From my childhood in the suburbs of Houston, I can honestly say that their neighborhood looks like my old neighborhood, and the characters look like my neighbors! I’ve always kind of felt that it’s a funny show for anyone, but you have to be from Texas to get ALL the humor. Much of it is spot-on.
I have a friend who lived in El Paso for a while, who had a girlfriend whose family was from Houston. He and I used to discuss how a lot of King of the Hill was dead on about certain Texas people. And also, he described his girlfriend’s grandfather as very much like Cotton! Except his shins didn’t get blowed off by a Japanman’s machine gun…
And for the record, there are Hank Hills everywhere. Not just Texas. I’m from Illinois, and my Dad is very much like Hank Hill- ultra conservative, narrow minded but not bigoted, very uptight, looks down on anything even slightly out of the ordinary, but very reliable and level headed when it comes to solving other people’s problems. He is even as passionate and overly sentimental about his job (farming) as Hank is about propane.
I gotta assume you’re either bragging or that I should worry about your mental state.
Boomhauer’s not hard to understand because of his accent and fast speech; he’s hard to understand because he speaks in random, stream-of-consciousness fragments.
I mean, I can understand what he’s getting at…
Yes. He is not supposed to be intelligible. In fact, there’s one episode (the one where they accidentally burn down the fire station) where, during questioning by police, each of the guys gives his own version of the story, in the form of a flashback from their perspective. In Boomhauer’s flashback, he speaks and enunciates perfectly, and everyone else speaks in his weird “dang-ol” patois. That joke wouldn’t work if it wasn’t supposed to be taken for granted that Boomhauer’s speech is not normal.
Similar gag in an episode where Boomhauer calls 911. The operator asks him to slow down, and he literally slows down but still speaks disconnected words.