King of the Hill

In 1995, Mike Judge wrote a pilot episode for an animated series centered around Hank Hill, a common sense, all-American propane salesman in Arlen, Texas. Hank was loosely based on a neighbor character in Judge’s hit MTV series, Beavis and Butt-head . Fox Broadcasting Company brought in The Simpsons writer Greg Daniels to collaborate with Judge on the pilot, and the series debuted in January 1997, with Judge and Daniels as co-creators.

The show remains true to Judge’s original concept and depicts the suburban Hills and their neighbors on Rainey Lane. The patriarch of the Hill family is Hank, a salesman of propane and propane accessories with a narrow urethra and an obsession with his lawn and the Dallas Cowboys. Hank is married to Peggy, a substitute Spanish middle school teacher with an inflated sense of her own intelligence. She writes “musings” for the Arlen Spectator and is a champion Boggle player. Hank and Peggy’s only son is Bobby, an overweight, under-achieving eight-grader with the dream of becoming a prop comic. Many storylines deal with Hank’s concern for Bobby, and an early catch-phrase from the show is “the Boy Ain’t Right.” Despite not understanding Bobby, Hank clearly loves his son and struggles to be a better father than his own, WWII veteran Cotton, who “killed fifty men” and lost both his shins in the war. Also living with the Hills is Peggy’s niece Luanne, a slightly dim-witted beauty-school drop-out who is able to find her voice through a Christian puppet show.

...