I have to get up really early in the morning for work, like it's still dark outside and it doesn't matter if it's summer or winter early. Adult Swim is still on in the morning and I see a lot of King of The Hill. During one of these early mornings I realized, nobody from King of The Hill is actually happy. There's something in all o their lives that makes them depressed.
1. Boomhauer: On the outside it may look like he's the happiest guy on the show. He's got a rotating door of women. He drives the coolest car on the show and always gets to take awesome vacations and actually loves his job as a Texas Ranger. But he's not happy. While he has a lot of women around, it's revealed that he basically just begs a woman until she agrees to a date and they rarely star around because outside of the sex, they consider him boring. Bobby once catches him on his knees begging a woman for a date and on another occasion Peggy states "I have never seen a man so sad and so relaxed as Boomhauer when he's nursing a broken heart," and that happens a lot. He doesn't take breakups well and even needed Bill to help him get over some.
2. Peggy: Peggy is a dullard. She's dull and doesn't have the courage to take chances in her life. She knows this, it's the reason she likes hank, because he never changes. Peggy doesn't handle change well at all, such as when Bobby became the best cook in the house. She's jealous of Nancy and it shows. Despite it looking like they're best friends, she takes any chance she can to run Nancy in the dirt to anyone but Dale and Nancy. She also becomes obsessed when she makes a mistake in something she considers herself to be great at. When Hank is the better teacher she almost ruins their marriage over it, or when she failed to guess the weight of an ice cream cone, or when she was a competitive boggle player. She even tells Bills "I'm sorry of taking advantage of your low self esteem to boost my already high self esteem," but we all know that's a lie. She views Bill, Dale and Luanne as the only people she can take advantage of.
3. Hank: He doesn't like his father very much after years of constant verbal abuse. This is one of the reasons he's upset, because he's like his father. Cotton always seems to turn the knob to 10 in contrast to Hank. But, how many times have we seen Hank get mad and yell "I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS?" Additionally sometime he talks to Bobby the way his father does but feels bad about it later. At times taking away Bobby's things for mundane things and later coming to his senses.
4. Nancy: Nancy is cheating on her husband. However, she legitimately feels bad about it. She knows Dale isn't Joseph's real dad. But, she really does love Dale. She even tries to stop cheating on him several times because she feels bad about it. Nancy is obsessed with her guilt and the fact that she is aging. She's on TV every day doing the weather so watching herself age in front of Arlen eats her up inside.
5. Dale: It's not proven, but I'm pretty sure Dale knows Joseph isn't his real son. On one occasion he hypothesizes that aliens may be Joseph's real father. Dale might just bury himself in the conspiracy theories and alien studies because his marriage is failing. He really does care for Joseph and Nancy but it's not like they have the greatest relationships. It's a relationship strained more than the one between Bobby and Hank.
6. Bill: Bill's failed at just about every aspect of life since he played high school football. Bill is the guy who peaked too early and now treads through life just barely getting by. He envies Hank for his happy family knowing that he lost his chance at one. He really wants a family. Attempting to marry women with kids, attempting to "adopt" random teenagers, allowing teenagers to hang around in his yard or take in roommates running a fashion forgery business. He's the worst kind of lonely.
7. Khan: He should be happy, he has a family he legitimately loves and they love him. There's no cheating and the only problems they have are regular ones. Khan is bipolar so he can quickly reach the lowest of lows if not properly medicated. Even when he is medicated he's depressed that he isn't super successful. He's the only one in the neighborhood with a degree yet he's in the same neighborhood. Khan feels like he should be more successful than he is and it bothers him that he never made it to management and is just mid-level. So he takes any chance he can get to prove that he's somehow on a higher level, but he knows he's just fooling himself. Unlike some of the other Khan can be really open about these issues in some episodes. Such as telling Hank "I just don't get why you're so happy," on one occasion.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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Interesting article.
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