The trailer is out
Reminder all 10 episodes drop at once 2 hours from now (at midnight Eastern instead of the more usual midnight Pacific). I see a binge in my near future.
I’m on episode 1. I’ll probably get through all 10 episodes by tomorrow.
How is it?
I’m halfway through. It is extremely similar in style and substance to the original series. Dale’s new voice actor is distractingly different, though. They didn’t find a good match like with the Rick and Morty recast.
I haven’t watched it yet so I can’t comment on how Dale’s voice sounds but they have Toby Huss voicing him now, which I think is a good move. Huss voiced Cotton Hill and Kahn Souphanousinphone in the series previously.
So Dale’s voice sounded like Dale in episodes 9 and 10. I figured that those were the only two recorded by Johnny Hardwick before he died. But everything seems to be saying that the early episodes that sounded nothing like Dale were from Hardwick and the ones that sounded like Dale were from Huss. And Kahn was in only one episode but he sounded nothing like Kahn.
So to summarize, Dale didn’t sound like Dale but Kahn sounded like Dale but Kahn didn’t sound like Kahn
The Dale voice is different, but exposure to it allows me to get used to it. The Kahn voice was pretty jarring; Ronny Chieng voiced him in the series and didn’t make any real attempt to speak like Toby Huss did on the original series. He appeared to just be using his regular voice.
There’s been a couple of fun callbacks to the original series; a particularly sweet moment was Connie and Bobby doing karaoke of “How Do I Live” and flashing back to the middle school dance when Bobby had gout.
Another note: episode 7 features a guest appearance by Micah Parsons. The timing for this is hilarious given the huge pissing contest he and Jerry Jones are having at the moment.
Given the ending of that episode, maybe I shouldn’t use a different term than “pissing contest”…
I haven’t watched a KotH episode in years, and Dale’s voice immediately struck me as being wrong. It was like hearing Dr. Hibbert speak after not watching The Simpsons for a number of years.
Connie turned out to be a disappointing character in the reboot.
I was surprised by the (very brief) appearance of Junchiro.
Oh, Kahn didn’t sound like Kahn because Kahn wasn’t Kahn, Kahn was only Dale (who sounded like Dale, while Dale didn’t sound like Dale). Got it.
Brings new light to Bobby complaining that Mel Blanc wouldn’t have been able to voice Speedy Gonzales today.
I’ve only seen the first two episodes but noticed a Tom Petty song in the second one. And I was amused by Hank’s discomfort with the changes in America since he last lived here, versus his nostalgia for life in the Aramco compound.
I just finished it and really liked it. The complaints I have are fairly minor and easily ignored. Dale’s voice got to me. It was jarring at the beginning when it would flip back and forth between the two actors, but even when it was all Toby Huss, I didn’t care for it. Having said that, I think if it was only Toby, from the beginning of the season, I may not have noticed. I’m not familiar enough with the actors, that any talk of new ones and I would’ve assumed they were referring to John Redcorn. Besides, the actors are all 15 years older too and Dale smokes a lot, so him sounding different makes sense, both for the character and the actor.
They other thing that bugged me was the it seemed like Peggy really ramped up her competitiveness. I haven’t watched King Of The Hill since the original run, but I don’t remember her being quite that intense. It also really bugged me that she went on and on and on about his narrow urethra to an airplane full of people, with him actively telling her to knock it off but then she got angry when he told that couple about a few very minor and very common post-pregnancy issues that she had. Yes, they mentioned it on youtube, but that chances of one of their viewers knowing her are pretty slim.
I can kinda fanwank that by saying she was mad that he opened up to a random stranger instead of her (even if it wasn’t his story, he still doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff in public) and she was more embarrassed than anything, but if that’s the case, I would’ve liked a short, matter-of-fact 'and Hank, I’m sorry I told that airplane full of people about you’re narrow urethra, I shouldn’t have done that".
I’m sure I’ll have other thoughts as I digest it, but I liked it and I’m excited for another season, which I assume is probably a year away.
And for anyone that likes breakdown/review videos. Johnny 2 Cellos, who does a lot of great videos on a lot of other shows as well, is doing a video for each episode and releasing them every few days. As of know, he’s up to the fourth episode and a non-spoiler season review.
Same. The smoother animation also took some getting used to.
Hank liking soccer was … well, it was quite the thing. In a way his journey mirrors mine, in that he went from hating it to loving it once he (and I) actually looked at the sport with an open mind. I hope they do more with this in S15.
I’m not sure how I feel about the whole will-they-or-won’t-they thing with Bobby and Connie. Truthfully, I wish they would just be friends. I also hope that, in S15, they expand on Bobby’s culinary journey - maybe he’ll win a local award or appear on a reality-TV chef competition or something.
I’d like to see Bobby have to resort to kicking people in the testicles again. That was one of the funniest episodes of the entire original series.
You remind me of another disappointment. There was a reference to him kicking people in the balls, obliquely. But I wanted him to scream “I don’t know you! That’s my purse!”
Did they mention Boomhauer being a Texas Ranger?
Did you catch the reference to that? At least within the King Of The Hill world, that still happened.
If you missed it, though I’m assuming you didn’t, when Peggy had finally got an MRI the doctor mentioned to Bobby that she has scaring in her groin area as if she was kicked by a 12 year old, to which Bobby says ‘you can tell it was a 12 year old?’.