I’ve only seen that Christmas episode with the pretty dresses once and it was a while ago, but I remember it being pretty depressing. Is that the one you’re talking about, with the letter? If the “happy” ending is that he’s worth a Dear John letter, then…eh…I don’t see that as all that uplifting.
There was also the one where he thinks he was part of a military experiment and that’s why he’s so fat and bald and pathetic, and then he realizes that no, it’s just him.
And then there was that Christmas one where he played Santa for the kids and everyone loved him so he kept doing it after the point where it got creepy.
Peggy’s a kind of both, but she leans towards the arrogant moron side a bit too much for me; enough so that she’s my least favorite character one the show. Although, when we meet the Manger Babies, she has the best exchange with Bobby.
Bobby: So if dad’s God, that must make me Jesus!
Peggy: Bobby no! That’s for Luanne to decide.
As for Bill, he’s so pitiful that I can’t help but like him. He doesn’t have the best episodes (Dale and Bobby IMO), but I always enjoy them a lot.
Lot of Peggy hate here. Let me peg a few glimmers of hope.
-She’s the only one on her block who didn’t know Nancy was cheating on Dale, you can call that utterly moronic but when she catches them together John Redcorn says later “What kind of game is she playing?”, even Nancy admits, “Peggy just sort of sees the best in people.”
-She puts up with Cotton.
-She’s dominant in a way that Hank isn’t when it matters, cite Luanne’s trashy mother.
-She loves to teach and her reward is often self-effacing. As just about all teaching is.
-She verbally bitchslapped the pretentious self absorbed soccer moms, who on gods green earth hasn’t wanted to do that?
-She singlehandedly stood up for womans rights at the local Renaissance Fair and brought a lawsuit on an ass who badly needed it.
There are plenty more…seriously…no love?
Peggy’s mch more complicated than most here would admit, I guess. The thing is, she’s been caled, and probably is, the smartest person is Arlen (granted, that’s a shallow pool, but still). Her issue is that while she is very smart she’s also intellectually lazy and doesn’t apply herself very much. Her insecurity and her laziness are two seperate major issues. She probably could learn better Spanish - but she’s taken the idea that she’s so much smarter than everyone else to mean she doesn’t have to. This also comes back to bite her because when she really wants something, she can easily persuade herself she deserves it.
That said, she watches out for others, too (except Cotton Hill, but I have a hard time imagining Saint Francis of Assisi caring for Cotton Hill). She genuinely doesn’t mean to hurt others. But again, she’s intellectually lazy and often won’t look outside of what she thinks they ought to have, do, or want.
This is kind of an interesting contrast to Hank, of course, since his major faults are pretty minor, but basically come down to very small comfort zone of prescribed interactions and not wanting to step out of it. Of course, this makes sense if you think of him as having the really major insecurity issues, and given Cotton HIll’s parenting, I don’t think anybody can blame him.
I’ve only seen the first and second seasons. I thought she was definitely a good person who wanted to help people but had self-esteem issues back then. Sounds like she got more cartoony and annoying as the series went on?
One of my favorite exchanges (paraphrased) from the first (I think) season:
Hank: I … can’t … shoot! (pause) Peggy: I … (gulp) … I still love you.
Cotton: This was supposed to happen to you. You’re worthless. You’re not even good enough to be married to my worthless nothing of a loser son.
Peggy: Enough! Your son has always loved you despite your constant torture. You want to die alone? Fine. You want to keep coming back and never die? That’s fine, too. In fact, I hope you do go on living forever as the unhappy person you are in the hell you have created here on Earth. I hope you live forever. I really do.
I still love that her motivation to walk again after she fell out of the plane was that Cotton told her she could dance on his grave.
Despite her competitiveness and some of her more shallow moments, I think she’s a good mom. Bobby’s a great kid with a lot of self-confidence, and that’s primarily because of Peggy. In the episode where she finds out that she’s been unknowingly posing for a foot fetish website, Bobby has a great line.
Bobby: I’m fat
Peggy: Oh no, you’re husky.
Bobby: It’s okay! I don’t feel bad about it because you never made me feel bad about it.
She gets Bobby when Hank won’t or can’t. And she always did her best to protect and encourage Luann (though some would argue her bid to make sure she didn’t marry Lucky was a dick move).
As annoying as Peggy can be, I definitely agree she’s a great mother, probably the best in the series. (Minh is much to strict, Nancy is too concerned with John Redcorn or her career, Hank’s mom is a pushover when it came to Cotton’s treatment of Hank, and Peggy’s own mom is a bitch frankly.) She’s a great surrogate mother to Luanne up until she meets Lucky (sabotaging Lucky’s GED studies was IMO the worst thing she does on the show), but after they’re married, she’s goes back to being good for her.
I hate Peggy. If there was anyone on the show I wish would have died, it was her. I liked KOTH a lot but started to waver towards the end and missed a lot of the final 2 or 3 seasons. I can trace my Peggy hate to 3 instances:
The first was during an episode for Bobby’s birthday. Peggy made a big deal that she brought him his cake for 12 straight years and was disappointed she wouldn’t get to any more. At the end of the episode, through some wacky situations, she brought him his cake in the middle of the street beneath a light pole that Dale’s bug truck hit. Her hooting and hollering was extremely annoying given the emphasis she placed on it.
The second instance was during a boggle tournament or something else. Luanne had made a comment, after hearing Peggy talk about either boggle or teaching, saying “Hey! Maybe I can play boggle/teach too!” And Peggy laughed in her face! God I wanted to punch a hole through those glasses.
And the last was the thanksgiving episode with the stolen turkey. She was jealous her own son cooked better than her and stole the turkey to share with her hairdresser. After that episode, no more giving her a pass.
It sucked though how the only time she gets called on it, she’s right. Probably reinforced her opinion of herself some more. I can just imagine her typing away another one of her stupid columns
There’s the one where he dressed like Santa for months because some woman enjoyed how he brought some fun into her and her son’s life during Christmas. Then the one where he uses all of his vacation and sick days to join a traveling singing show. And the one where he lets some punk teenager steal from him because he pretends that Bill was the father figure he needed in his life.
Not to mention the offhand comments/situations in other episodes about Hank needing to stay over at Bill’s house during holidays to prevent him from killing himself, when he took Peggy’s body cast and pretended she was married to him, closing the blinds and crying, and telling Bobby to do anything to win back his love or else he’ll reget it for the rest of his life. It’s sort of how Moe from the Simpsons went from a grouchy bartender to a suicidal depressed maniac
Yeah I know there’s a lot of episodes where we see Bill’s pathetic life, but I never got the sense that they were cruel “Laugh at the loser! LAUGH!” episodes.
Sure, the episode when Peggy inadvertently kidnaps the little Mexican girl was annoying, but there was so much hilarity in her getting off the hook because of her Spanish language inadequacy. I also like that she’s good at Boggle. My answer is she’s an arrogant, do-gooder moron, with some insecurity interspersed.
There was at least one instance of Bill not being a loser; Peggy was employed as some pyramid scheme and got Bill to work for her, he got a ton of clients and made her a lot of money. She’d wanted to get an award or go to some meeting somewhere. So he was good at something.
Yeah, but there have been quite a few episodes where Bill steps up and drops the loser schtick. There’s the time he takes on the doctor who told him he’d wind up in a wheelchair. The flashbacks to him taking on a whole bar full of punks to save Hank. The Ann Richards episode. The one where he thinks he’s been experimented on - sure, part of the joke is how badly he turned out, but when he has to bluff their way, in a tank, out of getting arrested, he makes good.
He’s loyal. He’s kind to Bobby. Bill is a good man with serious depression problems.
There was also the episode where he returned to his high school football team to retake his touchdown record after it was broken in a fraudulent matter (a hotshot kid had tied his record, then allowed to score a ceremonial touchdown to break the record after he broke his leg). Bill was seen as a loser by the rest of the team, but he did power his way in to score that one touchdown.
He was also classy enough not to try to score any more after that, pointing out that the kid had tied his record legitimately.
All in all, it was a pretty good episode for Bill.