King of the Hill is one of the most beloved shows in television history. A show that never went over the top, never lost it’s believability, and built characters that had a shelf life long before the initial run of the series. While many shows (looking in your direction, Simpsons) lost their way after obliterating every plot twist and premise possible, King of the Hill never felt out of place. It was always that cozy blanket or perfectly worn in shirt in the form of a Sunday night animated show.
The sophmore effort of legendary writer/producer Mike Judge, KOTH feels completely different than his first show, Beavis and Butthead. Even as different though as the shows felt, they felt like they existed in the same time and place. Judge tends to keep the shows he makes as slightly askew versions of the world he grew up in and lives in. Tom Anderson from Beavis and Butthead could very easily by Hank Hill’s actual father. Dale Gribble is what happened when you gave Beavis the internet.
What made King of the Hill special, though, is how relatable the characters are. Everyone has a family member that is Hank. Rigid, but someone you could always depend on. Everyone has a Peggy, a well meaning person who gets out over their skis on their own intelligence and standing. Everyone grew up with a slick, cologne drenched friend like Boomhauer. We all have a Bill Dauterive in our lives. Every one of us has chased the acceptance that Bobby craves from his dad. It all felt like it made sense because the characters in KOTH felt like actual members of our families.
Put in sports terms, King of the Hill was Edgar Martinez. Many of us remember those mid 90’s Seattle Mariners teams. All of those players felt like a part of the Sunday night FOX animation lineup. Ken Griffey Jr was the Simpsons. He, like the show, was the G.O.A.T. Alex Rodriguez was Futurama. On the same level as Griffey, but everyone just got kind of sick of it, then it would never stay away. It just kept coming back. Randy Johnson was Family Guy. Wild, out of control, in your face, but at it’s best, was the absolute most dominant thing happening. Then there was Edgar Martinez. He was just there, in the middle of the Mariners lineup everyday for nearly two decades. He was often overshadowed by the bigger stars on his team, but to those that understand, he was one of the truly underrated players of his generation. Martinez has the 22nd best on base percentage in the history of Major League Baseball, and there are only three people ahead of him that played after Jackie Robinson integrated the game (Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Frank Thomas). King of the Hill did 259 episodes without ever being considered to be the best show on it’s own channel on that day. But it would later be named one of the best 100 television shows of all time. It’s reboot will shoot it past shows like Cheers. It has already existed longer than Friends, The Jeffersons, and Happy Days.
I say all of that to say this: King of the Hill never got the respect it deserved during it’s original run. It’s a testament to the staying power the show has had on streaming and in syndication that it’s going to get a new season. And in honor of that new season, debuting August 9th on Hulu, I am ranking every episode from worst to best. Let me know what your favorite episode is in the comments.
259: Season 13, Episode 23: When Lori Met Joseph
When I started thinking about this project, I found it to be nearly impossibly difficult to come up with a favorite episode, or even a top 50 that I felt comfortable with. But I knew immediately when I started, which episode was going to go down as the worst. It didn’t even get a first run episode on Fox. It aired for the first time in syndication, which means this episode debuted as a rerun. This episode aired after the final episode later (more on this much later on in the list) and it could very easily be one of those forgotten episodes that never really needed to exist.
The premise of the episode is that Dale can’t handle the idea that his “son” Joseph is growing up and getting into girls. This leads to Dale ending up in a mental hospital (they did this premise, much better, several seasons earlier). They do a whole thing about the person who owns the Mental Institution having no formal training, and then Hank has to figure out how to get Dale out.
Many shows have a similar issue to this episode, where they see the finish line, and they are just trying to drag their legs, one ahead of the other, to get to the end. This doesn’t feel like an episode as much as a white flag being waved.
258: Season 12, Episode 1: The Suite Smell of Excess
This episode bothers me for both canonical and sports reasons. The episode portrays Hank and the guys as huge sports fans, which is canon to the entire history of the show. Then they portray Peggy as a psychotic sports fan who will rip through the furniture for University of Texas football, which is absolutely not canon. Outside of softball, Peggy doesn’t show an overwhelming inclination towards sports.
Second, the entire premise to the ending crescendo of the episode is so flawed in sports parlance, that it continues to make me angry to this day. The short version, for those that don’t remember: Everyone sneaks into the suite of former Nebraska legend Jake Middleton. The head coach of Nebraska gets hurt, the assistant coach calls the suite that they are in, Hank gives intentionally bad advice, but due to a series of on field questionability, Nebraska wins.
The level at which you have to sustain disbelief to even find this remotely possible is on some real Simpsons season 25 bad. It feels like they really wanted to do an episode where they try to give Bobby and Hank a connection, but it just doesn’t work.
The episode is also a testament to the seemingly endless heel/face turns of Peggy throughout the show.
Best lines from the episode: Nebraska Assistant Coach: “I need to know what to do. The fans will kill me. And they’ll do it with tractors and farm machinery.”
257: Season 9, Episode 6: The Petriot Act
Hank thinks he is temporarily adopting a dog for an armed forces member. He gets a cat instead. Hijinks ensue. I was honestly stunned to find this was a season nine premise, and not somewhere buried in the middle of season 13, because it feels very “we are out of ideas.” I hate cats. I had a cat. I hated that cat. It would suck on my shirt thinking it was my nipple. Even so, I wouldn’t portray a cat as such a dick. At least it was a good episode for Bill, who got a date and flew in a fighter jet. Both things happened relatively infrequently on the show.
256: Season 12, Episode 22, Life: A Loser’s Manual
Luanne’s father had been referred to a couple times, notably during much more highly rated episodes “Texas City Twister” and the first Thanksgiving episode. It didn’t feel necessary to have to flesh out the character, especially because, canonically, the timelines didn’t make sense. Now, obviously there is a wide range of writers who had taken turns developing the characters in between point A and point B, but it seems like it would have been easier enough to just adjust the dialogue in this episode.
Even beyond that, though, the episode just isn’t very good. It plays on Lucky’s well intentioned naivety to an unlikable level due to the way Lucky had been built up over the previous seasons.
255: Season 13, Episode 16: Bad News Bill
While I do agree with the early premise of there just being too many little league baseball leagues, the episode just craters into making Bill run so counter to his allegiance to Hank, that it just doesn’t actually make sense. Then again, having Bill, who didn’t have a child in the league, having that kind of leadership role he did, didn’t make any sense, either.
254: Season 11, Episode 2: SERpunt
Some of these episodes are just rough to write to the point where I get depressed because i’m so far away from getting to write about the good episodes. Anyway, Lucky gifts Bobby a snake, the snake goes into the sewer system. Chaos ensues.
This is functionally a dollar store version of the episode of the Simpsons when they had to start a Bear patrol after a bear wandered through the neighborhood. Watch that instead.
253: Season 12, Episode 9: Dream Weaver
Dale Gribble is arguably the most memorable character on the show for any number of legitimate reasons. Being a massive fan of basket weaving is not one of them. Additionally, he has booby trapped his house, successfully pulled off blowing up Hank’s shed multiple times, and has shown he is able to build traps out of things he found in the forest. I find it hard to believe he was unable to weave a basket.
Also, if you have ever been forklift certified, you know that it’s a lot easier to seriously injure someone than this episode made it look. Real FLC homies know what i’m talking about it.
252: Season 10, Episode 5: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clown
I mean, good on them getting one of my favorite comedians growing up, Paul F Thompkins, some voice acting work. And i’m sure there is some kind of impetus for what motivated this story. If feels less vague and pulled out of thin air than some of these episodes. That said, Bobby has at least a certain level of self awareness and while he loved comedy, this really has “Shane Gillis doing old Jay Leno Monologues for his sets” vibes to it. Like, yea, I suppose it could happen, but for a show grounded in reality, this feels like it wouldn’t have worked. Bobby never aspired to be Tartuf the Spry Wonder Dog. Even Hank, the person most anti-comedy on the show, knew that.
251: Season 2, Episode 12: Meet the Manger Babies
This episode got put here for two reasons: The Manger Babies became an ever more tiresome crutch in later years after being introduced here. Second, the whole Troy Aikman being there hurt my brain. So let me get this straight, timeline wise:
The Manger Babies are set to air opposite the Super Bowl on public access television.
Hank forgoes playing god to watch the Super Bowl.
During the Super Bowl, Peggy keeps using a universal remote to mess with the television.
Hank takes this as a sign and goes to the studio to portray god in the episode.
The episode is, again, airing DURING the Super Bowl.
Troy Aikman shows up.
Troy Aikman says he was in the locker room, playing grab ass with the other players, or something, and went to church to get some perspective.
Troy Aikman makes it to the church to see at least part of the puppet show.
And somehow, the thing that bothers me most about this timeframe bukkake is that the episode implies the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl. They played in the Super Bowl two week’s into KOTH’s Season 1, and then never ever returned. Yes, I know that it takes a long time to make these episodes and that it would have made practical sense to have the winning team be the Cowboys due to both them being the local team on the show and the defending champions. I don’t care.
From now on, as long as the Cowboys don’t make the Super Bowl, i’m calling it the King of the Hill Aikman Curse.
250: Season 3, Episode 3: Peggy’s Headache
They did this exact same episode better in a later season when Peggy would, once again, get hired on to write for a newspaper. But that time, she just tried to get the entire town killed with mustard gas. This time, she tried to out John Redcorn and Nancy Gribble’s affair, something that would have actually altered the entire timeline of this show.
Like, this episode is not good, thus the poor ranking. But it does pose an interesting alternate timeline if they do the end of the episode differently. What if Mike Judge and the writers decide they want to explore the character of Dale as a divorced father. What if they want to build a character arc more closely around John Redcorn and Dale’s/John’s son Joseph? There are numerous episodes that use the Redcorn/Joseph situation as a side quest, but rarely do they actually bring it to the forefront of the show, and when they do, they don’t necessarily do it with much tact, with John Redcorn often coming off either completely aloof to the situation or pushy and overbearing on the topic, with little to no middle ground over the course of 13 seasons.
249: Season 11, Episode 10: Hair Today, Gone Today
This episode was so bland, the only thing I remember is “Nancy started losing her hair because she stopped having sex with John Redcorn.”
248: Season 6, Episode 12: Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret Hill
Peggy Hill pretends to be a nun to get a teaching job and avoid having to work with Hank. Pretty sure that Peggy is going to hell for that. The only redeeming quality of the show is the two second spot gag with Hank explaining the pen situation at Strickland Propane to Peggy, only to have Buck enter the room right after and ask Hank if he told her about the pens.
247: Season 6, Episode 5: Father of the Bribe
Kahn doesn’t like Bobby dating Kahn Jr. Kahn bribes Bobby. This entire “Kahn bribing Bobby” thing worked a lot better when it wasn’t using the lazy narrative of overbearing school administrators to be the throughline of an episode.
246: Season 13, Episode 23: The Honeymooners
I’m probably being a little bit hard on this episode, but it underlines a problem I have with how Hank was portrayed for the entire show. He treats his mom as if she is a grown infant, in a constant state during the entirety of the show of checking on her to the point of babysitting (with him actually babysitting her and her friends in a different episode). That is pretty much the entirety of this episode.
Here is the thing, though. Hank’s mom isn’t written as dumb unless they are shoehorning stuff into this episode to make it seem like it. She was strong enough to escape her marriage to Cotton Hill. She lived independently for the entirety of the show. She kept on relationships, including two different ones over the course of the show. At no point during the show was she portrayed as someone who could not handle the idea of living independently, or as even someone deserving of the narrative this episode tied a bow on during one of it’s final episodes.
245: Season 13, Episode 19: The Boy Can’t Help It
To it’s credit, this episode does show a level of emotional growth with Bobby and was a precursor to the final episode. That’s kind of the only thing going for the episode. Otherwise, it’s basically just Hank having trouble with gender stereotypes, which the show does much better in episodes further down the list.
244: Season 5, Episode 20: Kidney Boy and Hamster Girl
For most hardcore Simpsons fans, the endpoint to the show’s glory days was the Armin Tanzarian episode. I didn’t, because that episode had the brilliant exchange:
Armin: This is Armin’s apartment. Armin’s liquor. Armin’s copy of Swank. Armin’s frozen peas.
Homer: Can I see your copy of Swank, Armin?
Armin: Yes, you can.
There is a rule of threes thing in comedy that they blew past by adding the frozen peas, but it was absolutely delightful that they did.
Anyway, the reason I mention it is because I am not one of the people that thinks this is the derailment point. I point further down the line a couple seasons, when Bart was able to secede from his parents and got his own apartment and Tony Hawk and Blink 182 showed up. That’s what this episode felt like. Oh, No Doubt is here?? That’s adorable. The difference is, I still watched every other episode of King of the Hill because they stopped the initial run around 125 episodes after this, instead of The Simpsons, which is barreling in on episode 700 SINCE that moment. Sorry KOTH and No Doubt fans. The episode Venn Diagram sways a little too close together.
Note: At this point, we are just gonna blow through a bunch of bad Peggy related episodes, rapid fire style.
243: Season 5, Episode 4: Spin the Choice
Peggy creates a dumb Thanksgiving related game.
242: Season 3, Episode 6: Peggy’s Pageant Fever
Peggy thinks she can win a beauty pageant to win a truck.
241: Season 7, Episode 8: Full Metal Dust Jacket
Peggy thinks she can get into a book club by buying a book store.
240: Season 4, Episode 11: Old Glory
Peggy thinks she can write a school essay for Bobby.
239: Season 8, Episode 5: Flirting with the Master
Peggy thinks a latin television star is into her.
238: Season 10, Episode 2: Bystand Me
Peggy thinks she can make up a cleaning solution and nearly poisons the town.
237: Season 13, Episode 17: Manger Baby Einstein
John Redcorn has pivoted from New Age healer to band frontman to casino owner to children’s musician to sleazy promoter. Or maybe he isn’t sleazy and is just realistic. Either way, my long standing hatred of the Manger Babies is gonna go ahead and throw this one towards the back of the line. Lucky Kleinschmidt deserved better.
236: Season 6, Episode 6: I’m With Cupid
I feel like i’ve been unnecessarily tough on episodes involving Bill and children, but I think i’ve got some further down the list that were better. It’s just not a combination that seems to work. Bill is at his best when he is unloading his problems on the apathetic ears of Boomhauer and Dale, or the caring but ill-equipped-to-help Hank.
235: Season 8, Episode 10: That’s What She Said
I actually meant to put this closer the worst episode part of this list than it already is. Just an absolutely dreadful episode all around. I don’t want to write about it anymore. So I won’t.
234: Season 10, Episode 14: Hank’s Bully
I also meant to have this further into the worst episodes. I really should have trusted my first instinct more. This episode sucks out loud. Some kid in the neighborhood starts pestering Hank and he is the bad guy. I’d have punted the kid through his parent’s front door, but I guess Hank and I are just different that way.
233: Season 11, Episode 8: Grand Theft Arlen
Nothing that happened before or since leads me to believe that Hank would get involved in a video game, even if it did involve him. It felt like they had an idea for “Hank Hill Video Game” then just kind of worked backwards to Bobby being lazy to shoehorn everything together.
232: Season 12, Episode 7: Tears of an Inflatable Clown
Just pretend I put this in at the back of the list because this is arguably the worst episode, but by the time I got to Season 12 while building the initial list, I was just plugging episodes into whatever available spots I had left. This episode really doesn’t have any redeeming qualities.
231: Season 9, Episode 12: Smoking and the Bandit
Dale decides he is going to flout the new smoking ban in Arlen by becoming the Smoking Bandit to impress his son. It actually works. Then Hank figures out who it is and has to bail Dale out. It’s a…fine? Episode. We are slowly wading into the watchable episode territory, where the episode isn’t completely without merit, but the ending to the episode tends to fall flat.
230: Season 9, Episode 7: Enriqueciable Differences
Remember that episode where they really tried to make Enrique a thing? Yea, other than “I brought rebar!” I don’t, either.
229: Season 8, Episode 22: Talking Shop
Maybe I just really hated seasons 8 and 9 of the show, because this is third of eight consecutive episodes from those seasons i’ve ranked lowly. Again, not terrible, and the final couple minutes of the show is almost amusing. I might actually have been too tough on this episode because the through joke of the episode of Hank being excited, then disappointed by thinking Bobby was going to take auto shop is pretty entertaining. That said, as i’m writing this, it’s Wednesday, i’m supposed to have this go live on Friday, and i’ve still got 228 more of these writeups to go. Oh god. What was I thinking??
228: Season 9, Episode 8: Mutual of Omabwah
I distinctly remember liking the part of the episode where Luanne and Peggy are stuck at the rest stop along the highway and are using an old tree as a battering ram on the vending machine. But that’s the B story, and the A story to this episode is butt cheeks.
227: Season 9, Episode 2: Miss Wakefield
I actually got some blowback about ranking this episode here when I mentioned it to a buddy. He said this was a much better episode than I’m leading on, but I mainly remember this episode as the episode where Hank is considered the bad guy for not letting a random old lady die in his house. Dale trying to create a haunted bed and breakfast out of it is entertaining, but why is everyone in the episode mad at Hank? My house is 80 years old. If some random 90 year old who lived in my house as a kid just knocked on my door wanting to die in here, i’d probably spray them down with a fire extinguisher and lock them out.
226: Season 8, Episode 19: Stressed for Success
I had real trouble figuring out where to put this episode. It’s prety funny, but I can’t just keep jamming everything up the list. If I had thought my way through this, I would have just created tiers, and not listed everything in order. This would fall under the “funny, but ultimately flawed” tier list that I have in my head.
225: Season 4, Episode 17: Bill of Sales
So true story: Recently, someone was going door to door through our neighborhood trying to scam people into giving out their ComEd bill information so they could screw customers under the premise of “we will save you money on your bill” kind of stuff. The guy got our information. I won’t say who gave it to him, but there are only three people in the house, and it wasn’t me or my infant daughter.
224: Season 8, Episode 9: Ceci N’est Pas Une King of the Hill
I initially thought this was the flood episode, which isn’t great and also has a french episode title for some reason. Then I checked and yea, this episode is worse. It wasn’t even the art episode that I enjoyed where the one artist goes “this is the last Avant Garde art show Arlen will ever hold” and the cop goes “we’ll survive.”
223: Season 13, Episode 10, Master of Puppets
Who hasn’t played their parents against eachother at some point while growing up? That said, I don’t really need to see it on an episode.
222: Season 12, Episode 2: Bobby Rae
The entire side story of the teachers raising money for their Bahama’s teachers institute is really good. Bobby acting as a social leader for the school is a huge departure they would use several times in later seasons from his class clown mentality of the rest of the series. I feel like there is a good chance something like this actually happened and the writers thought, “ok, we’ll just do that.”
At this point, we are hitting a thoroughly mediocre stretch of episodes that really doesn’t merit much discussion, so here are a bunch of episodes simply ranked. I’ll jump in briefly if I have anything to add to them.
221: Season 3, Episode 2: And They Call It Bobby Love
220: Season 10, Episode 1: Hanks On Board
219: Season 7, Episode 3: Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Watcha Gonna Do
218: Season 1, Episode 12: Plastic White Female
217: Season 7, Episode 13: Queasy Rider
216: Season 8, Episode 8: Rich Hank, Poor Hank
215: Season 13, Episode 12: Uncool Customer
214: Season 10, Episode 13: The Texas Panhandler
213: Season 12, Episode 15: Behind Closed Doors
212: Season 10, Episode 15: Edumacating Lucky
211: Season 7, Episode 9: Pigmalion
210: Season 8, Episode 6: After the Mold Rush
209: Season 7, Episode 4: Goodbye Normal Jeans
208: Season 7, Episode 12: Vision Quest
207: Season 7, Episode 7: The Texas Skillsaw Massacre
206: Season 2, Episode 19: Leanne’s Saga
205: Season 2, Episode 1: How To Fire A Rifle Without Really Trying
204: Season 7, Episode 10: Megalo Dale
Top 100 episode if not for the mind bending climax that involves Chuck Mangione actually living at the Mega Lo Mart. That was a bit much. Rest of the episode was really good and deserved better.
203: Season 3, Episode 11: To Spank, With Love
202: Season 6, Episode 8: Joust Like a Woman
201: Season 10, Episode 6: Orange You Glad I Did Say Banana
200: Season 1, Episode 7: Westie Side Story
199: Season 2, Episode 14: I Remember Mono
198: Season 4, Episode 10: Hillenium
I’m going to be honest. This is not an episode that should be ranked this badly. When I did the original list, I found that I was missing one episode. When I went through to fix it, I thought i’d solved the problem, which was caused by the final four episodes of the show getting shown out of order and different websites listing these as different show numbers.
It turns out that wasn’t the only problem. I had actually double listed an episode. When I figured that out, this spot was available, and when I figured out the episode, I just dumped it here because I was too tired to fix things. Just pretend this is number 98, not number 198.
In my defense, roughly half of the top 10 is from season four. It’s one of the best seasons any show ever did. The showrunners that season were Greg Daniels, who would go on to do The Office, and Richard Appel, who had previously written “Bart After Dark,” one of the most underrated Simpsons episodes of all time. Which episode was it? It was this one:
197: Season 8, Episode 7: Livin’ on Reds, Vitamin C and Propane
196: Season 12, Episode 18: The Courtship of Joseph’s Father
195: Season 13, Episode 21: Just Another Manic Kahn-Day
194: Season 6, Episode 7: Torch Song Hillogy
193: Season 4, Episode 16: Movin’ On Up
192: Season 5, Episode 18: The Trouble With the Gribbles
191: Season 8, Episode 15: Apres Hank, Le Deluge
190: Season 7, Episode 21: Night and Deity
189: Season 8, Episode 4: The Incredible Hank
188: Season 9, Episode 10: Arlen City Bomber
187: Season 13, Episode 9: What Happens at the National Propane Gas Convention in Memphis
186: Season 8, Episode 16: Daletech
185: Season 7, Episode 20: Racist Dawg
184: Season 2, Episode 20: Junky Business
183: Season 12, Episode 21: It Came From the Garage
182: Season 13, Episode 11: Bwah My Nose
181: Season 13, Episode 1: Dia-bill-ic Shock
180: Season 4, Episode 12: Rodeo Days
179: Season 13, Episode 18: Uh-Oh Canada
178: Season 9, Episode 11: Redcorn Gambles With His Future
177: Season 2, Episode 22: Peggy’s Turtle Song
176: Season 5, Episode 9: Chasing Bobby
175: Season 9, Episode 13: Gone With the Windstorm
174: Season 5, Episode 8: Twas the Nut Before Christmas
173: Season 9, Episode 14: Bobby on Track
172: Season 2, Episode 4: Hilloween
171: Season 2, Episode 3: Arrowhead
170: Season 11, Episode 6: Glen Peggy Glen Ross
169: Season 3, Episode 23: Wings of a Dope
168: Season12, Episode 20: Cops and Robert
Not completely show related, but the setting point of this show is Peggy buying Hank an autographed photo of the Cowboys. When Hank realizes one of the autographs is a fake, he tries to return it, but is rebuked by the shop owners, who grab a bunch of random stacks of certificates of authenticity to say it’s real.
A couple weeks ago, someone came forward to say they were a part of a years long, multi million dollar celebrity autograph forgery scheme. He named names and explained not only the process, but the well known companies they had sold to, or forged certificates of authenticity for. This caught the eye of the police. When they went to pay the poster a visit, they found him in his house, shot dead.
The sports memorabilia market is not for the faint of heart, folks. Neither is Dale Gribble in a Hooters knock-off outfit. We also get that in this episode.
167: Season 4, Episode 21: Nancy’s Boys
166: Season 7, Episode 1: Get Your Freak Off
165: Season 13, Episode 7: Straight As An Arrow
164: Season 4, Episode 20: Meet the Propaniacs
163: Season 8, Episode 14: Dale Be Not Proud
This episode is funny because Dale ends up trading his kidney to a child for a game boy and some candy.
162: Season 3, Episode 21: Revenge of the Lutefisk
161: Season 13, Episode 13: Nancy Does Dallas
160: Season 8, Episode 13: Cheer Factor
159: Season 13, Episode 8: Lucky See, Monkey Do
158: Season 4, Episode 5: Aisle 8A
157: Season 2, Episode 21: Life In the Fast Lane
156: Season 5, Episode 6: When Cotton Comes Marching Home
155: Season 8, Episode 20: Hank’s Back
154: Season 9, Episode 15: It Ain’t Over til the Fat Neighbor Sings
This episode tends to drag until the end, when Dale goes into a tirade to end all tirades to shame Bill out of an all men’s choir group. He refers to it as something along the lines of a 12 headed jackass, which is a brilliant thing to call an A Capella group.
153: Season 3, Episode 10: A Firefighting We Will Go
152: Season 8, Episode 2: Reborn to be Wild
151: Season 6, Episode 10: The Substitute Spanish Prisoner
150: Season 2, Episode 7: The Man Who Shot Cane Skretterburg
149: Season 3, Episode 22: Death and Taxes
148: Season 5, Episode 15: Luanne Virgin 2.0
147: Season 9, Episode 9: Care-Takin’ Care of Business
146: Season 12, Episode 16: Pour Some Sugar on Kahn
One of the earliest television references of any kind of Sriracha. It would later become very popular because it’s the closest thing people can find to ketchup while still feeling like they are eating spicy.
On another note, a couple weeks ago I thanked “Smokin” Ed Currie for creating the hot sauce industry as we know it today. Real heat seekers will know who i’m talking about. #GatorAndPepperXSlavicPlumForLife
145: Season 4, Episode 8: Not In My Backhoe
144: Season 5, Episode 16: Hank’s Choice
143: Season 9, Episode 1: A Rover Runs Through It
This episode deserves a full dissection some day. Henry Winkler is like the fifth weirdest aspect of this story. Peggy’s mom de-aging is fourth.
142: Season 3, Episode 8: Good Hill Hunting
141: Season 12, Episode 3: The Powder Puff Boys
140: Season 2, Episode 8: The Son That Got Away
139: Season 12, Episode 17: Six Characters in Search of a House
138: Season 3, Episode 7: Nine Pretty Darn Angry Men
137: Season 13, Episode 2: Earthy Girls Are Easy
Not funny, but a good episode as it puts a microscope on the fakeness of the environmental industry and the lengths people will go to profit from people wanting to take care of the earth.
136: Season 1, Episode 5: Luanne’s Saga
135: Season 6, Episode 16: Beer and Loathing
134: Season 11, Episode 1: The Peggy Horror Picture Show
133: Season 7, Episode 5: Dances With Dogs
132: Season 5, Episode 3: I Don’t Want To Wait For Our Lives To Be Over
131: Season 3, Episode 5: Next of Shin
130: Season 12, Episode 10: Doggone Crazy
129: Season 7, Episode 14: Board Games
128: Season 8, Episode 18: Girl, You’ll be a Giant Soon
127: Season 4, Episode 24: Peggy’s Fan Fair
This episode probably deserves another look from me. I kind of pushed it off to the side because it’s so celebrity cameo heavy, but Bobby accidently food poisoning Brooks and Dunn should be enough to make the top 75.
126: Season 4, Episode 7: Happy Hanksgiving
125: Season 10, Episode 9: The Year of Washing Dangerously
124: Season 5, Episode 12: Now Who’s the Dummy
123: Season 11, Episode 5: Hank Gets Dusted
122: Season 8, Episode 3: New Cowboy on the Block
121: Season 6, Episode 4: The Father, the Son, and the JC
120: Season 13, Episode 3: Square Footed Monster
Peggy: This was an act of god. An angry, vengeful god.
Ted Wassonasong: This was no act of god. Look at these sledgehammer marks. It was the act of rednecks, on a drunken rampage.
Hank: We don’t have anything to hide. The only one who did something wrong here is you. Your shoddy McMansion was gonna destroy our homes. We only took it down in self defense. And for the record, nobody was drunk.
Lucky: There’s a chance I may not have been within the legal limits.
119: Season 3, Episode 13: DeKahnstructing Henry
118: Season 7, Episode 17: The Good Buck
This is the episode where Octavio shows off his jesus tattoo, only for Joseph to point out it’s Rob Zombie.
117: Season 12, Episode 12: Untitled Blake McCormick Project
116: Season 10, Episode 12: 24 Hour Propane People
115: Season 7, Episode 22: Maid in Arlen
114: Season 10, Episode 3: Bill’s House
This absolutely does not deserve to be ranked this well. At some point around this season, I just started slapping unimportant episodes in spots that didn’t matter. This is definitely not a “top half of the rankings” episode. That’s on me.
113: Season 7, Episode 2: The Fat and the Furious
112: Season 10, Episode 7: You Gotta Believe (In Moderation)
111: Season 1, Episode 11: King of the Ant Hill
110: Season 2, Episode 18: The Final Shinsult
109: Season 9, Episode 5: Dale To The Chief
108: Season 10, Episode 8: Business Is Picking Up This Year
107: Season 3, Episode 14: The Wedding of Bobby Hill
106: Season 6, Episode 21: Returning Japanese Part One
105: Season 6, Episode 22: Returning Japanese Part Two
104: Season 2, Episode 16: Traffic Jam
103: Season 2, Episode 11: The Unbearable Blindness of Lying
102: Season 12, Episode 19: Strangeness on a Train
101: Season 6, Episode 20: Dang Ol’ Love
100: Season 3, Episode 16: Jon Vitti Presents A Return to La Grunta
99: Season 12, Episode 8: The Minh Who Knew Too Much
98: Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot
97: Season 2, Episode 10: Bobby Slam
Honestly, I’d have done the exact same thing as this episode if I was in middle school wrestling. That was the late 90’s. In fact, in high school, one of my English classes had us do a demonstration where we had to create easy to read step-by-step instructions on how to do it. Most people did something along the lines of “How to cut an apple” or “How to fold a towel.” I, on the other hand, did “How to do The Rock’s finishing moves.” My buddy Aaron helped me out, and I proceeded to Rock Bottom him and give him the people’s elbow in the middle of class.
We both ended up in the nurses office, and as far as I know, the teacher quit doing that part of the cirriculum.
96: Season 4, Episode 9: To Kill A Ladybird
95: Season 13, Episode 6: A Bill Full of Dollars
94: Season 4, Episode 23: Transnational Amusements Presents Peggy’s Magic Sex Feet
93: Season 3, Episode 24: Take Me Out of the Ballgame
92: Season 1, Episode 6: Hank’s Unmentionable Problem
The part of this episode where Hank is going down the cafeteria line just ordering random meats and whatnot seems ridiculous. Then I ate at Terry Black’s BBQ in Austin a few years ago, and it was functionally the exact same thing. Texas is a culinary gem.
91: Season 13, Episode 14: Born Again on the Fourth of July
This episode is only ranked this high because it gave us the “Bobby, if those kids could read, they would be very upset” meme, which lives on to this day.
90: Season 7, Episode 18: I Never Promised You an Organic Garden
89: Season 8, Episode 21: The Redneck on Rainey Street
88: Season 5, Episode 5: Peggy Makes the Big Leagues
This is the first of two episodes that Brendan Fraser would do a guest voice on. He played different characters each time. In neither of those occasions was “Brendan Fraser” the character he was playing.
87: Season 8, Episode 1: Patch Boomhauer
86: Season 6, Episode 15: A Man Without a Country Club
85: Season 10, Episode 10: Hank Fixes Everything
84: Season 5, Episode 7: What Makes Bobby Run
83: Season 12, Episode 13: The Accidental Terrorist
82: Season 2, Episode 17: Hanks Dirty Laundry
81: Season 13, Episode 4: Lost in Myspace
80: Season 8, Episode 17: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alamo
79: Season 4, Episode 22: Flush With Power
78: Season 11, Episode 7: Passion of the Dauterive
77: Season 10, Episode 11: Church Hopping
76: Season 6, Episode 9: The Bluegrass Is Always Greener
75: Season 11, Episode 11: Bill, Bulk and the Buddies
I will never give a poor grade to a television show that has Macho Man Randy Savage on it. You have your rules. I have mine.
74: Season 9, Episode 4: Yard She Blows
73: Season 6, Episode 14: Of Mice and Little Green Men
72: Season 5, Episode 19: Hank’s Back Story
71: Season 11, Episode 9: Peggy’s Gone to Pots
Underrated episode if, for no other reason, we get the ACTUAL Rusty Shackleford on it.
70: Season 4, Episode 13: Hanky Panky (part one)
69: Season 4, Episode 14: High Anxiety (part two)
68: Season 6, Episode 19: Sug’ Night
67: Season 3, Episode 12: Three Coaches and a Bobby
66: Season 5, Episode 17: It’s Not Easy Being Green
65: Season 7, Episode 15: Officer and a Gentle Boy
64: Season 3, Episode 25: As Old as the Hills (part 1)
63: Season 4, Episode 1: Peggy Hill, the Decline and Fall (part 2)
62: Season 3, Episode 19: Hank’s Cowboy Movie
61: Season 3, Episode 15: Sleight of Hank
60: Season 10, Episode 4: Harlottown
59: Season 5, Episode 10: Hanky Yankee
58: Season 3, Episode 9: Pretty, Pretty Dresses
An exemplary episode of the lengths Hank is willing to go for his friends. Also, Dale has two great moments in it. First is when he is holding Bill at gunpoint to make sure Bill doesn’t try to kill himself, and two, when Bill and Hank take off the dresses at the end and then Dale emerges into the alley also wearing a dress.
Also, this episode was written by Toby Flenderson himself, Paul Lieberstein!
57: Season 5, Episode 14: The Exterminator
56: Season 1, Episode 9: Peggy The Boggle Champ
55: Season 3, Episode 4: Pregnant Paws
54: Season 7, Episode 19: Be True to Your Fool
For the most part, I actually liked backstory episodes of the show because of how good of a job KOTH generally dead with keeping everything canonically believable. It’s also fun to think of a drunken Hank at a punk rock bar screaming “Play the Gambler.”
53: Season 1, Episode 10: Keeping Up With Our Joneses
52: Season 13, Episode 5: No Bobby Left Behind
51: Season 1, Episode 3: Order of the Straight Arrow
50: Season 4, Episode 19: Hanks Bad Hair Day
I put this episode here on purpose, because I feel like everything from here down is the essentials of the show, and this is as good of a first episode to show someone who hasn’t seen the show as it gets. It has a little bit of everything from every character, all the way down to Bill scoffing at Hank’s tip in lieu of the bill that had been sent by the US Government for Hank’s haircut.
49: Season 11, Episode 4: Luanne Gets Lucky
48: Season 12, Episode 4: Four Wave Intersection
47: Season 2, Episode 6: Husky Bobby
46: Season 3, Episode 20: Dog Dale Afternoon
45: Season 6, Episode 3: Lupe’s Revenge
44: Season 12, Episode 14: Lady and Gentrification
43: Season 8, Episode 11: My Hair Lady
42: Season 11, Episode 12: Lucky’s Wedding Suit
The original final episode of the show. Season 11 was supposed to be the end of the show. In fact, the show was technically completely done. If my memory serves correct, though, Fox looked at all of the new shows they had going into the Sunday lineup and realized how screwed they were. You see, Fox always had a problem with shows surviving after The Simpsons. While Family Guy continues on now, it was cancelled after just a few seasons before gaining a second life on Adult Swim. The PJs failed in spite of Eddie Murphy being behind it. Futurama kept getting cancelled. They could only get so far by continuing to do spin offs of Family Guy characters.
King of the Hill was the one show with the consistent built-in audience. So at the last minute, they brought KOTH back for a season 12, and eventually, a season 13.
This was an ideal finale, though, and would have ranked much more highly if this was how the show ended up going out. They brought back every character for the wedding scene, and the show ended with Hank, Bill, Dale and Boomauer in the alley, saying the same words to end the show as they said in the first words of the first show. “Yep.”
41: Season 1, Episode 4: Hank’s Got the Willies
40: Season 13, Episode 20: Bill Gathers Moss
Criminally underrated episode of the show.
39: Season 2, Episode 9: The Company Man
38: Season 12, Episode 5: Death Picks Cotton
37: Season 2, Episode 13: Snow Job
36: : Season 4, Episode 15: Naked Ambition
35: Season 6, Episode 11: Unfortunate Son
I don’t care about any other part of this episode. This is the episode where Dale gets a falcon, which is arguably the funniest part of any episode ever done on the show.
34: Season 7, Episode 16: The Miseducation of Bobby Hill
33: Season 7, Epsiode 11: Boxing Luanne
32: Season 1, Episode 8: Shins of the Father
31: Season 8, Episode 12: Phish and Wildlife
30: Season 5, Episode 2: The Buck Stops Here
29: Season 4, Episode 3: Bills Are Made to be Broken
28: Season 2, Episode 5: Jumpin’ Crack Bass
27: Season 3, Episode 17: Escape From Party Island
26: Season 9, Episode 3: Death Buys a Timeshare
25: Season 3, Episode 18: Love Hurts and So Does Art
Gout is real, folks. It is a crippling thing to deal with. This episode also made it okay to laugh at it. You know what, this deserves to be ranked last just because of that!
-Me, a gout haver
24: Season 2, Episode 23: Propane Boom I
23: Season 3, Episode 1: Propane Boom II
It’s not easy to throw out a season finale cliffhanger, then nail the landing four months later in the season premiere. This did that pretty perfectly. It also helped to extend out the KOTH universe by bringing in Chuck Mangione (RIP) who would be a show mainstay for the rest of the original run, among others.
What it did most importantly though, was to show that it wasn’t like other shows, in that the actions on this show had actual consequences. Buckley, the on again, off again boyfriend of Luanne was killed in the Mega Lo Mart explosion two years before The Simpsons killed off Maude Flanders. King of the Hill did a helluva lot better long term story telling in relation to it, as well.
22: Season 1, Episode 2: Square Peg
This gets up here on the strength of a bit that causes me to remember a standup comedian, Dave Sitko, who brought this up to me on multiple occasions that it was one of his favorite bits on the show, and I tend to agree.
21: Season 12, Episode 11: Trans Fascism
Did this show nearly make the top twenty strictly on the basis of Hank Hill saying “I’m losing a turf war that I didn’t want to be apart of” while getting into a food fight with a rival food truck from Hot Springs? No, this episode was really good. But that quote definitely helped.
20: Season 2, Episode 15: Three Days of the Kahndo
This is the episode that has the meme of Hank trying to fix a creaky door with WD40, having the bottle cap stick, and then unholstering a smaller bottle of WD40 to get the larger bottle opened. Those memes are correct. This is the funniest thing to ever be put on television.
19: Season 6, Episode 2: Soldier of Misfortune
Top to bottom great episode. Also, this is the pocket sand episode!
18: Season 11, Episode 3: Blood and Sauce
Deep down at the heart of the show, there is a goodness and love among a group of people that have been around each other for a long time. The fact that Bill turns down large sums of money because his family member tells him not to, just to give it away for free to Bobby, really shows this.
Also, if there was ever an episode that gave credence to the idea that Bill is actually Bobby’s dad, this was it. Bill was overjoyed to have Bobby working with him the entire time, covered for him when Bobby bailed, and then, at the end, once Bobby is completely bought into the sauce before getting told that it wasn’t going to happen, then having Bill say that they could still give it away and make the food for the love of it, and Bobby saying he doesn’t know if it feels right because he’s not a Dauterive, only for Bill to smile and say “Bobby, trust me. I’d be honored.”
I never really took a lot of time to figure out what side of the fence I was on over this conspiracy theory. That being said, this is not the only episode where comparisons can be drawn. While Bobby did bare some resemblance to Cotton Hill and Cotton’s late life child GH, there wasn’t much there in terms of looking like Hank. Hank had well documented trouble with his narrow urethrae. Bobby’s personality more closely resembled that of Bill’s throughout the show. If Mike Judge were to come out at some point and say yea, Bobby really is Bill’s son, i’d buy it.
17: Season 13, Episode 15: Serves Me Right for Serving General Patton
I really love this episode more than most. It probably has to do with the fact that i’ve been very lucky in my life to have a group of friends that has existed as long as Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer on this show. This episode, deep down, is an exploration of friendship and the bonds struck through it. When I think of this episode, I think of the friends that I have that would stick with me through whatever dangerous, ridiculous, or benign situation I get them into.
Honestly, that’s kind of what made the show great to me when I look back now, nearly 30 years after watching the first episode. This show did a much better job at exploring relationships and friendships than nearly any other show. Most shows that handle these kind of things don’t get the life span that King of the Hill did. Most shows that last as long as KOTH don’t bother digging that deep into those feelings because, generally, the show just resets for the next episode, like wiping a slate clean.
The relationships don’t reset on this show as much as they evolve in them, like actual friendships. Like actual relationships. That’s what made the show work, in my opinion.
16: Season 2, Episode 2: Texas City Twister
The first great episode of the show. There were glimpses during season one that they were getting the characters dialed in and the environment to a spot where it could really be filled out. This episode though is the first one that feels like it really hits on all cylinders and goes hard. The final scene, with Hank on the verge of getting swept away and killed by a tornado, still having a moral crisis whether or not to cover his nude body with a Texas flag before settling on a cactus, is one of the most memorable moments of the early run of the show.
15: Season 7, Episode 23: The Witches of East Arlen
This episode was very “of it’s time.” That being said, as a fairly unpopular high school student, this hits on a few different levels, and is also very funny. No, I didn’t get into tarot, but you can just swap that for backyard wrestling, and it pretty well tracks. It is also a very funny take on how a lot of parents have probably always felt, wanting to keep their kids from falling into the trappings of unpopularity. There are too many great lines in this episode for it to be ignored, though, including “I know a girl repellant when I see one Hank, now do something!” from Peggy which is one of her all time best lines on the show.
14: Season 5, Episode 11: Hank And the Great Glass Elevator
This episode really deserves to be ranked higher. Most other shows, this is a top five all time episode. It’s can’t crack my top ten, though. It really is a great episode, though. It shows that deep down, Hank really wants to just be a part of his friends. It shows the unwavering loyalty of Bill. It has Dale expressing how hot former Texas Governor Anne Richards was.
13: Season 6, Episode 13: Tankin’ It To the Streets
I sometimes feel like i’m quick to defend Bill due to the fact that i’m slowly morphing into him. Not the childless divorcee part. More the actual physical part. This episode lets me dream that I too was just a medical experiment by the government to create half man/half walrus super fighters for Antarctica.
It also has Hank screaming “How about you stand down wind of me and explain to me what the hell you think you were doing?” Something I have definitely said more than once in real life.
12: Season 5, Episode 13: Ho Yeah
“I am the mack daddy of Heimlich County. I play it straight up, yo. You get the hell out of my hood. She’s my hoe now.”
-Hank Hill
11: Season 6, Episode 17: Fun With Jane and Jane
I actually don’t even care about the A story of this episode that much. Both Peggy and Luanne were ripe to be brainwashed at some point. This episode got to this spot on the list because the B story about the guys chasing down the Emu’s is so funny, it’s one of my single favorite through line bits of any episode the show ever made. All the way to the end, where the Emu’s come up behind Buck to exact their revenge. Also, Hank going “How am I going to explain a 600 dollar meat bill to Peggy. It’s not even a holiday weekend?” is epic, as is Bill saying “why do the things I love always run away from me?” with Hank responding “because you have to pet everything you love.” Such a great exchange in an incredibly rewatchable episode.
10: Season 5, Episode 1: The Perils of Polling
The George W. Bush limp handshake episode is one of the most well known episodes of the show, and also one of the best. The internal crisis of Hank is deeply funny. It also reminds me of the story of George W. Bush, around six months before the election in 2000, going to a church a couple blocks away from our house. Someone I know says they stink palmed George Bush as he was shaking hands with the amassed crowd. Do I believe him? Maybe. When I think of that, do I always think of this episode and Dale explaining the different types of limp handshakes, including the wriggler? You bet.
9: Season 7, Episode 6: The Son Also Roses
Bobby finds something he is good at. Hank gets involved and ruins the joy. I know this feeling. I got kind of lucky, because my dad was really not into sports outside of supporting my brother and I in them. I never really had to feel the overbearing nature within that. But the feeling that Bobby had during this episode is universal.
There is always that feeling of wanting to do things on your own, being accepting of the help, then feeling something that is yours getting taken away from you.
This episode has all of that. It just also happens to have quotes from Lao Tzu in it.
8: Season 12, Episode 6: Raise the Steaks
I might be on an island a bit with this episode. It generally doesn’t fare as well when I ask other fans where they would rank it. But it’s my list. So screw ’em. I think this is one of the best episodes of the final couple seasons. Part of it is because there is an actual relatability to it. I am very aware of buying subpar meat at mega stores and being disappointed by the quality. I’m also not a fan of hippy culture.
I’ve also tried to keep livestock in the backyard.
7: Season 6, Episode 1: Bobby Goes Nuts
I don’t need to tell you about this episode beyond “that’s my purse!” To this day, you can still walk into stores that sell the licensed merchandise from the show and they all have shirts that say that.
I will say, that’s not my favorite part of the episode, though. My favorite part is in the front yard in the climactic moment of the show, Bobby screams his iconic line and then attempts to kick Peggy in the balls. Peggy responds with “That’s right Bobby. I believe you will find that I have no testicles. Where is your secret weapon now?” To which Kahn, watching over the fence, screams “She’s Bluffing. Finish her!”
6: Season 4, Episode 18: Won’t You Pimai Neighbor
I love this episode for everything it wasn’t. It wasn’t audacious. It wasn’t over-the-top. They took a premise that could have had all of the trappings of a disaster, and ended up crafting a nearly perfect episode out of it. The jokes never felt over the top, but they hit. The ending showed the sweetness and (in a good way) smallness that the show had built itself on. Bobby didn’t need any other life than the one he was living, and didn’t need anyone else beyond Connie to help fulfill it.
5: Season 4, Episode 4: The Little Horrors of Shop
This episode was absolutely classic the entire time, but it got to this point on the list because of one of the most memorable scenes, at least for me, in the history of the show. There is no other clip that I think encapsulates Hank quite like this.
4: Season 4, Episode 2: Cotton’s Plot
Cotton vs. Peggy was such an underrated thing on the show. They constantly knew how to drill the depths of this relationship and continue to find humor in it. This is one of the only episodes where the two actually come together over a common bond, and it creates a great episode around the concept of hate is stronger than apathy. There were a lot of good episodes that came out of Peggy’s parachute not opening, but the end of this episode, with a clearly mentally strong in spite of her physical weaknesses Peggy literally dancing with Cotton on his grave.
3: Season 6, Episode 18: My Own Private Rodeo
I might be in the minority here, but this was a better “oh god, I know a gay person” fish out of water episode than the Simpsons episode with John Waters. Within this episode is one of the best single minutes of comedy the show ever made. I’m referring to the point when Dale’s dad is in the alley and his boyfriend comes to pick him up. Somehow, this entire clip is not on Youtube, even though 75 percent of the episode is available in various clips.
King of the Hill was always at it’s best when, in spite of if being a big world, the moments could feel small and impactful. Dale’s acceptance of his father being gay is a quintessential moment like that.
2: Season 4, Episode 6: A Beer Can Named Desire
From a pure comedy standpoint, this is probably the best episode by a long shot. Gilbert Dauterive could have easily been a character they leaned on more in the show, but the fact that they didn’t made his appearance on this episode all the more audacious. Among KOTH fans, this is one of the more infinitely quotably episodes in the entire run of the show. From Bill being an unexpected source of attraction to three widowers (one of which being his cousin), all the way to Hank tackling Don Meredith in front of 70k people. It was truly a special episode.\
1: Season 13, Episode 24: To Sirloin With Love
It was never going to be any other episode. Most shows just aren’t able to nail the landing on their series finale. This was actually the second attempt by the team to finish off the show, after being brought back from the brink of cancellation several seasons earlier. It’s not just the satisfying ending that the audience got. It’s the satisfying ending that Hank got. The entire show was, in a lot of ways, the struggle of Hank to be a father in an ever changing world and his struggles to connect with his son.
The show shows something that means something to a lot of people. That friendship you develop as you get older with your father. It goes beyond common interest. It goes beyond big moments. It’s the love and bond forged through all the difficult times you go through together.
Also, we find out that Boomhauer was a Texas Ranger this whole time!
What is your personal top 10? What did I miss? Leave it in the comment below. Thanks for reading everyone!
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