King of the Hill has at least two Halloween episodes, and I'm writing about the one that doesn't end up with a man going mad and being turned into sausages. The very first Halloween episode is from the series' second season called "Hilloween"
I'm going to kind of assume that most here would be knowing the show "King of the Hill" are reading this post, but some might be very curious. King of the Hill was a FOX Network animated sitcom series, that probably the tamest in how it is, minus that one thing I mentioned, it's a show that most of it's episodes are TV-PG , minus like one that hit TV-14. It plays things to a more grounded sense, and is very much a tactical difference to shows like "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy".
This episode is about Hank wanting Bobby, his son, to have a good Halloween like he did as a kid. It has a flashback of him and his friends as kids, with copyright safe "That's not really Peanuts, don't use us" music. At the store, Hank wants Bobby to have a scary costume and not a dalmatian. Bobby makes a good point that dogs can be scary. It's interesting how this episode will play into Hank's characterization of being very rigid on things, but also seems to be heavily focused on him wanting something you'd otherwise think he'd not be a fan of.
Next we meet the antagonist for the episode, Junie Harper. She's a very Christian woman who thinks witches are real and doesn't like Halloween because she feels it's a Satanic holiday. (jokes on her, that would be New Year's Eve) Luanne, Peggy and Hank's niece, is getting praised for being so smart when Junie asks baseline questions. She brings the information she got from Junie and brings it Hank and Peggy to address her concern. Hank dismisses it. She runs to Junie Harper and by this point Junie gets info that she's really interested in.
She finds out that the middle school that Bobby goes to is holding a haunted house for Halloween, that Hank is putting together. She makes the case that it should be stopped because she decides to use separation of church and state as a reason, since she says some might consider Halloween a religious holiday. It gets canceled, since Hank decides he's not going to change the whole thing. Bill's line is fun too.
There are some weak points to this episode. Hank does seem a little overtly mean to Luanne in this episode. Though some of it could be showing more of Hank's frustration because he's doing this Halloween stuff because he wants to make sure Bobby has a good one like he did. He wants to pass it down and is pretty annoyed that Junie Harper messed up his plans. Luanne from a point of view likes how Harper called her smart- having Hank caller her dumb is good contrast- that makes her feel good at passing information along. She also seems to be become more of someone who just ends up repeating things Harper said.
It's funny that Hank, normally heavily law abiding and orderly has decided to each Bobby how to egg and TP a house. It ties back to his memory flashback, and it's funny to see Bobby say it's wrong to his dad. The biggest mistake is that Hank decides to egg Junie Harper's house and she hears and decides to chase, running over and killing her cat too- and I think this set her off. "Get out of my house-- Exodus" is a funny line. (Good Kate Bush song too)
Bobby feels bad. Luanne talks to him and she gets to him as well. Anyway, she's been set off by her cat being killed -by herself- and she's gotten the city council to pass a curfew to cancel Halloween trick or treating and stuff. Bobby goes to Harper's Halleluiah house where she does stuff. Peggy finds out and gets mad at Luanne because of her "coming between her son and husband".
Hank decides to put on a costume and decides to defy the whole curfew and start staying "Trick or Treat". His friends, and even Luanne decide to join in. Also the club thing is trying to feel like they are joining a timeshare agreement, Bobby don't sign---noooo.
Hank shows up to get Bobby and it works when he does a fake organ thing and some fake eye thing and Bobby decides he'd rather be with his father rather than anything else.
The full basic premise of the episode is really a story where Hank just wants to share Halloween with his son and doesn't want anything to get in the way of that. Yeah, that's my view. The episode isn't going for a debate over Halloween. Hank (and Peggy) are Christians as well, so the show isn't going for that route of them being against Junie because of that. If anything, Junie is just a local agitator and even though she got the school thing canceled, she didn't go for the harder thing until she ran over cat after Hank and Bobby egged her house. If anything, that's Hank's fault on agitating her more. The episode doesn't really say Hank is right or Junie is right, because they both kind of do the wrong things in this episode. Luanne's part was kind of annoying, again Hank was kind of mean to her, but- at first she was more just saying stuff she got from Harper, Hank is free to celebrate Halloween -as Peggy said.
Bobby doesn't get to do much in this episode either. That's kind of a shame, he kind of drifts along with Luanne's plan and then decides he just wants to spend time with his father. I do find it interesting that he was going with a moral center, that ironically Hank and Peggy taught him, but Hank wants to nudge him out of it for Halloween. There's not much fun Peggy moments either, she kind of exists to be between Hank and Luanne. She also gets mad at Luanne when she feels the latter got in-between son and father. Luanne's turn around at the end was I don't know that was an ending. The episode goes out of the way to say that she's easily influenced and maybe Peggy yelling at her influenced her, but yeah that was a mess.
Sadly, not a overly strong story episode, but does have some funny moments and it's pretty interesting to see Hank that invested in Halloween and really just wanting to spend time with his son. There are some funny moments, Dale brings grade A funny in the small moments he's there, Peggy doesn't have much, neither does Bobby. Hank gets some funny liners in like "Get out of my House, Exodus" line. Luanne has some funny lines too. Bill doesn't show up much either, but liked his idea of making it a house of pancakes. (careful Bill)
That's it for now , tune in next time when someone tries to ban Thanksgiving because Turkey is evil.
