"King of the Hill" Ceci N'est Pas Une King of the Hill (2004)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Tricia Garcia

Writers:

Etan Cohen (writer)
Greg Daniels (creator)

TV Series:

"King of the Hill" (1997)

Original Air Date:

25 January 2004 (Season 8, Episode 9)

Genre:

Animation | Comedy

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Texas | Propane | Beer | Father Son Relationship | Neighbor

Cast

Mike Judge	...	Hank Hill / Boomhauer (voice)
Kathy Najimy	...	Peggy Hill (voice)
Pamela Adlon	...	Bobby Hill (voice) (as Pamela Segall Adlon)
Brittany Murphy	...	Luanne Platter (voice)
Johnny Hardwick	...	Dale Gribble (voice)
Stephen Root	...	Bill Dauterive / Buck Strickland (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Trace Adkins	...	Elvin (voice)
Ashley Gardner	...	Nancy Hicks Gribble (voice)
David Herman	...	Jimmy Witchard (voice)
Nicky Katt	...	Artist / Voice on the Phone (voice)
Romy Rosemont	...	Margo (voice)
Dave Thomas	...	Ambrose (voice)
Lauren Tom	...	Minh Souphanousinphone / Kahn 'Connie' Souphanousinphone, Jr. (voice)

Company:

3 Art Entertainment

One of my favorite episodes

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is one of my favorite episodes because it beautifully illustrates the mentality behind the artistic community on so many levels.

Early in the episode Hank visits an art store to buy a work of art. Here we encounter the usual gang of self-proclaimed progressives who lace their work with political overtones. In the real world, these free-thinking, non-conformist, political artistic types all seem to share the same adolescent and socialist point of view and, amazingly, that's how they're presented here. After this scene is a funny line by Hank as he tries to persuade Peggy to create some art: "Even the ones who do it for a living aren't very good at it." The amusing scenes continue. After Peggy creates her work it is reviewed. Once again the artists who profess to be so independent and broad minded come across like a simplistic high school social cliché. All of them look at Peggy's work and when asked their opinion they merely say "interesting" and then pass the question off to the next person by asking them what they think. After everyone fails to display the ability to form an opinion without instruction from the collective "hive mind" one artist finally peeps up. Is it an opinion? NOPE! It's a question about the artist! In order for the reviewers to form their opinion they question the artist to see if he or she conforms with the rules on what makes a good artist. Clearly, if the artist conforms to the proper model then the reviewers will praise the work. Obviously, Peggy's stable life as a mother and substitute Spanish teacher does not conform. One reviewer says "You're not a real artist, this is crap!" and all the other sheep fall into line with the same opinion.

The episode continues with Peggy finding success, but not due to the quality of her work. Someone discovers her, and then creates a phony new back history for her that pleases the artistic community and suddenly she's a hot commodity.

At the end, Peggy abandons this image and prepares to destroy her work. It is at this point that a bunch of typical people (the kind that the artistic community would look down upon as "redneck", "ignorant", "unsophisticated", and "stodgy") come across Peggy and display what the so-called sophisticated artists never did: the ability to think for themselves and form their own opinion about Peggy's art.

I really enjoyed this episode because it showed that community as it actually is instead of how it professes to be. I think most boring "normal" people acknowledge that the artistic community comes across as one of the most rigid and undiverse collectives around. King of the Hill should be praised for taking a chance by poking fun at an industry that's closely related to its own. I bet the writers took a lot of slack for this.