King of the hill (animated series)

In early 1995, following the success of Beavis and Butthead on MTV , Mike Judge co-created The King of the Hill with The Simpsons screenwriter Greg Daniels ^[3] . Judge took the idea of ​​Arlen from his own life: he lived in the city of Garland , a suburb of Dallas ( Texas ) ^[4] . He had the idea of ​​new characters - colorful Americans, he began to write an experimental script. This script was put to work by Fox . A little later, Greg Daniels rewrote the script and created several key characters who did not appear in Judge's first project (including Luanne and Cotton), as well as some other ideas (for example, Dale Gribble's passion for conspiracy theories ) ^[5] .

First Successes

After its debut, the series brought huge success to the Fox channel and was recognized as one of the best television series in various publications, including Entertainment Weekly , Time and TV Guide ^[4] . For the 1997-1998 season, the series became one of the leading ones on the Fox channel ^[6] , acquired the highest transfer rating and almost surpassed The Simpsons ^[7] . In the fifth and sixth seasons, Mike Judge and Greg Daniels took a less active part in the creation of the show ^[5] . Ultimately, they focused on the show again, although Daniels paid more attention to other projects.

Reason for closure

During the show of the tenth season in 2005, a preliminary decision was made to cancel the series, however, the audience’s high rating of the series forced the channel’s management to postpone the decision ^[4] . Fox extended the series to season twelve, making it the second-longest animated television series after The Simpsons. ^[8] After downgrades, Fox eventually decided to remove the show from the air, motivating its decision by the need to allocate time for the spin-off of the Griffins series called The Cleveland Show . ABC also stated that it was interested in acquiring rights to the series, but in January 2009, ABC President Steve MacPherson noted that there are no plans to acquire rights to this animated series yet ^{[9] [10]} . On April 30, 2009, it was announced that Fox would do at least two more episodes to show the proper ending. ^[11] The fourteenth season of the show was forecasted in 2009-2010, but Fox later said there were no plans to continue filming ^[12] . On August 10, 2009, Fox announced that the latest episode would be aired on September 13, 2009. ^{[13] [14]}

The main characters of the cartoon

"King of the Hill" tells the story of an ordinary middle-class family living in a typically American town. The plots in the series touch on contemporary topics, such as the relationship of fathers and children, friendship, loyalty and justice. A distinctive feature of the series is a comic display of Americans' views on life and the rules by which they live.

Ashley Gardner, Brittany Murphy , Toby Hass, Pamela Edlon , Lauren Tom, David Herman, Brekin Meyer , Jonathan Joss and Tom Petty participated in the original character dubbing.

Numerous guest stars also participated in the series, including Troy Aykman , Brad Pitt , Danny Trejo , Heather Locklear , Sally Field , Johnny Depp , Chuck Manjone , Snoop Dogg , Kid Rock and Jason Bateman . In later seasons, Tom Petty joined as Lucky (Lucky, Lucky), guy / husband of Luanne.

The action of "King of the Hill" takes place in the fictional city of Arlen ( Texas ). In a 1995 interview before the show's debut, Judge described Arlene as “a city similar to Humble ", A suburb of Houston ^[15] . In a later interview, Judge noted that the Dallas suburbs - Richardson ^[16] had a special influence on Arlen's image. Arlen is literally 15 kilometers south of him, his full address is Arlen, Houston, TX 77078. Despite the fictitious terrain, the authors of the show sought to accurately display the surroundings and even went to the point that they traveled to Texas to explore the environment and write characters .

The series depicts Arlen's places such as Rainey Street, where the Hill family lives, and Strickland Propane , where Hank works. Also in the city there are places parodying well-known companies, for example, Megalomarket (Mega-Lo Mart, “Superdeep supermarket”), parodying large chain supermarkets , especially Wal-Mart and Kmart . Most of the children on the show go to Tom Landry High School (named after the former Dallas Cowboys team coach). It was mentioned at the beginning of the series that the school belongs to the Heimlich County School District (as labeled on school buses), but in the following seasons it changed to Arlene Independent School District. The mascot of the school is Longhorn (in honor of the American football team of the University of Texas at Longhorns). Also in Arlene there is a local club - “Nine Rivers Country Club”, but only Asian Americans are accepted there.

Strickland Propane is a fictitious corporation selling propane and propane equipment, as well as related products, in the animated series King of the Hill.

The creator and owner is Buck Strickland, headquartered at 135 Los Gatos Road, Arlen, Texas. The main employee of the company is Hank Hill, who has been awarded the title “Employee of the Month” 41 times in a row.

The company's motto is “Taste the meat, not the heat” (from the English - “Taste meat, not heat”, the film says “Taste of meat, not coal”), emphasizing the advantages of propane over coal in cooking meat. Hank himself says that “the propane has a softer heat, and it costs less,” although the family does not quite agree with him: in one episode, Peggy and Bobby secretly from Hank cook meat on charcoal with pleasure.

In Texas, Strickland Propane has five branches: in addition to the main, these are Strickland North, Strickland South, Strickland East, Strickland West. Little is known about them, except that Strickland North is located in the "coal district" ( English charcoal county ).

The main competitor of the corporation is Thatherton Fuels (from English - “Tatterton Fuel”), the creator and owner of which is MF Tatterton, a former employee of Strickland Propane. Their slogan is “We sell the heat ... with warmth” ( Eng. - “We sell heat ... with warmth”).

In the last episode of the second season - “Propane Boom” - another player appeared in the propane industry, the Mega-Lo Mart hypermarket, which sold propane cheaper than its competitors. This led to the closure of Strickland Propane (an economic phenomenon called the Wal-Mart Effect is being played out). However, due to an illiterate corporate policy regarding personnel (due to artificial management schemes typical for large corporations, gas was entrusted to the newcomer) Mega Lo Mart took off and after the repair stopped supplying propane, which allowed Strickland Propane to return to the propane business. In many episodes, there is a reference to the fact that Hank allegedly blew up the Mega-Lo Mart. After the incident in the hypermarket, Hank appears to have "propanophobia."

Corporate Staff