What have they done to my KotH, ma? (2/13, maybe earlier)

Cafe Society
1

So I sit down last night to watch the 2/13 King of the Hill episode (IIRC called “the Petriot Act”- Hank and Bill both pet sit for US troops in Iraq, a high-priced vet tries to gouge Hank). While the generic plot of “professional gouging Hank til he fights back” has been used before (house mold episode, front yard archaeology dig, etc…) that didn’t really bother me, nor did the sub-standard humor. What bugged me was the animation- they’ve totally gone on-the-cheap now. I thought it was my Tivo acting up but it appears that they now have the animation done by comupters instead of by hand, giving the episode the same low-quality appearance as a SNL Robert Smeigel “TV Funhouse” cartoon. When a character on the show isn’t talking or doing something that’s the focal point of the scene, they’re now frozen which gives them a really creepy and unnatural look. When they’re all in the alley, one person will talk and move while everyone else has rigor mortis, then they’ll freeze and the next person will come out of suspended animation long enough to deliver their lines.

Was I the only one who noticed this? Has it been going on for a while now? Maybe I’m Jimmy Wichart in the head, but this really lowers my enjoyment of the show and I can’t find anyone anywhere who seems to have even noticed the change. I actually like KotH’s low-budget look and feel but only up to a certain point and this was past it.

2

I thought the colors were brighter and a little less subtle than in the reruns I’ve been watching on F/X, but I didn’t notice anything different in the animation itself.

3

I haven’t seen KotH for quite a while, but I caught this week’s. I noticed the same thing - everything looked very pixelated. I agree that it was distracting and sloppy.

4

At first I thought it was pixellated too, which is why I thought it may have been my Tivo acting ornery. But then I noticed the characters only move when they’re talking syndrome and put it together. It was actually distracting and kinda painful to watch.

I should’ve mentioned that I actually like TV Funhouse but that’s for the low-brow humor and not the animation, which I thought was supposed to be intentionally cheesy. And apparently it’s spelled Jimmy Wichard or Witchard.
[sub]DALE: “You told Bobby to listen to Jimmy Witchard? He was in my gun club. People say he fried his brain one day staring at the sun. 'Course, he couldn’t have been to smart to do that in the first place. Kind of a chicken-egg thing.”[/sub]