire is what's happening. After you watch King of the Hill, you realize Beavis and Butthead live in Texas. If it's not obvious immediately, you're like, oh, they're living in the King of the Hill world, pretty much. I'm glad they never ran into Hank Hill. Because I think there'd be some weird Mr. Anderson time cop thing happening there. Tom Anderson is Hank Hill plus 10 years. The thing about I think every animated series I've seen so far, especially primetime ones,

is that the first season of every one feels like you're listening to a podcast at one half speed because everybody is just naturally a lot slower. It's lower energy. A lot of this first season, the joke is that the characters are low energy. It's about a very mundane world. But I feel like eventually over time, they had to talk a lot faster to tell bigger stories and to fit more content into the episodes, especially Dale. Dale talks so slow in these. And then later, he talks so fast. I think Dale's voice is sort of like early Homer in this. It took until maybe season three to get Dale up to speed. Though it's weird to me, though, because then it sounds like Johnny Hardwick. Johnny Hardwick has this amazing announcer voice he does, too.

And that voice in Dale used to be farther apart, but Dale slowly moved closer to that guy. Dale's more like, up here now. But in the beginning, he's like, I'm Dale Gribble. You can go now. I love his. this is the meanest dale gribble in this oh yeah realist this episode they soften him from this point onward i think hank is a lot meaner he's not as quick to snap i mean a lot of the jokes in this episode are about people seeing hank angry out of context but they would soften hank a lot too including his design like he's got way too many lines on his face in this first season. They really clean him up in the second season and beyond.

And there's an interesting dichotomy of the show too, politically, I think, because there's definitely like a Texas conservatism to the show though. I mean, Mike judge would see himself as more of a centrist, a libertarian type dude. Who's I think he is a funny,

intelligent guy. I'll have some stuff a little bit later about him yeah share but mike judge also is tempered by having all these like wussy ass twig boy writers around him all out of harvard like like greg daniels and jonathan collier that i think temper that a bit and and give it more nuance this episode has a format that i think they would do better with later, and it is very sort of one note. I love this episode, though,

but it's very Mike Judge in that a know-nothing, effeminate, liberal city boy comes to Texas or Arlen and doesn't know anything about the quote-unquote real world, and Hank is right, ultimately. I think they would do a lot more, so no matter who was watching it, no matter which side they took,

they could get something out of it. I'm i'm not pro-centrism by the way but it's a very careful game to play to not make hank right but to make him right enough to be sympathetic and on the dvd extras i was just watching today about the making of like greg daniels was very clear these were thoughts i wrote down as watching it but then in the extras, Greg Daniels is very clear that he created characters like Dale Gribble or Cotton to show the real rightward extremes and the more conservative people in Hank's life to then make Hank seem more centered. That makes a lot of sense. There's an intentionality to that to soften Hank's very prudishness to not make it seem like he's a hateful man i will say now one thing that makes me like king the hill less in these political times and i'm an sjw ruining king of the hill but it is but there is something to it that it's like

this episode stance especially is oh you people judge rednecks but you are actually the judgmental people here not you which it is so dismissive of the casual racism and bigotry that it is the heart of many southern people and i know this as a native arkansan so i'm not just talking shit here but it feels like it apologizes for it in a way of just like oh well you might think he's some redneck wife beater but you didn't see that a baseball accidentally hit his wife and all that like in in cases in this, Twig Boy is actually correct and he is overzealous. But if you go to a house and see the son and the wife have bruises on their head and they don't say it's from a baseball, you do call Child Protective Services. It's maybe not an accident with most of the time.

It's a funny episode and i don't like the argument and also you want to uh you're on hank's side but yeah in these cases you don't give the father the benefit of the doubt the suspected abuser yeah there's another episode that i don't like the message of a lot where it's about um the premise is oh this uh this drug addict is going to come work at a propane oh yeah propane and he gets to break all the rules because society lets him and they're trying to take care of him and oh boy and so and he gets to break all the rules because society lets him and they're trying to take care of him and oh boy and so they all pretend to have you know ailments in order to get like you know special treatment it's it's it's a bad message it's a funny episode though but

it's another very libertarian uh mike judgy thing that i think greg daniels and all the wussy harvard boys do a good job of softening yeah and you uh they eventually like create characters that are explicitly for that like uh like lucky and his whole clan is to show you like look these are rednecks like these are just hank and everybody uh in their neighborhood are just like regular people and same with um with con too is like they show that con like makes like just makes all these judgments and makes fun of them based on either misinterpretations or intentional misinterpretations but uh they're like just regular people who who are just trying to get by yeah and i don't i don't feel that is a fair presentation of things to say that like oh

see the only people here who make the assumptions are the people who are normally the judged by society it's just it is a very defense of establishment thing that i i'm not as big a fan of even though i mean i they find funny ways to do it yeah sure it's a good mark of quality in that i can disagree with the show and i don't like when hank is super right all the time and they would get better about that but i can still find it funny and still like the characters. Yeah, when Hank works best, it's like he does end up usually being right. But he's also like open-minded and can change and changes. All the best episodes are about him knee-jerk reacting to something and then learning,

OK, this isn't so bad. I should be more open-minded. There are different kinds of people in the world. But in real life, I don't think that ever happens. I don't think the Hank Hills in real life have that reaction. No. Well, that's kind of the message of this episode, too, by the end, which it feels very Greg Daniel. I don't want to take credit away from Mike Judge if he did write this, but it feels very Greg Daniels to me that the episode is the Mike Judge-y kind of message feels like, oh, if we were to do all this PC touchy feely crap to interact with our kids,

then we'd be raising them poorly and they'd become hell or hell raisers. Yeah. But then at the end of the episode, Hank realizes like perhaps being more in open emotionally with my child is a bright thing to do. I just need to do it my way. Like Hank does meet somewhere in the middle with this idea. Like he's not going to be as horrible as his own father was. That's really true. Like when he

learns a lesson, it's very much like, I will do this my own way that I feel comfortable with. I will do this new thing, but in the way that I am comfortable with for sure. And you can see, especially in this episode, you can see the parts of beavis and butthead kind of repositioned around to work like i mean bobby and joseph are beavis and butthead yes by the way we're bobby and hank on this episode we are yes i mean hank just is tom anderson they're the same guy yeah and meanwhile hank is constantly bedeviled by van dreesen types who are telling him no you need to take care of these kids you need to listen to these kids. I'm honestly surprised Mike Judge did not voice that character.

Yes, yeah. Although he would in The Good Family. There'd be another version of that guy. That probably should have just been Dave Herman. Yeah, but instead they find Dave Herman on the show. He was an original cast member of MADtv, and he goes on to become a superstar voice actor in all the shows that

we love like that guy has some of the most amazing range of anybody uh in in the industry i think dave herman is the fucking greatest like and he's twig boy looks so much like michael bolton from office space as well yeah oh that's right yeah he's also in that so he's like a longtime judge guy and he also ends up being he's one of those guys like he's always like the fifth guy that doesn't get mentioned when you're like oh i love the futurama boys cast you know billy west like you'd name all the all the guys but no one ever says dave herman when he's like every other character that's not one of those main five people that's right the entire cast king of the hills four main characters is an office space except for uh johnny hardwick i don't think he is an office space no maybe he's like in the background somewhere but mike judge stephen root and uh

dave herman all in office but he's playing characters although mike judge is probably not credited i think i think this too is like the greatest this is one of the best casts in voice acting cast in tv history i think like yeah everybody is so good i mean kathleen and jimmy broke out in sister act of course but who knew she'd be so great of a voice actor especially when they give Peggy a lot more energy and give her a very interesting character especially for a mom on TV yeah she's cast as a totally different character than she would become and it's Stephen Root who I mainly knew from playing Jimmy James a kind of one note but hilarious Mr. Burns type character on news radio.

He then can be a million different guys on the show. And it's so in touch with just the, the pure abject sadness of Bill Dautreve's life. He doesn't get a chance to be very sad in this episode, but I've actually been trying to figure out like what Peggy is supposed to be before she becomes who she is. And I think her character early on is she is naive naive but in a different way than Hank and that she has a lot of conventional wisdom she gets through popular media she would say I heard from this

book or I heard from this tv show so she buys everything at face value but later she would claim to have invented that knowledge I think that's where the turn came like in my opinion Fox News yeah uh and uh yeah one other thing i wanted to say about the show too that i like is that i do like when they cast politically i like when they cast hank against oppressive conservative forces in his life like he hank even in this episode hates megalomart he hates it he knows that megalomart is destroying him even though the republican party loves walmart and big box stores and he's voting for them but he knows they're destroying the world and the show doesn't like strickland and strickland propane even though

hank loves it more than his father in the second season finale he organizes a walkout when he's forced to work at Megalomart. So Hank is a big union guy. That's one of the most fun parts where they can point, when they point Hank in the direction of the forces actually destroying his life

that are not overreaching governmental bodies like Twig Boy in this episode. All right, why don't we get into the episode then? So the first, let it be known, the first line of the entire series is said by Bill.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. You know what it could be. That damn starter motor You getting good compression? Yeah

I know what's wrong with it It's a Ford You know what they say Ford stands for, don't you? It stands for fix it again, Tony You're thinking of a Fiat, Dale Fix it again. I'll tell you what you do. You just take them damn spark plugs out,

and then that little hole, you just put a little hole around there, just like Bobby Hunter said, just like it'd go boom, just like that. Well, I wish it were that simple, Boomhauer, but I'll tell you what my truck really needs. Leadership. Detroit hadn't felt any real pride since George Bush went to Japan and vomited on their auto executives.

Who's ready? Y'all catch a Seinfeld show last night? Yep. Oh, hell, I missed it. I tell you what, you see that part where Daniel George comes in there, he's talking about tasting his own bourbon, Kramer comes sliding in. I tell you what, man,

them dang old New York boys. Just a show about nothing. I love Boomhauer as sort of an R2-D2 character and that the other characters can understand, and I love all the reactions to love Boomhauer as sort of an R2-D2 character in that the other characters can understand, and I love all the reactions to what Boomhauer says in that they can understand him and react. And it's funny that, again, this feels like a podcast at half speed. I'm getting

kind of impatient with these beats between dialogue. I had to keep it all in so people can feel the real pace of that there. But you can actually make out what Boomhauer is saying, which feels odd to me. Like, no, it's got to be so fast that you can only make out a few words. But I don't know if we brought this up in that history. I haven't listened to it for a while, but he's actually based on a guy who would call in and complain about Beavis and Butthead. Yes. the South. My family's from Maryland and Virginia. So they never like really connected with the Simpsons, like my grandparents and my parents never really like connected with the Simpsons

or a lot of other shows I would watch. But this show they connected with. And I think that scene is like, why? Because they were all were like, oh, that's us. That like people saw themselves in the show. And everyone, everyone would always mention Boomhauer when I was a kid, when I would talk about watching King of the Hill, every adult would be like, oh, I love that Boomhauer guy, and do an impression of him. One of my favorite responses to Boomhauer is in Dogdale Afternoon,

one of my favorite episodes, in which Dale is assumed to be a sniper, and people are trying to talk to him with the police radio, and Boomhauer gets on it, and he does this babble, and Dale's like, you've obviously been coached. I was just thinking of that one. Also, usually it's

Hank, but once in a while they throw it to someone else. And then the episode where Boomhauer goes to his grandmother to get her wedding ring. I love that. They flip it where he does it to his grandmother, where he doesn't understand what she's saying, and then she puts her dentures in and it says the same thing again. And Brad Pitt is his brother,

Patch Boomhauer. Great job, too. Man, the guests they get on the show that are like often big celebrities to the point that when it's not a big celebrity, you're like, could they just not get someone? Why is Dave Herman a new character? All the celebrity guests like Drew Carey, Kathleen Turner, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, they're all really good in the one or two. Michael Keaton, they all do such a great job in the one or two episodes they're usually in. Yeah, no, they attracted a lot of really cool guests. It became the cool thing to do.

Chris Elliott would be a recurring character on the show, too. He's a couple characters. I think this opening 100% has the feel of a Mike Judge short, like a pre-Beavis and butthead mike judge short from the pacing to the once a mostly static shot of just the four guys it feels like it could have

existed as a standalone short you're totally right about that which i wonder if that is how well he sort of had been thinking about it the whole time he drew a drawing of those the show started with the drawing of those four guys not the family and then the uh the pitch was oh mr batoyan you know like the hank hill pitch to that guy canceled the critic uh but yeah just them staring at a pickup truck and drinking beer and that just the indulgence the indulgence of they all drink their beers they are silent for a few seconds and they actually just show hank walk off screen yeah to get more beer and then hand them to everybody it's never that slow again to be fair but the yup yup yup uh-huh that is the slowest one of those and that is like a

recurring sort of like uh refrain in the show i love how it's a real like this is as slow as we'll ever get to make you feel better about how slow it is later. Yeah. Well, and also, if you just came from the Simpsons, here's how the show is. Like, are you on board or not? Because this is how slow we're going in Texas. You go from Good Morning Starshine to this. And that Fiat joke also is about as racist as Dale gets because definitely, overall, there's a fear of foreign cars, which I guess is, I think that still exists now.

But Ford stands for fix or repair daily. Oh, okay. I guess that Tony in that is the implied mechanic you know is named Tony. Yeah, for an italian car yeah but the uh apparently in 2014 fiat actually did their own ad campaign for that traded on the fix it again tony label those tony a hunk well i think he was but the real message of it was that the fix it again is fixing a lesser car and turning it into a fiat they're taking it. That's how they're owning the narrative on it. Take it back, as one of the shows would say.

And though, yeah, it should be noted too that it was not, as we said in Two Bad Neighbors, H.W. Bush does not vomit on Japanese car executives. It was politicians he was vomiting on. Records from that era are spotty at best. Well, that's how Hank wants to remember it, because he's like, finally, some Republican took it upon themselves to get back at the Japanese.

He weaponized his vomit against the car executives. I always think of the SNL sketch of that, of just repeatedly playing Dana Carvey throwing up. That was pretty good. Though, I am sensitive to vomit jokes a bit much, but the,

I do think it's a real good, it does capture that these guys don't like foreign cars and it is a kind of just light jingoism that the kind that is appeal that is appealed to in Trumpism as well, but it just gets more loud speakery in that way. It also feels like a very metatextual moment of saying a show about nothing because that's what they're saying about this show. This is a show about nothing. Can you believe you're watching four guys standing around and look at a car? This is actually a show about nothing. Also, Seinfeld was never a show about nothing. I hate when people say that. Tons of shit happens.

Yeah. Too many things happen in that show. There's so many plots. Well, I think that shows you how effective they were as writers on Seinfeld, that within the show, they called the show a show about nothing. And so everybody's like, well, I guess that's what the show is. No, it's the show with 18 subplots. That's what the show is. And then we get the great theme song.

By the Refreshments, who broke up right after this. They were poised to be big country rock superstars. And I think they do a little more music later in this season. I think the montage in this episode is their music. I believe so. Where Bobby's acting out. But yeah, they broke up right after this. The music is great.

And it really does set the tone. And it makes it like, this is an America that doesn't get cartoon shows made about them and you know i it's the banality of suburban existence is just so well captured here i don't know about you guys but i never skip the opening it puts me in a really good mood every time i see it and it's so short but just such a great little ditty that really evokes the the tone of the show yeah and it's quick enough and uh and they, they reorchestrate it later and they add some layers to it, like the bell and stuff.

Does that? The bell comes in. Is that now recorded by the refreshments? The bell signifies the season finale. When there's a bell on like hooting,

that's the season finale version of the song. Okay. Yeah. The intro too, it just so puts you in the world of it of just showing that like,

here are these slow guys and the world goes all around them and they just keep, it just so puts you in the world of it, of just showing that, like, here are these slow guys, and the world goes all around them, and they just keep on living. And also that you see, like, Hank gets in an American Gothic pose with his very lame family. I knew I recognized that before, but only upon thinking about this for a podcast. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's an American Gothic joke. I've seen it a billion times, and it just washed right over me, yeah. And the world's spinning. Does it bother you when the camera spins around his head and it settles onto it being a logo,

his t-shirt turns into the blue shirt that he wears to work, to give him a collar? It is his blue work shirt, it's true. He kind of morphs like black or white Michael Jackson video style into a work shirt. He does it. It's weird. Cause it's,

it's clearly cause like they didn't like how just the head floating in that circle looks. So they needed to give it a little bit of form down there, but it's, it's odd to me that it changes in the intro. I just like when he blinks. He blinks. So then we get our, we're right back from the opening.

We get a truly iconic moment in King of the Hill in the first episode. Like, yeah, that's something to in the first season of Simpsons. If we're comparing the two, is there really a scene that gets memed all that much now or that memorable from the first 13 episodes of Simpsons? Anything on the level of toilets? It's all toilets. Yeah. Also, uh, setting up very very early just like all the harvard

writers on the show bobby is a femi comedy nerd who loves weird comedy stuff and it happens like i forgot that it was baked into the show this early i'm sure all the harvard guys grew up being this little fail son yeah greg daniels was this guy trying to probably telling in the extras greg daniels talks about how his dad was a guy from rural massachusetts who was raising these kids in urban new york and he probably for him it was his son probably talking about like bob newhart records or something or spike jones or something yeah spike jones alan sherman later on bobby does the the sound effects thing from police academy which is basically later on he'd be doing it just like a lot louder and and probably for longer uh but yes here's the here's our first appearance of

bobby and lou i am what you're listening to son i don't think you like it well why not i like this new generation of music Hello? Mother of God, it's all toilet sounds. Where did you record this? I bought it at the mall. It's the funny phone jerks. Let me tell you, Bobby, there's nothing funny about these sounds. What that person on your tape has is a medical disorder. Now you get ready for the game, okay?

Yes, sir. That boy ain't right. Oh, there we go. Oh, God! Luanne, I thought you went home. No, Uncle Hank, Mom and Daddy are still fighting. Well, you're welcome to stay, but for God's sakes, girl, lock the door. I've got a minor son living in this house. My favorite jokes in the show are the ones about Hank being naive, and I just love how he takes this Jerky Boys parody at face value. He's like,

this is a serious medical condition. And that he thinks his son recorded it because no person could sell this. That would be illegal. I just, and also how crude their parody of the Jerky Boys is. So I'm picking up the phone

and a fart noise. Just this confused old lady and an immediate fart. For as racist and not funny as the Jerky Boys were, there were at least characters. Like the Egyptian magician. Oh, yes. Leanne is a little different too. She's the only one who actually talks faster than she would later.

Because they just kind of dumbify her over time. But she also is like, she's kind of a gearhead in this episode. Like she fixes a part of Hank's truck. I really... Later on, if she touched his truck

without his permission, he would lose his mind. I really like that about her in that there's like a through line with the truck throughout the entire episode and she is the one who fixes it at the end

and she immediately knows what the problem is. But throughout the entire episode, they're all looking at the truck. Everyone's tinkering with the truck, but Luanne is the one who actually fixes it. It gives you a real worth to Luann that's easy to underestimate

because she is, I mean, at face value in this scene, she's supposed to represent the real redneck, white trash that Hank isn't. And especially her talking about the trailer parking, Mama and Daddy fighting. Like, that's a very, it's a very hick thing. And it's to show you that Hank isn't that. And this also is a very telling character moment for Hank

that, you know, other characters on a show, they would have been like, ooh, a sexy girl. But this young woman in her towel disgusts Hank. He's just like, it's so improper. He has to turn away. He can't even look at her bare shoulders. Even if it wasn't a relative, he is repulsed by sexuality. Oh, very much so.

Outside of Peggy. Oh, yes, yeah. I also feel like, speaking of her touching the truck, in this episode, two people touched the truck without permission, which I feel like later would not happen, because especially the other guys are like terrified of hank sometimes they do run away every time they mess with the truck and it doesn't work hank hank and his truck is one of my favorite episodes the one where his truck is dying yeah he's crying when he that is one of the like real there's multiple moments in the show that

actually make it harder for me to watch because they remind me too much of, I was definitely Bobby and my dad was Hank Hill, except he didn't love me. But the bit. Sorry to laugh at your pain, Henry. But no, that was a joke. But anyway, when they go to that movie and the father only starts crying seeing this movie and never shows emotions otherwise. Like, that was so real to me. And especially the mother saying, like, well, no, this is about your relationship with your son. And he's just like, no, it isn't.

It's about me and my truck. You see, I poked myself with a straw. If we do Talking of the Hill, the miniseries for the Patreon, we have to do that episode. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, I think that should be on there. That episode is a great example of what an amazing voice actor Mike Judge is because he does these

sort of cartoonish voices that are like imitations of these broad generalizations of types of people, but brings such heart to them. And you believe it that when Hank is crying and he's literally going,

boo-hoo-hoo-hoo, you feel it. It feels like he's really crying, even though he's making the silliest sounds. Yeah. I mean, the speech at the end of this episode is great. I feel like there's some ad-libs in there too, because for the Beavis and Butthead music video segments, he would be doing a lot of ad-libs in the booth and being fed lines by writers, but he's good at ad-libbing. He's an amazing voice actor. Yeah. I mean, too, the Bobby stuff in this is just so easy to identify with when I was a heavyset kid of a guy of a father who wanted me to be a little league playing kid.

Also named Hank. Also named Tank, yes. Oh, boy. And I especially identified with just that line there where Bobby's just enjoying his stupid comedy thing, but he knows his dad won't like it. And then when his dad's like, now it's time to put away your dumb comedy thing and go play baseball. And just Bobby's like, all right.

He doesn't, the last thing in the world he wants to do is be active. So then we get the first scene with Peggy, which yeah, I think you're right. She is not fully formed. The Peggy here is definitely a more coddling mother who like is very comforting and understanding to bobby so yeah to can't to hank chagrin a lot of the time i think the jokes here are and for the first season are mainly look

how peggy raises bobby it's very different than hank and Hank is worried about Peggy feminizing Bobby. A very real father fear, but here's Peggy's first scene. So, you ready to kick some wildcat butt, Bobby? Okay. Nah, don't you worry, son. You just do your best. Don't listen

to her, Bobby. If you want to win, you're gonna have to do better than your best. How do I do that? You got to give 110%. That's what will give you that winning edge. But what if the Wildcats give 110% too? Well, then you got to try even harder.

How about if Bobby gave 112%? Sure, that'd work. Or maybe 113%. Yeah, yeah, that's even better. No, I don't know. 13 is a very unlucky number. Look, we're not talking about 13. We're talking about 113 and even okay, give 112. What's the difference? I punched up Peggy's joke a little bit to be modern Peggy. And I think she would have been saying, so the original line is, I don't know, 13 is a very unlucky number. I think a modern Peggy would be like, I have heard that 13 is a very unlucky number.

Or in my opinion, 13 is a bad, like, I feel like that is what the modern Peggy would be. That's the only thing that's missing in this episode for me is that I love modern Peggy. She's like one of my favorite characters on a TV show. So I just want her to be a little more self-centered and a little more uh the speed i want her to be greg daniels on the commentary for the episode mentions that the animators make her look better every season and yeah he kind of likes how just plain and because hank's a plain guy he should have a plain wife and it makes it even funnier when hank talks about how pretty he thinks she is and everybody's like yeah he compares her to a truck design documents for the characters uh are really

interesting and peggy's that specifically points out like this is the good posture this is the bad posture keep the bad posture and it shows in the doc like this is how easy it is to make her look pretty don't make her look pretty make her look normal her look pretty. Make her look normal. Which is just, it's not about, it could be so dangerous to veer into you're making fun of a woman's looks and that's shitty, but it is that everybody in this world is plain. That even Dale's wife is supposed to be hot, but even she isn't a particularly super attractive woman.

She's like middle-aged weather lady hot. Yeah, exactly. John Redcord, now that's a foxy man. He's a big slice of man. I love the reveal of Joseph in this episode. It's so funny and well done. Such a joke that's so tired, but they get mileage out of it for 14 years.

And the way it's introduced is just so funny because it's like you get the joke oh she's cheating on him and then there's like a full minute before he's like joseph come in here and then joseph comes in and looks like john redcorn yeah just to reveal like hi dad is like walking in it you forget it is it was a just a huge gut laugh and then they have to commit to that character in the aftermath of that joke because we made the joke now he is a character who exists in this world uh so now we get uh hank is correct at 113 is a different number than 13 i i like that point there but i can so identify with bobby bobby is a clever ish kid who is just trying to get out of doing physical activity he simply doesn't want to play baseball.

So anytime his dad's like, well, you have to play baseball. He's like, but what if I didn't? Like, no, you have to. And like this bit here, the lawyer ball joke is one of my favorites of the whole episode. Bobby, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you can't get on base without taking a swing. The pitcher could walk me, couldn't he? Don't play lawyer ball, son. Now you hit the next one out of the park.

Run! Run! Run! Look at the batter, boy. ball huh what hey don't look at me keep your eye on the ball keep my eye on the what stop looking at me boy watch the ball can't hear you dad if you're watching fox in early 1997 you've seen that clip a billion and a half times. I think they only showed all the physical humor bits in this episode to advertise it. Like Hank falling in the truck, Bob being hit with the ball.

It was the real, you know, man fall down funny show for Fox. People are really going to tune into that. It's a real ow my balls, actually, if we're going to talk Mike Judge stuff. Him getting hit in the face of the ball is very funny like active too and and i like hank just shaking his head at peggy is right i agree with peggy cheering on her son even if he doesn't take a swing at the bat but the way hank just goes like he's yeah he's mad that she's encouraging him no matter what we he's like no i only want to encourage him to do the good things that i want

him to do instead of blanket approval which i do feel like that is an opinion of mike judge too that children don't need blanket approval on everything i do think judge and daniels too are way ahead of the curve of making fun of big box retailers like yes for sure for sure like i'm sure obviously i was a teenager at this time i was not reading a lot of leftist critiques of capitalism. But this is one of the first times I noticed like, oh, big corporations are bad. It wasn't King of the Hill. And by the way, Megalomart is probably the best like name joke, sign name joke. It is so subtle that it just hits me every time like, oh, yeah, Megalomart, like megalomaniacal. Yes, yeah.

It's almost too much of a joke because i i think about that because you know when you listen to the simpsons commentators or whatever they talk about how they would agonize over every single name you'd see in a thing or bob's burgers even more so or bob's burgers like every name of every business is a joke and on king of the hill when you see a business in the background or they go to one it's either a real texas thing like jeans west uh or it's like goes so far out of its way to not be a joke that you feel like you wasted your time looking at it and i like that there's no villain of megalomar just a giant corporate presence that's in

everyone's life it just exists and does these things yeah and that this is the show being way ahead of most of holly of the hollywood writers of things, recognizing that Walmart is the center of an American town or a target. Like that's if you lived in a suburban southern town, like that's what else were you going to do? It's open 24 hours. All other commerce has been killed by this thing. So here it is. And when they stop there, Hank hates it. For minute one, he hates that place.

And it's so great. And also, in the scene here I'm about to play, you get to see Buckley for the first time, even though you don't know it's Buckley. I love that they killed Buckley when they realized, like, we can't do anything else with Buckley. He is just a bad, like, he is your first bad teenage

boyfriend, which I'm surprised there are no women writers on the staff, because I feel like it's very observational. Oh, there was. There was Cheryl. Oh,l oh sure holiday yeah uh do you remember like the summer where they tried to do uh who shot mr burns again but with what turned out to be buckley yeah there were a ton of great two-parters with king of the hill two-parter cliffhangers i think just two but then they did the japan thing too yeah no the megalo this one they did a like when you would buy tv guide you'd get a trading card of each of the characters and guess who would be who would die when they came back for

the next season it would have been funny if they had killed chuck mangiani that was their world if he had exploded in in the world of king of the hill that would have been uh there was who who exploded who shot down uh Strickland's girlfriend. Debbie Grund. And also, did Peggy just die? The skydiving one. The skydiving. A lot of great two-parters.

So Greg Daniels made Parks and Rec, right? When I was watching the first season, I was like, Chris Pratt's character is Buckley 10 years later. The first version of the character who was not lovable, who's like the shittiest boyfriend who plays rock band after you fall in a hole that's so true yeah he's and that's though that was the turn they stick with all these characters basically unchanged for king of the hill but

in parks and rec they're like this this meanness and badness doesn't work as much for parks and rec so instead they turn the other way that just no just about everybody's really good at their jobs and it's just a company of equals which uh it was nice but it's also a very obama era thing that i have trouble going back to now yeah it's a little rough now yeah also did you notice when hank parks at megalomart he doesn't park in a parking space oh no i didn't notice that i didn't notice he's like in a non-space just parks like, it's like they just drew the background and didn't draw an extra space for him to stay in. Okay, so it's an animation error, not a joke. Are we to imagine this is some magic parking space?

But yes, here's the Megalomart. I hate this place. Excuse me, where's the hardware department? Where is the hardware department? Um, hmm. What exactly is it you're looking for? The hardware department. Yeah, but are you looking for, like, a tool or something?

What difference does it make? Huh. What difference does it make? Okay, I'm looking for a tap and die and some WD-40. Huh. What is it that you're trying to do? I'm trying to buy a tap and die and some WD-40 and get out of this godforsaken store.

Uh, and what is a tap and die? Okay, forget it. Let's say I want a hammer. Do you know what a hammer is? That's what I want, a damned hammer. Now where in the hell would I go? Hey, that's that Hank Hill fella that lives on the block next to us he sure has a temper doesn't he sure does makes you wonder who gave his

boy that black eye uh you're gonna have to pay for that dude you're fired by the way a tap and die that's a tool used to create screw threads uh yes I had I didn't know that either I do like so the Simpsons did a lot of dumb teenagers working at jobs and they're in over their heads. But I think the commentary here and with Megalomart

is that these giant corporations just hire dumb teenagers that pay nothing who don't have to know anything and you can never yell at the right person because it's just a poor child thrown into a giant store.

Hank is directing his anger at the wrong person here. Like Buckley, I mean Buckley is frustrating in this case, but he's not anger at the wrong person here like buckley i mean buckley is frustrating in this case but he's not mad at the things that create a buckley or put buckley in this position though i mean the questions buckley is made to ask are so great too because it it's more frustrating than just a a squeaky voice teen who is dumb it's also his questions to hank are framed as like no you, you're wrong. I need, oh,

do you think, what are you looking for? If you think you need the hardware section, it could be in a different section. So you need to tell me what you're looking for. It's like, no, I know where this is not you. That's, that is the frustration Hank is feeling at that moment. It's so very specific and great. And just his is a hammer like do you know what a hammer is uh and unlike buckley those gossiping ladies never really came back and like two of them are voiced by kathy and jimmy yeah it's very distracting it's just kathy and jimmy pamela and um joan something the the woman who does uh nancy nancy yeah yeah so then we cut to twig boy this is another like uh are we to expect this is some kind of magic twig boy uh well no it's the it's

called arlen county on there when it is heimlich county right yeah it's just they hadn't figured out heimlich yet i wish they would have named this character did they name him at all it's anthony anthony oh you're right it doesn't come up that often he would come back a couple times but basically they he would come back in two other episodes one where he doesn't even remember hank and he's used weirdly but i think too it's odd that like so they have him as twig boy but they also have useless yeah which he kind of just inherits all the twig boy jokes except he's a texas native yeah and he's just, what, the sad liberal dad with the droopy mustache? Yes. They eventually stopped using him completely.

I love how mean they are to useless. It lets you know that they're, and I mean useless, but it lets you know that these, you're watching guys who were the bullies in high school. They are bad people, or they used to be bad people. I do like the double carpal tunnel syndrome bracelets on that guy. Yeah. Just his, what a, you are really supposed to hate Anthony. It's a little too extreme.

I mean, I get it. He sucks. But the one joke I think is too, and those like, thanks for the latte, Kenneth. That's the joke that he drinks a latte. Just like, ah, come on. She doesn't drink those now. They're delicious. More than any stereotyped redneck.

It does feel almost like a response to when you see the stereotypical redneck on these other shows that don't take place in Texas. Yeah. He is the inverse of that of the hyper-stereotypical touchy PC liberal from Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. And I think, too, in Twig Boy, there is a bit of the anti-government sentiment, too, that he is an overreaching, over-controlling bureaucrat inserting himself into regular people's lives, which I feel like social workers have no free time to do anything that Anthony does. Yeah.

But it is very much the inverse in reality of what people imagine a twig boy does in real life at the same time though his boss is like a good old boy oh yeah they're not trying to say you know all social workers are bad just this guy who's overreaching the good old boy's the good guy he gives the dad the chance you know yes Hank really takes to calling him twig boy and calls him that a lot and never calls anyone else that again but cotton does call somebody that in a much later episode and i wonder if that's like i don't think it's an intentional callback but i wonder if some writer was like oh maybe we'll throw that in there to say that he got from him or something uh and so then we cut back and we get we got a little

dale in the opening but now it's time for for Dale to really find out what makes Dale tick. Hey, I know what's wrong with your truck. It's your quote-unquote pollution control. I heard on talk radio you don't even need them. They're just an egghead government plot. How is cutting down on pollution a government plot, Dale? Open up your eyes, man. They're trying to control global warming. Get it?

Global. So what? That's code for UN commissars telling Americans what temperature it's going to be in our outdoors. I say let the world warm up. See what Boutros Boutros golly golly thinks about that. We'll grow oranges in Alaska. Dale, you giblet head we live in texas it's already 110 in the summer and if it gets one degree hotter i'm gonna kick your ass that's how much the window has shifted that a conservative tv character not only believes in global warming but wants to beat up people who are spreading lies about it yes yeah that's uh that is to show that hank isn't that guy yeah it's like see hank's not as bad as this guy and uh this this is a real window into what it was then the talk radio fox news uh info wars viewer and i bet dale was listening to alex jones when he was in texas

at this time yeah which they're making fun of talk radio. And oh, wait, what's this on my computer here? Hello, this is Hank Hill. And I'm telling you what, you need to listen to Alex Jones. Infowars.com. Mike Judge, what is the secret of the universe? What? Yes, Mike Judge in 2013 did an interview on info wars which it's easy to say that five years ago people didn't know as much about info wars but

i have to wonder at alec at uh mike judge choosing to do a thing with on info i forgot about that i mean recently i heard that uh mike judge was liking ben shapiro tweets and I was like, I don't want to know anything more. I will choose not to investigate this. Let's not dig any deeper. I was not aware of this at all. I just know that I'm working with John Kay. Yeah, they have a weird boy. It's not cool that John...

So Hank Hill and George Licker have existed together in the same world. It's from UFC. Yeah. Oh, God. There's like a weird... Okay's i mean if you like ufc it's cool but there's a weird like libertarian kook uh like crossover between ufc people and that side like what's going on there i'm making bad diagrams with my fingers here um i as the biggest ufc fan of the people around in this on this this podcast, I don't really know. I mean, it definitely is a more separate from corporate fighting because it's just one guy.

And so it lets specific types of dudes show up. It also is about being like the complete man. If you're the complete fighter, the ultimate fighter, it, I guess it has kind of a libertarian determinism to it too and there are definitely some very conservative figures in it but there also are like there are some hardcore lefties in the uh ufc as well like to the left of obama and tons of stuff too but joe rogan is still the voice of the ufc too that is very real i call him pink shrek he looks like a pink shrek uh well he it's not i hope you're not saying he would do anything that would change his appearance over time.

Of course not. No. But yeah, so I did think that was an interesting extra dimension to, Dale is a joke here. Being a talk radio kook is a joke and you're supposed to laugh at him. But when I see that Mike Judge did Info did info wars in 2013 when you should definitely know who alex jones is then i wanted butthead to weigh in like he's stupid but instead you get that like i and he did a full interview so you really want to watch a full interview on info from info wars with mike judge it's out there but uh so it just felt weird to me like so you're making fun of dale gribble

for being a talk radio talk radio guy but mike judge kind of knows this world more than you'd think i'd like to think that he was more of a fan of alex when he was just sort of the conspiracy kook back when government conspiracies were more fun he was an art bell type yeah at a time yeah but then unfortunately that's the real problem with laughing at Alex Jones after Obama's out of the white house, because then he has to love the government. And so it's just like, Oh, it's, it's just more boring. I suppose he always sucked. I don't want to say that, but this takes me back to when people were afraid of the UN having any power and hate her. Like, do you, people even know who the secretary general of the UN having any power and hate her. Like, do you people even know who the secretary

general of the UN is right now? I had to look it up. Anthony where goes or something. I can't even remember his name. Boutros Boutros Ghali was a memorable name that came up a lot on Murphy Brown. That is true. That's just a, it's a funny name. Like John Sununu, who you don't need to know politics to know Stephanopoulos at the time, it was definitely a fear of the UN was going to regulate Christianity away and all this stuff. They came up with a snowflake down. What a cartoon for Clone High.

But the UN has no power. It can't do shit. It couldn't prevent the Iraq War, so what the fuck good is that? That's the whole point of the UN. The UN can't sanction, let's say, apartheid states in the Middle East that we support

as well. Not naming any particular ones. So what can the UN even do? Why would you be mad? But climate change denial is as real now as it ever was among the Dale types. So after we get that scene, goes to Bobby throwing his baseball against the wall,

making dents in the wall. Some real damage going on to that drywall. With just an empty look on his face. On the commentary, Greg Daniels says that Bobby is so slow in this compared to later and that his catchphrase in the first season was, okay.

That is true. He definitely holds on to that. I like the okay because like as bobby gets uh like wilder and louder and higher pitched i feel like she always holds on to that as the like centering of bobby where later on like seasons later you still like will hear like if they tell bobby to do anything he just goes okay and then goes and does it and it's i laugh at it every single time especially when it's like because it usually it means someone tells him to do something and he's a kid so he has to when he goes to do it or if somebody says something stupid that he just has to listen to

because he's a child he'll say that like there are times when peggy says something completely stupid and he just says okay like just accept because it's his just i have to accept this and move on without questioning it. And I also like Peggy's reaction to daytime TV is them kind of showing the gullibility of her. Oh, that poor man. That poor man. And though that watching TV, having a silly reality TV moment like that, that is so Beavis and Butthead. Yeah.

That's exactly the show Beavis and Butthead would see on their TV. If only there was a Brian Gumbel joke, then it would be more complete. It would be better. Mike Judge, one thing he's really good at, to get back to complimenting him,

is screaming in pain. Yeah. I love it. So you'll hear a bit of it in this clip here. Blah. Hello. I'm a social worker

with the state. Would you mind if I talk to you for a minute? Well, sure, come on in. Dammit, there it is again. Where is that thumping coming from? It's driving me crazy. Could be far off helicopters. You in helicopters.

Dale, what are you doing? Give me some light. Now, I can't see. My arm. My head. Ow. Ow. Ow.

God. God. Mrs. Hill, would you say your husband has a bad temper? Who, Hank? No, Hank is as gentle as a lamb. No more bouncing that ball. Hank, we have a visitor I feel like Hank shouts more in this episode

Than he does in the entire series combined The rest of the entire series And just his The sad look on his face Yeah Is really good Just they Greg Daniels also comments on it

That there's a lot more lines On Hank's face in this Than you get in any other episode, especially the lines under his eyes. Those got moved away. One of the recurring jokes we missed is Hank saying, I'm going to kick your ass, which is a minor Hank line he uses a lot. I'll kick your ass. His kick your ass is how Hank keeps them in line as yeah as we'll see later in this episode they already established it like if the other three guys don't have hank around they will just it's chaos immediately it all falls apart hank is their leader he's getting interviewed by twig boy and just also i think

it's you need to have peggy let him into the house because Hank would never have let him in. Even it has to be Peggy that does it. And his anger at how much writing comes after the word. No, it's so fucking funny. And also I was definitely Bobby as the boy list is listlessly playing his game boy in the background. Just, just how blank Bobby's face is.

You said it in our, what a cartoon Bob, but Bobby is a millennial. Really, yeah. He is the millennial child. It's perfect, really. He's just soft. He just wants to play his Game Boy, and he just has a blank look on his face most of the time.

I think he came from Mike Judge seeing a kid at the mall or an airport just blankly staring off into space while eating ice cream, looking exactly like Bobby. But so yes, Hank gets a little interview here. So your assertion, Mr. Hill, is that Bobby got the black eye at his baseball game? That's not my assertion. That's what happened. Have you ever hit your son, Mr. Hill?

No. No. What the heck are you writing? All you gotta write is one word, no. Mr. Hill, I feel that you're coming from an anger mindset. And if you're projecting this anger onto me, it gives me grave concerns as to how you facilitate your son's growth in private. Mister, I have not begun to project my anger onto you.

Mrs. Hill, how did you get this here on your forehead? Oh, this? Well, Bobby threw his baseball at me. You threw a baseball at your mother? Oh, Hank, it was an accident. So would this be the same baseball that gave Bobby the black eye? Now, think of yourself as Twig Boy. Yeah. It is your job to judge the safety of children in a home you come here and

see this screaming angry man who almost hits you with a baseball who has a wife and son with bruises on their face who's now screaming at you twig boy is not wrong to make these assumptions at the start here i would have done the same thing. It feels like Hank relies on baseball-based abuse, throwing baseball to people's heads. He's just an uncreative abuser who just says, just say it was a baseball too after he hits them. That's what the assumption is here. And I feel I would, in the real world, I would want a social worker to make the assumptions Twigboy is making, at least on surface value. His one flaw comes up later in his investigation, which does show he was making too many assumptions based on Redneck City. But in this scene here, I don't think he's doing it wrong.

He's doing his job correctly. So then we had to hear a little bit about Peggy? In fact, Hank's sperm count. That's enough! What in the hell did you tell him that for? Well, he asked me. He asked you how many kids we have. He didn't ask you about my glands. I love hearing him say that. There's a funny joke later in that even Dale knows

about the narrow urethra, so you get the idea that Peggy tells everyone who wants to know. Peggy has told everyone a long time ago about his narrow urethra, which... It's like an interesting fact about Hank, you know? Yes. I mean, and it just immediately makes you think of him ejaculating, or maybe that's just me.

He's only done it once. Yeah. I just love that, well, and that the later backstory they will add in is that Lady Bird relaxed him enough to let enough sperm escape his urethra to create bobby oh god well that also shows why he's like it's his it's his only child it's why he takes so much pride in bobby it's my boy that's my boy well that's my boy and and also, like, you do get a little bit of overconfident Peggy in her assertion that she knows Spanish enough to speak it.

Yeah. And that clearly everyone around her won't correct her on this because they don't want to be mean. So, there's so many great episodes out of her Spanish language stuff, too. Like, actually, everything in this scene would come back to be like an ep more than one episode later like every joke is later the premise of an episode at least at least one like when she she became a spanish teacher she got arrested in mexico in one episode i remember there's an entire trial in spanish where they have to prove that she can't speak spanish without her knowing that's what the point of it is not To not hurt her feelings. God damn. And same actually with Bobby's Game Boy leads to That's My Purse, another classic.

Then we get Hank's stump speech here, which is about summing up Hank, but also letting you know what the politics of the show are in general, at least his position. Loud is not allowed. Now you listen to me, mister. I work for a living. And I mean real work, not writing down gobbledygook. I provide the people of this community with propane and propane accessories. Oh, when I think of all my hard-earned tax dollars

going to pay a bunch of little twig-boy bureaucrats like you. It just makes me want to... Oh, God, it just... Hank? Honey, bring me my B.C. headache powder and a glass of water. All right, Hank. Now, you listen here. You see that boy?

That's my boy. And if you ever try to take him away, so help me God, I'll tear you a new one bigger than the Grand Canyon. Now I want you to get out of my house. You're not welcome here. I mean now this is a tonal for the show to have a character give a long speech like this with music that's not part of the scene, but like a funny song, like the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a hilarious song about war. With a record scratch, a very cartoony record scratch. With a record scratch. But I do like that the social worker is taking notes during the speech. That's great.

Yeah, it's a great little joke, but I'm glad they never really went that far again to just sort of break the reality that much. I think they definitely felt they needed Hank to make a statement of, this is what I'm all about. This is me. And I mean, you can also see a lot of Hank's politics in there too, that he feels like some rather libertarian values of hating government overreach, hating that his tax dollars are paying for a bureaucracy that's torturing him. And also, though, that he defines some work is more valid than others. Like he says, not do real work. Like it is is a very unsocialist message of like, well, all labor has value to Hank.

No, what Twigboy is doing is not valuable labor. It is lesser than his work. And he should be doing real work that real Americans do. And the way he chases him off, though, is pretty funny. Like, he's just like, now, get out. Is that her first ladybird appearance? Yes. Yeah, that is.

Which she gets kind of nothing in here. She's too active in this episode in terms of the one time we see her. She should be asleep somewhere. Oh, you know, she is pretty. She holds pretty still in her one other scene where she's photographed on the oh you're right as hank cosplaying as hank oh first cosplay in the series i also feel like later on the this whole episode wouldn't happen because i feel like hank's screaming at that guy like the town would rally behind him and join him and also yell at them. They wouldn't assume Hank is being wrong. Yeah, it would be more

forces against him or against Twigboy, I think. Twigboy. Bobby reenacting this scene is, I think, the funniest I think this episode gets. I laughed so hard at Bobby imitating Hank. He's not much, but he's all I got.

I think a better executed version of this kind of a story would happen in an episode called, I think it's called the Texas Skillsaw Massacre, in which Hank accidentally cuts off Dale's finger and he has to go to anger management classes. So it's about government overreach, not looking at the context of a situation and punishing Hank. But I think everyone is much more sympathetic throughout that episode. It's a better version of this kind of story. It's one of my favorites, one of my favorite episodes as well that's a great episode and the the point of the episode is like anger is good and sometimes people have to be yelled at yeah uh and so then we get maybe the darkest dale scene ever just because he's like he's not empathetic in any way no in this scene this is a very, Dale is a horrible person.

Not fun. Just a dick. Well, Hank's got a lot of problems. Hey, baby! How about a couple of beers? Sorry, should. Gotta go.

I got another migraine treatment with John Redcorn. Nancy, you've been going to that healer for 12 years and you still get headaches every night. Healing process takes time, honey. Great song choice.

Getting back to the Hill family, have you ever seen Hank hit his child, Bobby? Hank? No, sir. Bobby's his pride and joy. Because of his narrow urethra. Are you absolutely sure? 100%. You can ask my son. He's Bobby's best friend

Joseph! What is it, Daddy? You ever seen Hank hit Bobby? Nuh-uh, never See? Now you can just move along now It's a much less whimsical Dale I think a modern Dale would be in the basement

With the show turtles Mountain Dew But instead it's like hey baby like that's just mean like and that's and that shows you too when you see a character do that in front of a stranger yeah like boy what how does he treat her when a stranger is not but he's punished by being cucked oh yeah yeah it shows you that he's a huge loser who his wife has not like touched in years he got what he deserves ultimately yes yeah and just him smoking in his easy boy his lazy boy and also his it's so fucking we already said it but god the joseph joke is so funny because walking into the frame

and you set up this guy who is so sure of his worldview, thanks to talk radio, that it's led him to be the stupidest one of them all, like that ignorant of reality. That's true. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That is the joke about Dale. He is sure he knows everything except the fact that his wife is cheating on him for 13 years and his son is not his real son. Who looks just like the only Native American man in his world. Yes. He looks just like the only native american man in his world yes he looks just god damn uh and yeah i think the uh of there is a bit of like when you soften dale too much i it makes him a funnier character and it makes for a better show but i sometimes don't like that it softens your views on a truly bad part of society which are are racist conspiracy theory nuts like this guy, like the type of guy Dale represents. By softening him, it's kind of like you're doing PR for a bad person, which I'm not a fan of that, even though I love Dale, but I'm just saying that's an unfortunate

side effect of it. They never really dealt with racism on the show itself, and I'm kind of glad they didn't. There's one episode I can think of in that Bernie Mac was on the show itself, and I'm kind of glad they didn't. There's one episode I can think of in that Bernie Mac was the co-star and that Lady Bird attacked him. He was a repairman, so they were worried that Lady Bird was racist. But really, Lady Bird would only attack repairmen because they were in Hank's domain, and Lady Bird could tell how upset they made Hank. Yeah, that was a sweet episode.

He also plays multiple characters. Bernie Mac comes back more than once. I gotta watch some of those later season ones. I need to check that out. Well, speaking of dogs barking, though, Boomhauer's got some thoughts on that. I've been calling y'all people better than a month now. I grab back y'all every time a dang old dog crosses.

You start yapping in your jaw 24 hours a day, and nobody answers. How are you supposed to come back there and do anything about that dog if you're just going to get a dang old computer and going to come over here and just shut that dang old dog up? He just backs away. That's a direct parody of that guy calling MTV and complaining. That doesn't happen very much, but I love when a real person

or a quote-unquote real-world person encounters Boomhauer and has no idea what to do. There's a great episode. Again, we're referencing all these episodes that happen much later, but Boomhauer is kind of like a dog to women. There's an episode where he actually falls in love and is in love with a woman who sort of does the same thing to him. And when she leaves him, she's like,

sorry, I have no idea what you're saying. Oh, yeah. In the Snipe Hunt episode, there's the good gag on that too, where they're trying to keep a secret that they killed this endangered bird. And then Boomhauer just tells on them to the cops immediately. And the cop doesn't understand. They do so much with what could be a one-note joke. It's amazing.

Like a Boomhauer joke feels like a stunt to me. Like, what are they going to do this time? And I love in that clip too, you can hear the dog barking in the background. That dog barking is still a problem for him. Good foley. Then we get a quick scene with Bobby and Joseph, which when I watched this pilot, when it was new, I didn't have tons of years of King of the Hill that I watched for context. So I only thought of it in relationship to Beavis and Butthead. This was the new show from the Beavis and butthead guy and bobby and joseph interacting felt like real beavis and butthead goofing on their dad there's a gray shirt and a blue shirt guy next to each other you're right whoa which one likes death rock oh skull and there's there's also some gags in there in this episode with reddening faces that they

kind of dropped that which they he did that like if you watch office space the first short he did and this happens in beefs and butter too faces red in a lot in other mike judge animation so i think it was just them borrowing that animation style early and they're like it doesn't really work for this world yeah when all the characters have flat colors and shading in this world it just feels off to see just blotches appear on their faces and also just they're very realistic sad suburban time waster of trying to throw pebbles into the muffler i think it's very telling when bobby repeats things that his dad said they're not things he said he's not quoting hank he's making up new words which i think shows you it gives you insight into what

bobby thinks his dad thinks of him he's not much but he's all i've got hank didn't say that to twig boy so that's what bobby really thinks his dad thinks of him that that talks to the disappointment he'll mention later and that also shows that like bobby doing these funny imitations is him trying to be creative and funny in this you know stilting world around him it's like it is comedy through adversity which i think is what the crucible that comedy writers are forged in you know just pain and sadness and uh then we come back from that h Hank is offended by a pair of panties. He's just like, just to see them, the sight of them.

And we get Brittany Murphy's best scene in the episode. Good God, Peggy, this was on my road and track. Luann! Luann, honey, can we talk to you? Wait, wait, not while I'm here. 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 tipped 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. What am I going to do, Uncle Hank? There, there. You can stay with us till your mama comes home, and you'll style a new wig better than before. I'll let you use my tools. Oh, thanks, Uncle Hank.

She has got to go. Yeah, they set up Luanne living there in like 20 seconds yep yeah she just she has moved in now this temporary thing has turned permanent and two episodes come out of that one scene oh yeah at least two at least like the fork thing is a recurring thing for a long time the the trailer tipped over they go to get that trailer she just the trailer stays there but she just assumes because it's tipped over it's basically destroyed but then hank is very mad to learn that no it's just all that happened was it tipped over and we can just we can just put it back up and then a twister changes hank's plans again and he'll just never be free of luan which it's that is one of my favorite

moments in the whole show the ender and the twister when the twister has like systematically removed all of Hank's clothing until he's totally naked and his two options for covering his genitals are a cactus or the Texas flag, and it takes a while to decide and he picks the cactus. I forgot about that joke. And then at the end

of the episode, they say, like, he even took his underwear. No, not his underwear. Oh, and how the old lady says like don't be shy i've seen a barrel of pickles oh god yeah yeah emil adlon uh who is fantastic in the new movie bumblebee by the way uh she voices so many characters early on and i feel like they realize that a lot of those characters even though they're great performances and still different enough it just sounds a little too much like bobby maybe and she doesn't voice uh characters other than bobby after a while except for like young women who have a lot higher

pitch than him it's reminiscent of how julie cavner did more incidental voices in the early seasons of simpsons and then they yeah just like that and r.i.p britney murphy yeah so good uh at the live reading of a king of the hill we saw it was it was uh it was a very sad absence of her but pamela adlin does a pretty good luann yeah if this show were to come back and i think it can i think they could recast luann with pamela yeah just keep it in the family she could do she could do a good luann obviously wouldn't be britney murphy and it felt like they were buds off screen you know so yeah it they i believe they told the story that it was up if britney missed a recording date or was late that it was up to pamela to pick her up which uh you know i think i think britney liked the party yeah a bit it was i still love her she briefly became a movie star and luann left the show but

then luann came back and was a major character again after a few years yeah i mean come on you can fit in recordings in between being a movie star not when you're in just married oh god oh that's right so then we get to see uh twig boy and yes a very a very like low blow about him liking lattes which but i mean and a man named kenneth yes yeah that which but you're supposed to not like this guy he's a wuss he's he's a typical hollywood elitist wuss that he is specifically a hollywood la transplant let you know how much that you're supposed to hate him in this world but i think it is important to let you know that by him being from Los Angeles, you're so used to seeing these Hollywood produced shows where LA is this dream

space to go to. But it is realistic that for, to show that in a large part of America, being from Los Angeles is a bad thing. Being from California is a sign of moral failing or it makes you suspect. Like the second you say I'm from California, people sign of moral failing or it makes you suspect. Like the second you say, I'm from California, people are like, California, eh? I've talked about it on other podcasts, but I've been flying a lot in the past few years just to do panels and to do podcast stuff.

And whenever I'm flying back to California, I'm at a bar. People are terrified to go to California. They hate it. They're afraid of it. They're disgusted. Just like, it's a big, there's lots happening. There's a lot happening in the state. I haven't lived in real America for 13 years

because California rules. That's my feeling. I mean, when it's not on fire, it's the best. The parts that aren't on fire are the best. Go there. But yes, here's Twig Boys come up and see her. Thanks for the latte, Kenneth. Anthony, can I see you a minute?

So in this Hill family case, you couldn't confirm any actual abuse, but you still recommended the state take custody? Oh, yeah. I mean, the whole neighborhood was Redneck City. Did you see in the report how he dented my G.O.? Redneck City. That's pretty funny. Where are you from, son? Los Angeles.

Hmm. Let's see here here hit by a baseball so uh how did you like old Harvey? who's Harvey? oh he's a little league coach you did talk to the little league coach didn't you? so that is

Gaylord Sartain who we heard on the last few episodes ago the Simpsons spinoff showcase. He was playing Big Daddy. Charles Daddy. Charles Daddy. Also, we mentioned on that episode that he was an Ernest character. He was Chuck in Chuck and Bobby.

And Bobby was the mute, weird, younger brother. I think they're supposed to be twin brothers. I found out through research that Chuck and Bobby and Ernest were all part of the same advertising organization. So they were also characters advertising everything for anyone who wanted them to advertise. Wow, they had been working with Ernest that early. Yeah. I mean, we already said it on Spit Off Soapcase, but I do love Gaylord's voice. It's great.

It is very authentic, because that is where he's from. And it shocked me to find out he this is the only king of the hill he ever appears in i think it's because mike judge did not want to voice hank initially and they were at they were auditioning a lot of people and gaylord was one of the people who auditioned to be hank i see and it would have been it would have been wrong for anybody but mike judge to be hank yeah i I love the way that Dave Herman says Los Angeles. It just has a little extra... Los Angeles?

I'm probably going to be saying it that way from now on. This place I live in. You're one of those Los Angeles sissy boys now, Matt. Yep. Well, we live near San Francisco, so it's only fair. Oh, yeah, and you're in Berkeley, which is just as bad. Oh, God, yeah. The People's Republic of Berkeley.

Well, so that's another problem I have in this episode, though, that the character of the case manager is presented as a good man who does good things, and he's just making sure that this case, Twig Boy did a bad job. He should have checked with the Little League coach that a baseball did or did not hit Bobby, which would give Hank an alibi.

So that's true. But part of me, this is just me, but part of me feels like that case manager is covered for a lot of Hank kills in his time. Just like, well,

can you be sure? Can you be sure? I feel like he's questioned a lot of things like that. He is a good old boy it seems like especially with gay lard's voice or a bubba as mike judge refers to those types of guys in describing making this show the total just rejection of dave herman well in the way dave herman it's very real the way twig boy says it's redneck city he's used to saying that yeah

to receptive audiences to the idea of Redneck City. He didn't read the room correctly to tell this guy. I like the response, like, Redneck City. That's pretty funny. Where are you from again? And then we get Bobby destroying a stop sign, which is a

very beavis thing to do. It really is. Yeah, he's just like drilling on it. He stole it from somewhere. Super illegal. And he brought it into the yeah he's just like drilling on like he stole it from super illegal brought it into the driveway and just like drilling on it and he's hitting a power drill with a hammer right yep so ruining his power drill as well it's like homer fixing marge's camera it's actually the same in lisa's rival though then we get kind of the message that well if you were to follow twig boy suggestions on how to interact with your child,

it leads to them being a hellion who's controlling you. Yeah. And I don't think that's, I'm not a parent, I can't say, but I don't think that is reality. Honestly, the worst parts of this episode are the very dated, making fun of touchy-feely therapy talk,

which the Simpsons did in Bart's Inner Child. Yep. Like three or four years ago. But I just think those were funny, but whenever I hear those again, like you've activated my shame spiral or any of the things they're doing in this, I mean, yeah, they're silly sounding,

but they just feel so dated. I mean, it's a 22-year-old episode. Now that everyone is in therapy, if you can afford it, everyone's in therapy, so it's a much different world. It's the same thing with sushi or being a vegetarian, like these things that were weird to us at one point. And now it's just like, yeah, I go to the corner and get $4 sushi.

Yeah. But then again, that could be just California ruining us from being real Americans, guys. I get my CBD milkshakes. I'm saying this all for my liberal bubble. I don't understand anything about how the flyover states work. You should hang around some racists. Then you get centered correctly, guys.

Oh, I do. I also think Bobby being yelled at for destroying a stop sign is exactly what Tom Anderson has done to Beavis and Butthead in episodes of the show. You're quoting that. That's the most Tom Anderson moment of the episode. You're quoting that, like that's the most Tom Anderson moment of the episode. Like you're quoting that and me and his head like shakes in the Tom Anderson manner too.

And then Bobby gets the information that the investigation has been called off, which he hides from Hank, which shows you that Bobby is not just a stupid child. He's clever enough to know he wants to keep this advantage over his parent. It was very weird to go back to Beavis and Butthead in the very, very brief window of time in which Tom Anderson and Hank Hill existed co-currently. It was only a few months, but they

both existed as Mike Judge characters. So it was very strange. Then we get a brief scene that shows you that Luann has value. She's not just this ditz who goes to beauty school that she could, but that's her problem is that I think Luann, this early version of Luann lives in a world where she sees no upward mobility, that her mom and dad are just trash and that she feels like trash. And that when she actually has incredible mechanical skills she just doesn't even think of them as as real or useful or a career she could have even yeah yeah

she thinks she's supposed to go to beauty school that's the best she can do and so yeah then bobby gets to to messing around with hank quite a bit here what in the heck don't you see i'm working here close the dang door bob just keep put stop stop hitting that button give me that thing dad that's not respectful adult child growth dialogue i'll give you dialogue that's not coming from a center of anger please return the garage door to its factory preset down position. That is cool. And that's just them laughing together, Beavis and Butthead style.

Just getting this guy. Joseph eventually becomes Butthead, though. Yes, yeah. Later in the series, when he goes through puberty, he becomes a Butthead or Beavis character. Oh, I don't know. I'm not ready.

But he's just so... One of the few great voice actors on the show who's not present in the early seasons is Breckenmeyer as Joseph, as puberty Joseph, who's just sexually frustrated and confused at all times. He's got a real anxious Kirk Van van houten before he starts talking too yeah we get a little montage of them messing with hank where and he's wearing a brown shirt that he very rarely wears lady bird in hank's clothes pretty funny i do like and they're just laughing at him and uh yeah then we get bobby gets exposed though once uh once the once the guy returns to Redneck City to explain things. What on God's green earth are you making those noises for? They're sound effects, like that guy in Police Academy.

That's what I'm going to do when I grow up, I decided. And Dad can't say boo about it. Bobby, a man from the Child Protective Services just came by. Now, he said that he told you last week that this investigation was off. Oh. Please don't tell Dad. Well, son, I have to. He's been worried. But I like him better this way.

How come? I can make him love me even when I screw up. Is that what you think? Oh. I can make him love me even when I screw up. Is that what you think? Oh, that's a little too sentimental for Bobby to say. Greg Daniels on the commentary says, oh, that's a little too on the nose. I wish we would have rewritten that line. Well, yeah, it's too in touch with his emotions and understanding them, I suppose. Characters shouldn't say what they're feeling.

That makes me angry. I mean, well, they, but they do need this emotional shift because otherwise Bobby's just doing this for the obvious reasons of, well, it's fun to torture my dad because he normally has power over me. Like that's,

that's really what it feels like. I mean, as treacly as that line is, it does get to me. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I, I said it before. I'm a soft boy with father issues. So this fear was definitely mine as well. I didn't have a happy ending in this episode. But it was this feeling of just like, well, yeah, I'm a disappointment to him. So I better, I got to at least make him, I got to force him to love me if he's always disappointed in me.

Like, ouch, like that hurts. Yeah. Yeah. But I do love how Hank is upset to hear that's what Bobby always disappointed in me like ouch like that hurts yeah yeah and i but i do love how hank is uh upset to hear that's what bobby thinks later in this next scene that's good too that they do think the pc babble stuff is bad but that hank does need to be more in touch with his emotions as we see in this it's so great it's hard peggy i don't want to lose my little boy, my only son. But oh, it's hard. Well, you can relax. The investigation has been off for a week. Only Bobby didn't tell us. I'll kill him. All right,

calm down, honey. Now let me explain. He didn't do it to be mean. Bobby honestly doesn't think that you love him all the time. That's crazy. Of course I love him. Very good. Now, say it to Bobby. What are you talking about? I want you to tell Bobby that your love for him is unconditional. I can't say that. I can't. You know how I was raised, what my father's like.

I got my shin blown off by a Japan man's machine gun. So don't come crying to me with your problems. Honey, I'm begging you. For the sake of this family, you have got to do it. He's waiting for you out on the porch. Oh, geez.

Twig boy comes over here. We get a nice little sliver of both Cotton Hill and John Redcorn. They're working as many characters as possible in this episode. Love that. I completely forgot Cotton was in this episode and as a first-time viewer you're like that wacky character we'll never see him again like what is this who even is that it's a while where you only see cotton in flashbacks yeah he doesn't show up for a good while and i love with him yeah the cotton

you see the cotton is horrible to everyone but bob Bobby. Somebody who you think he'd be mean to. The show often is about surprising you on your assumptions. And one of them is like, well, this guy who was so cruel to Hank when Hank was a good son will be really cruel to this soft little boy. Instead, he just loves Bobby unconditionally, which only makes his cruelty to Hank seem worse. And weirdly enough, the entire, like, just his vocabulary revolves around Hank. So there's Hank, Hank's wife. And then his child he has later is good Hank. Good Hank.

Oh, God, yes. People are going to think I'm bad Hank. And also, I mean, Cotton's death scene in- It's great. One of the best. I love that he, that Peggy knows what a horrible, awful person he is in general, and he hates her too. It's one of the more redeeming scenes with Peggy in episodes. I mean, they go a little too far with her sometimes in making her a despicable character

who is very self-centered and narcissistic, but that's a great Peggy moment. She loves Hank and just wants him to be happy and not be hurt by his father any longer. And I guess technically she succeeds at that by getting Cotton to kill himself. Yeah. And also her bonding with Cotton after breaking all of her bones is also a great scene. Yeah, I love that one too,

that it ends with Hank telling her the like, well, no, look, all I know is that my, with Hank telling her the like, well, no, I look, all I know is that my, obviously my dad didn't do all those war stories, but they did survive World War II and having his shins, his feet tied to his knees. So that's gotta be something. Yeah. So in the last scene here, we get a rather, uh, an uncomfortable touching ending that I feel like this is also a rejection,

a slight rejection of sitcom tropes that it just takes so long for it to happen. You would think like, well, in a written show, it would be better paced, but more pithy too. But here's just how uncomfortable an actual human would be saying these things. Uh,

you, uh, you're my son. Uh, well, you know, with everything, uh, These things. and more, uh, you know what I mean, don't you, boy? No. Ah, well, uh, that's a hell of a weird sound. I never made that before. Uh, I, you, uh, family. You're not making this easy on me, boy.

Okay. I love you no matter what you do there Phew Let's go get something to eat I'm not Just a big disappointment to you Disappointment? No, you make me proud I've been disappointed by just about everything else in this town

But you? Not once Dammit it you're my boy you know better than that he punched him i knew it i told him did you see that see what big boy never mind i mentioned it before on other podcasts but i love the series f is for family it reminds me of a very uh just like this, a very character-driven show about a very, you know, well-defined place. But I feel like it is missing the sweetness of scenes like this. I feel like that show is very funny, but it's always so cruel. And I feel like no character really loves another character. Their love is just begrudging and obligatory, but there's always cynicism to it.

But here, this is the real sweetness of the show. Despite how dark it can get, despite how ugly the characters can get, I do like the underlying sweetness to the relationships. Like, Hank does not hate Bobby. There are many real fathers who despise their children who are too different, but there is, it's slightly unrealistic, I guess,

in this case, but there is underlying love and sweetness to it. I also love Epheser Family, and I've been re-watching a lot of Bob's Burgers lately But there is, it's slightly unrealistic, I guess, in this case, but there is underlying love and sweetness to it. I also love F is for Family. And I've been rewatching a lot of Bob's Burgers lately after we did the Thanksgiving podcast. And I'm noticing that that is also very in the mold of King of the Hill, especially when you're terrible, you're all terrible. Like that kind of stuff is, it feels very King of the Hill to me. Bob is a Hank Hill figure as well figure as well too yes like a put upon every man yeah yes yeah though he's more understanding of the world he comes from the

world like no i like everything i'm i'm a burger artist though like he that but they he's definitely in the hill mold when you mentioned f is for family, that made me think of in the first episode of that show or second, there's a real opposite scene of this, of his firstborn son screaming at his dad, I fucking hate you. Yeah. And his dad is this close to punching him until he goes to the garage to hit his punching bag so he doesn't punch his children. He never puts them through a wall like he claims to. Yes. Want to. punch his children like he never puts them through a wall like he claims to yes want to but it's so like it is a mean show yeah but it's but it's also just about like you're all driven ragged

by existence so that you you're cruelest to the people around you because life is awful it's much more realistic in that sense but i love the the uh the altered reality of king of the hill where people can love each other despite their huge differences well hank isn't as economically troubled as his family is though he's got a nice middle class lifestyle but god yes that's a great exit there a great exit of twig boy being rejected by texas like like this world will keep existing it It doesn't need your LA values. Get back to LA, twig boy. Wasn't I a twig boy?

Like that just delivery there. I also just like putting on my Southern man voice. It's fun. Everyone knows him as twig boy. Twig boy. They just know, just looking at him, you're a twig boy. That's what you are.

I'm sure I would be one if I went to Texas. Oh, yeah. Or girl hair. Girl hair, twig boy. I mean, they're not making fun of his girly haircut, which he also has. He breaks all the rules of manhood, Anthony does. Well, same with Anthony. He should be Tony.

Tony. You don't go by Anthony. That's a wussy boy's name. Fix it again, Anthony. These are all the rules of life in the South that you just know. It's like, well, men don't do that. Men don't do that. It's a very oppressive life.

It sucks. But this show doesn't suck. No, no. This was a funny pilot. I haven't watched the pilot in a long time, and I forgot how good it is. I mean, it's not quite the pace I like the show to reach, but it's still very funny. The characters are mostly who they are, except for Peggy, when she's still funny. I hope we can do this for our Talking Simpsons Patreon

next miniseries in 2019. The voting should be happening soon for that, I'm guessing, right? Yes, yeah. King of the Hill will be one of the choices among others. No Futurama in this first one because I feel like that would just win. Yeah, Futurama gets one turn off.

And it looks like with what our Patreon is doing, we might do two miniseries in 2019. So who knows what we'll do after that. And they'll all be exclusive to the Patreon at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. But I feel like we're getting ahead of ourselves on plugs. We should give Matt some more plugs. Yeah, Matthew J., thanks for joining us. We mentioned your stuff up top.

Can you remind everybody where we can find you and what your projects are? Yeah, I'm on Twitter at MrMattJ. And my main two things are, we'll watch Mitch Live at Mitch.Live, which is happening about once a month. The talk show where the host doesn't know who the guests are going to be, what the jokes are, sometimes when and where

it's happening. And the host, of course, is Mike Mitchell from Doughboys, who is one of the funniest guys in the world, so he rolls with it and is great. Oh, and his co-host from Doughboys, Nick Weiger, is going to be on my other podcast that i mentioned earlier killer the corny ass nick weiger wow we're we're gonna we have uh the burger boy himself nick weiger coming on to talk about some adult swim stuff and he's worked on adult swim shows like many of our guests uh and uh that's over at you can just search on iTunes,

the deep end. It's the one with brackets around it. There are a couple of shows called that, but we're the only one currently, I think. We very quickly rose to like the easiest one to search for, for a day or two. It was hard to find,

but we got enough reviews that it went up there. We're watching everything that's ever been aired on adult swim, including things that we ran-ran from Cartoon Network, specials that only aired once, like Night of the Living Dew. We're going to cover everything with a bunch of awesome guests. Weiger is not the secret guest that I couldn't say earlier. I'm still not going to say, but I will tell you, you're not going to believe it when we get to it.

It's nuts. And my other show is the Cartoon 101 podcast, which is at patreon.com, just Cartoon 101, where i interview animation creators like uh uh bill oakley um like alan denton who i mentioned earlier jeff trammell from craig of the creek oh i didn't know you did jeff yeah i had jeff funny came over to my house jeff's a super cool guy he's one of the coolest guys in the world he's he's a good buddy we're twitter buddies i need to yeah i i'm looking forward to having him on a future What a Cartoon, I think.

Yeah, totally. Oh, yeah. Get him on. He's going to be annoyed that he wasn't on for King of the Hill. Oh, no. Get him on. He's a super cool dude. Let's re-record this with Jeff.

Let's, no. Yeah. When you come back down to LA, we'll hang out. Los Angeles? Los Angeles. Bunch of awesome stuff over there. And there's also a Patreon for The Deep End where you get an extra podcast

that every week is about the Venture Brothers. We're going through every single episode of the Venture Brothers, which may be a hint for who our special guest is. I won't say it. Oh my God. Check that out at patreon.com slash the deep end. So yes, I mentioned it before,

but if this is your first exposure to a What a Cartoon style podcast, check out What a Cartoon. You can find that wherever you find podcasts. Like I said, we go through a ton of animated series, a different episode from a different series every week, and that comes out every Monday. And that is supported by the Talking Simpsons Network. So if you want to support our show and get a ton of bonus podcasts on top of that, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And for the subscription fee of five bucks a month you can get every

episode of talking simpsons and what a cartoon a week ahead of time and ad free and there are so many bonuses on top of that i mentioned our exclusive series that we do for the patreon those are only on the patreon and they have included so far a talking critic in our first year talking futurama in our second year and who knows what it'll be it'll probably be king of the hill i'm guessing but there could be a fourth series in 2019 if we raise a few hundred more dollars and hit our $11,000 goal. And it seems very likely at this point.

So if you sign up today, you get a nice little code you can drop into your podcast machine and you can access dozens and dozens of bonus episodes. So many to catch up on if you've never been part of the Patreon before. And Patreon also has a very good app you can use if you want to listen that way as well. And Henry, we have a new $10 podcast that people can listen to, and it's all about movies.

Can you talk about that? At the $10 level, we used to offer a monthly video, which you can still see all the previous videos. They are available to everybody who signs up at the $10 level. But now, each month, we will be doing a different animated film for our What a Cartoon Movie podcast, me and Bob. We talked about Batman Mask of the Phantasm in November. December was Kiki's delivery service. January is looking to be Akira, just in time for 2019, which is when the film is set.

So you will be able to hear all those. If you up your pledge to $10 a month, I think you get a real good deal out of that for the amount you pay. And it helps me and Bob do this full time. And also, I want to say, there's just a few days left when you're listening to this. Oh, my gosh. But Talking Simpsons is doing a live podcast in San Francisco on January 16th, 8 p.m. at the Gateway Theater.

You can find the tickets to it at sfsketchfest.com. Look for it on the schedule. Me and Bob will be doing our episode for Principal and the pauper the armin tamzerian episode and we will have special guests there julia prescott and ally gertz of the everything's coming up simpsons podcast so it is a simpsons podcast crossover event live january 16th 8 p.m at the gateway theater in downtown san francisco it's like the avengers but for for Simpsons podcast, right? Is that how it works? Yes.

Oh, they said that Infinity War was the greatest crossover of all time. That's the meme. Which Infinity Gem am I? Yellow? Who knows? Ask yourself at home. Hair. Thank you so much for listening, folks.

As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mack. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is retronauts to classic gaming podcast check it out at retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast machine it's been going on since 2006 and i think we have almost 500 episodes so far so just dig into the backlog and see what you like and if you like it please subscribe henry how about you hey i'm henry gilbert and you can find me on twitter h-e-n-e-r-e--G. When there's updates to the shows and all the other podcasts and everything that's going on on the Patreon, I share it there on my Twitter account along with lots of other things. One more time, that's H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

Thank you for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for the City of New York versus Homer Simpson. Thank you for listening. Get out of my house My boy ain't much But he's all I got