Yup. I can’t count the number of times I have heard: “You’re from Texas, but you don’t have an accent.”
Geez, I don’t have a ranch, truck, or any cowboy attire of any sort either. Of course I haven’t lived there for a long time now. Now its: You’re from Ohio? I hate Ohio State.
Unless they learned social interaction from TV. 
Here’s the interview with Judge. He talks about the characters at about 12:30 in.
I’ve only spent two nights in Texas in my life but I’ve known plenty of Peggy Hills: middle aged women who simultaneously have low self esteem yet grossly overestimate their I.Q.. A disproportionate number of them will talk to you for hours if you let them about their absolutely brilliant child/ren or the novel they’re going to write one day, and many, like Peggy, wind up in education. (Note to forestall flaming: this is not to say or imply that all middle aged women are like this, just a tiny minority, but there are enough to be an archetype, and for when you describe somebody as “she’s a Peggy Hill” many people know exactly what you’re talking about.)
Hank’s a good guy, salt of the Earth (no sarcasm intended), he’d be a great neighbor and a friend you’d say ‘Hello’ to and maybe catch up on a couple of things when you did, but you probably wouldn’t be bosom buddies with or invite to your smaller parties since
1- He’s boring as hell (the Lady Propane worship)
2- You know that the only thing he finds wrong with the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency is that she’s a woman
3- While he might be too polite to mention it you know that you’d offend him with every other sentence out of your mouth
Bill is a depressing sad sack but not a bad guy. Dale is the only character on the show that I can’t stand and can’t figure out why any of the others remain friends with, but at least due to his cowardice he’s mostly harmless and he does love his wife and, uh, his son.
Dale is Joseph’s son in every way that counts. John Redcorn is a sperm donor who happened to have used the natural method.
Was this joke intentional?
I think voice acting tends to be exaggerated for the same reasons as stage acting. It’s harder to communicate subtle expressions and gestures in both cases, so the voice does more of the work.
I’ll give him that. And in the way Joseph regards him.
One moment I loved was when John Redcorn gave him a hunting knife. “I was given this knife by my father, who was give it by his father, who got it from his father, who got it from his father…”.
Joseph: Uh… thanks… for the used knife.
Has it ever said why Nancy stays with him rather than leave him for John Redcorn? He’s not rich, they don’t have sex (except once or twice a year), she knows he’s stupid, he’s not likeable, and she cheats on him constantly with Redcorn.
I think she stopped doing Redcorn halfway thorugh the series. Anyway, I think Nancy is one of those bigots who find having sex with persons of the despised ethnicity exciting, but refuse to countenance being in a public relationship with them.
You know, like Thomas Jefferson. 
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
You know, like Thomas Jefferson.
[/QUOTE]
There is no conclusive proof at all that Thomas Jefferson ever shagged an American Indian guy for several years. That started out as Revolutionary Slash Fiction by tween girls in the Carolinas.
One observation about Dale, was he honestly unaware that Nancy was shagging John Redcorn? Or did he somehow know in the back of his mind but was in a constant state of denial? Everybody else in the neighborhood knew about Nancy and John’s affair, so how could the signs escape Dale? I know he rationalized Joseph’s darker skin as due to Dale’s grandmother being Jamaican. Or was he unable to think anything ill of Nancy as she did seem to genuinely love him and was a good mother to Joseph?
It was always my impression that he honestly did not realize what was going on between John Redcorn and Nancy. In one episode he did begin to suspect that Joseph wasn’t his biological son, but his best guess was that Joseph was actually half space alien. (!) He decided that even if this was true, Joseph was still his son anyway.
The big joke about Dale is that he sees conspiracies everywhere except in the one part of his life where the people around him actually are hiding the truth from him.
In another episode Dale’s father, a flamingly gay rodeo cowboy, is in town and he comes out to Dale, which Dale accepts non-chalantly. When Nancy expresses surprise and gratitude that Dale is okay with it he says “I don’t know why you’re so surprised; John Redcorn’s gay and we’ve been friends for years.”
that, and he loves nancie so much that the thought of cheating on him never crosses his mind. nancie stays with him because she realizes that this love is hard to find.
:smack::smack: Clearly this issue of cartoon characters and their voices is going to be my most contentious subject, since arguments like this have come up every time I’ve mentioned it for years now. No, I do not believe that the voices of the Hill family - let me say that again, alright? The Hill family - are as exaggerated as the voices of the Simpson family, the Griffin family, the Smith family, or other “family” animated shows on TV. I am not just talking about the accent. I am also talking about the singsong cadence of “cartoon voice” and the way certain words are emphasized.
Now that’s one conspiracy I didn’t see coming.
Re Nancy & Dale- In one episode, after his Birthday romp in the sack, Nancy saw his pale wiry/dumpy body & realized how devoted he was to her & how much she cared for him & just couldn’t keep the affair with John going anymore.
(Emphasis is mine.)
Be afraid, be very afraid: in the +25 years I’ve lived in south-central Texas, I have met real-life counterparts to Boomhauer, Dale Gribble, Nancy Gribble, Bill Dautrive, Peggy Hill, Mr. Strickland, Cotton Hill, Khan, LuAnn Platter and her boyfriend Bucky. And I have worked for Hank Hill.:eek: (I don’t list the child characters because I don’t have much contact with children.)
One of my favorite lines, one that means nothing out of context, was in the episode where Hank met a guy who was basically another Hank. He was voiced by Drew Carey, and they would meet when and where they could but it was almost like an adulterous affair due to the jealousy of Boomhauer/Gribble/Bill. The final time they meet they’re parked a ways from town, barely changing a word save for “Yep” and a nod. When Drew Carey’s character drives off, Hank says
“I’m gonna miss that crazy bastard.”
I swear I’ve known guys exactly like that. “Oh man, we are some football nuts! Sometimes we’ll get up at 5:00 on a Saturday morning just to drive to the game!”
Leander’s about right. Especially given that I’m fairly confident the local propane shop (yes, really) is the one Strickland is based on. Check out Action Propane in Leander.
I live there, I’d know.
Points to Mike Judge for not going for the obvious. I can’t think of a single core character on the show who, for instance, regularly wore a cowboy hat (Offhand, the only Stetsons I ever recall seeing were on Gay Rodeo cowboys and a LOUISIANA Ranger; not exactly Texas archetypes).
Bart Simpson is who I would’ve liked to have been as a kid, but Bobby Hill is uncomfortably close to the reality. This show cut close to the bone sometimes.