If it wasn’t animated Bobby would now be about 18 years old, instead of being a permanently pre-pubescent 13 year old. The animation allows the time and place to remain constant and they don’t have to readapt the story lines to match the aging of a child actor.
The show ain’t a satire, it’s a family sitcom in animation form…which seems to result in confusion in people expecting the show to a satire along the same lines as The Simpsons or Family Guy just because it is on Fox.
I, and all of my California-dwelling friends, love it, so I guess that’s one more hole in kmg365’s theory. I can’t speak for the state as a whole, but it’s on TV pretty often, so there must be a big audience for it out 'round here. It doesn’t take some sort of Secret Illuminated Heartland Knowledge to get the jokes. KotH works because the characters are realistic and three-dimensional. I can recognize myself and people I know in these characters, and that makes what happens to them compelling.
That’s like saying, “It should be a book, as nothing happens that particularly lends itself to being a TV show.” Animation is a medium, same as paint, prose, or poetry, and doesn’t need to justify its application to any particular storyline.
Besides which, there are huge advantages to working in animation as opposed to live action. If it were live-action, Bobby would be pushing twenty by now. If one of the voice-actors quits (ala David Caruso in NYPD Blue) or dies unexpectedly (John Ritter), they can hire a sound-alike without disrupting the show’s continuity. Like most sit-coms, a live KotH would be restricted to fewer than a half-dozen sets, tops, where as animation allows each episode to take place in an entirely new locale, if the writers so desire. Animation frees the director from the physical constraints of a camera. If he wants to have the show take place under-water, he doesn’t have to rent a bunch of scuba gear, experienced divers, and an expensive water-proof camera. He just draws the characters underwater. This also enables much more complicated shots than would be feasible for a similarly funded sit-com. The director has absolute control over what goes into a shot. He doesn’t have to worry about camera reflections in mirrors, boom-mikes in shots, or people in the background waving “Hi” at the camera. It allows actions scenes that would be either impossible or prohibitively expensive to film. I recall one episode where Dale got in a fist-fight with an ostrich. A live action show would have to shoot it as a combination of trick-photography and puppetry. KotH had a full-body shot of the ostrich beating the crap out of Dale. There’s no way a regular sit-com could have gotten that shot: they would have had to use deceptive camera angles, puppetry, and some heavy editing to put the scene together, and the end-result would have suffered considerably.
I think the real question isn’t, “Why is King of the Hill animated?” it’s “Why isn’t everything animated?”
Are we, perhaps, on our way to theorizing that Easterners who refer to KOTH as a show about trailer trash are “snooty East Coasters”, and that, since none of the East Coast respondents in this discussion have so characterized the show, they cannot be regarded as “snooty”?
We’re in Houston. We think KOTH is a documentary, 'cept in primary colors and without an anchorperson.
(I borrowed Boomhauer this week, when a piece of paper went missing temporarily. I returned it to the owner, saying, “Dang ol’ paper clips, man–dang ol’ mumble mumble hangin’ offa the edge of th’ desk, man.”)
I love KOTH. And I’m a suburban gal from the Pittsburgh area who loves the city.
I like how it’s NON stereotyped, for the most part-it would be so easy for Hank to be a gun-totin’ Bible basher or whatever, but I think it’s just that the characters are so freaking NORMAL that makes it so much fun.
My all time favorite episode is the one where Renee Zellweger plays a prostitute and turns Hank into her pimp.
“I am the Mack Daddy of Heimlich County yo!”
Peggy Hill holds the record for falling out of an airplane and living. You can’t do that in a live action show.
I love KOTH, but as another person pointed out, it is a sitcom made into cartoon form. The humor is eccentric, southern and off the wall. I am sure KOTH is watched a lot more in rural communities than urban ones.
ET
That’s not really true. But in any case, that’s not my particular point. I enjoy animated programs if the animation is good, if it uses its unique artform in an effective way. What you listed were really excuses to not make it live, as opposed to good reasons to make it animated.
Simpsons and Family Guy use fantastical exaggeration, in both motion and ideas, as part of the hook of their shows. Futurama, of course, is the same but has the addition of being SF. These shows are also fast paced and have wide ranges of locations, most of which cost around the same to draw no matter where they are (though that’s not always the case, esp with Futurama).
But live sitcoms are limited - they deliberately set most sitcoms in about four or five main locations every week because of budget constraints.
Having said that, I don’t watch King of the Hill so I’m not sure how they go with locations, but I’m fairly sure there’s no exaggeration or fantastical situations in it, it’s normally just a bunch of redneck idiots standing around drinking beer and talking bollocks. Which you can do just fine in a sitcom.
Age of characters and other arguments of that nature are a bit of a cop-out too, because any good writer can adapt to changes like that and make it work just as well.
Basically it seems to be a less crude “Married With Children” to me. And even that show went a bit surreal at times.
I’m from Texas, and the show definitely strikes home for me, with a couple of the characters:
Are you my brother? I can say the exact same thing about my father.
My mother is (well, was) a substitute teacher who enjoys flaunting her high-school level grasp of Spanish whenever the opportunity arises.
I went to high school with a guy who talks EXACTLY like Boomhaeur. Nary a day passed with him when he didn’t fire off some high-speed comment and everyone listening just kind of stared and nodded until finally someone asked, “What?”
I’m sure many MTV kids took to the show because of Mike Judge and Beavis & Butthead, that is the case with me and my West Coast urbanite friends. I honestly don’t think we missed any KoTH humor by not being Texan any more than we missed Seinfeld humor by not being New Yorkers. Both shows are driven by character interaction, Boomhauer is funny no matter what your background.
Tennessee checking in here…I don’t know about everyone else around here, but I find it amusing and like to watch it whenever I see it’s on. I’m not a hick at all, but I’ve dealt with many, which makes me appreciate the humor even more. Also, my last name is Hill, and acted almost exactly like Bobby when I was younger. Also also, my mother tends to act alot like Peggy, and looked strikingly similar when my mother was 30-ish and wore big glasses and didn’t straighten her hair.
Love it.
Well, I’m an Australian and I love the show. Course, I am pretty much the only person I know who likes it.
Absolutely love King of the Hill up here in the Frozen North.
I’ve been a Mike Judge fan ever since seeing Frog Baseball at one of Spike & Mike’s animation fests somewhere around '89 or so.
I have a hard time imagining that he’ll ever top King of Hill. I didn’t really like it when it started, but it really grew on me. The dialogue is as tight as a narrow urethra, and the underlying philosophy is as bright and pure as a propane flame.
I’ve never seen an episode I enjoyed.
Why do you view live-action TV as the standard and default medium? Animation isn’t a special effect used to overcome the limitation of live action TV. It’s simply an alternative medium. Some types of stories are easier to do in one than the other, but there is no right or wrong choice.
I think KOTH benefits from being animated because animated characters work better with extreme stereotypes. Live actors acting that way would get on our nerves (at least mine), but we have different standards for animated caricatures. The detachment from reality works well for many shows.
Well I think it is. Animation is a different medium with a different scope. From my experience, people who work in that medium concur with that opinion.
For all I know, there’s a perfectly good reason why King Of The Hill is animated rather than live-action, but I haven’t been able to spot it from my limited observation.
I like it, but mainly because I get to laugh at the stupid, ignorant American-types that show displays.
That’s a rather narrow view of art, isn’t it? Isn’t art about going beyond boundaries set by others? Maybe there reason is “We wanted to do a show in animation that had no real reason being animated.”
Reverse: If you enjoy laughing at stupid, ignorant American-types, you must really get a kick out of our news.
I’m in Texas, and I love the show. I feel bad for the people who can’t appreciate it, honestly. What sad, empty, propaneless lives they must lead.
King of the Hill is better than and has almost always been better than The Simpsons. (I’m from Minnesota. Several of my friends here enjoy the show.)
Ok, I’ve said my bit. Now burn me at the stake.
Someone up there said:
The show ain’t a satire
Jen says: It’s as much a satire as the other Fox animated shows, but it’s much more subtle. The characters make fun of themselves and their ways they live in the way they act and interact.
I think it’s animated because Mike Judge does most of the voices. It just wouldn’t be the same to me if it were live-action. Malcolm in the Middle is the only non-animated show I’ve seen lately that I’d call good. The others are so canned and phoney to me, with the pauses for the laugh track, and the overdone jokes.