That MAN Ain't Right

Hank Hill at a sci-fi convention. I mean, it writes itself. King of the Hill's fourth episode of season 15 is a ton of fun putting Hank in arguably one of the least comfortable places he's ever been in the entire series. But more importantly, this forges the path for a story about Hank disappointing Bobby and then pushing past his comfort zone to make it up to him. Add a very funny while infuriating selfish Peggy story focused on poetry and you've got yourself a solid episode of King of the Hill. So let's dive into season 15 episode 4, Hank Encounters of the Nerd Kind. And just like last year, I'll not only be covering every episode of this season, but I'll have my uncut reactions to each episode posted over on my Patreon as well. Check those out if it interests you. Thanks. Hank Encounters of the Nerd Kind is honestly a pretty inspired episode idea. Truly, who wouldn't want to see Hank Hill's reaction to an entire convention full of cosplayers? Or hell, just his reaction to Bobby's cosplay. >> You look like Cher. >> And honestly, I loved the setup for the story because they actually nailed down one of the few reasons Hank might be willing to find himself at a sci-fi convention. He's really just there to help Bobby out at the food truck that he rented for Robotech Ain. I also like that this is a pretty natural story evolution from the season premiere reveal that Emilio often has the brick-and-mortar kitchen under control himself. Even though we're just 14 episodes into the revival at this point, it feels like there has been real changes and micro-developments even within Bobby's restaurant career. But Bobby does not seem to know his way around the truck part of the food truck, hence Hank's willingness to help. And Hank also fancies a true salesman given his propane days. He really prides himself on his ability to relate to the customer. >> You know, I once sold propane to a man with an earring in his nose. >> But that is what makes the setup so ingenious. Hank has a ton of experience in sales and he believes that relating to the customer is his superpower, so he says. But here, he finds himself in a place that is just about as far away from relatable to Hank as possible. Not just people he struggles to understand, but things he doesn't even really comprehend. And this definitely seems to stem from Hank seeing a lot of this kind of stuff as juvenile, which is not even necessarily something unique to Hank. I think a lot of the older generation can't quite wrap their head around the idea of grown adults dressing up as fictional characters or outwardly showing their passion for things that might be considered for kids. And the growth in popularity and more open embracing of those subcultures is a great slight shift in society for Hank to press up against here. And press up against he does. This first interaction is such a hilarious way to make Hank immediately uncomfortable. We'll just call it alien female anatomy. I guess this also brushes up against Hank's like sexual repression as well, so it's kind of a double whammy. And Hank ends up showing his whole ass under these circumstances, which if you're familiar with King of the Hill, you'll know he actually doesn't have much of an ass. But in thinking that this dude is actually security for the con, Hank makes some pretty rude and condescending generalizations about the con goers. Of course, not realizing that this guy is also in cosplay. And the guy basically just tricks Hank into giving him Bobby's access badge. Honestly, kind of a funny development coming one episode after Hank's whole scamming debacle. You're just blindly trusting a man in uniform, Hank? Come on, man. I think what makes this really work is because Hank's biases aren't just making him look bad to these people, cuz honestly, Hank wouldn't really care if that were the case. The real issue is that in this circumstance, he is representing Bobby and Robota Chain. He's letting his biases alienate Bobby's potential clients, and he really struggles to put aside his own pride and preconceptions for the good of his son. They get another shot at reclaiming the badge, but rather than apologize, make good, and try to connect to the con goers, Hank doubles down and looks like even more of a jackass. I thought this guy's justification for stealing the badge was pretty interesting. He pointed out that there are many people who couldn't even get a badge that really wanted one and Hank is basically out there wasting one despite the fact that he has absolutely no interest in anything the convention represents. This was a very fun performance by Paul Walter Hauser, by the way. Love when King of the Hill gets some good guests in the mix, but Hank really just lays it on thick. Absolutely no self-reflection about the way he treated this guy earlier and this time with a major crowd, he basically insults all the con goers to their faces. It's like being at a comedy show when an entire room turns on a heckler and even worse for Bobby, he's the guy sitting with the heckler. Okay, I do quite like how the story resolves itself on paper, but I also sort of wish there had been like one extra beat in here. They maybe just ultimately ran out of real estate, but I'll get to it. This scene with Hank and the guys in the alley is pretty great and I love that Bill is the one to try and talk a little sense into Hank relating cosplay and dressing up for cons to putting on sports gear and painting your face for a football game and there is a real correlation in nerdistry between these two things. Putting on a big loud outfit you wouldn't wear normally to show your support for something you love and I think this really is something Hank should see and reconcile with. Hank Hill has gone to mower shows before. He is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to sports. Hell, Hank has a full-on hyper fixation on propane. How many people's ears has he talked off over the years diving into the nitty-gritty details of grill regulators? It's really not all that much different than obsessing over a fictional universe and immersing yourself in another world. You become intimately familiar with the details. I think where I wish we got a bit more was the transition from this conversation to Hank watching the sci-fi movie for himself. Maybe I'm dumb for wanting it spelled out a bit more, but I felt like coming out of the last scene, Hank seemed more annoyed than anything, but maybe if Bill had said something like, "Hey, didn't Bobby do cowboy fantasy camp with you last year? Maybe you could give one of his interests a chance." It would have given the next scene a smoother entry point. I did like this scene a lot, though. Hank initially watching with his arms crossed before slowly getting invested in the character drama and tragedy, even shedding a tear by the end. We do not see Hank shed tears often. I made a whole video about that years ago. And this entire dialogless sequence is like a little microcosm of one of the Hank Hill formulas we see in the show, rejecting something because it's different, eventually finding some kind of integrity within that he understands, and then coming to accept it for what it is. I also enjoyed that it was written by Greg S. Judge, an amalgamation of show creators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge, and I'm going to presume that the S stands for Saladin K. Patterson, the current showrunner, who coincidentally I got to interview over on my other channel Johnny 2 Casual. Please check that out. We got to talk about a lot of cool stuff about the new season. But I love that this leads Hank to marrying a newfound appreciation for this film with one of his interests, and he crafts [music] the secret battle axe scene in the movie and brings it to the con. This is a pretty charming scene. Hank shows not only that he put serious care into recreating this thing, but really understands the lore and history of the story and makes good with the con goers. I love that they also have these moments where Hank shows signs of growth, but doesn't change who he is fundamentally. The con goers all start chanting one of us with Hank saying he appreciates the sentiment, but they got to cut it out. It's super funny and a good example of that incremental growth we like from Hank. He also uses the axe to lure people to Bobby's food truck, which is a great way to make good with his son. But what I like most is that it also leads to him carrying a connection with Bobby into the future, asking Bobby if he wants to see the first of the prequel trilogy with him when it releases at a midnight showing, no less. That's where the real obsessive fans go. I think at its core this is exactly the kind of thing this show is all about, a father and son with conflicting interests and points of view finding ways to connect and become closer. It's pretty lovely to think that Hank and Bobby might make an event out of seeing these new movies as they release over the next handful of years. Okay, let's talk a bit about the B story in this one, a Peggy and Minh pairing, which I felt did a pretty great job interrogating the differences between these two characters, as well as starting to explore Minh's new post-divorce single life. Peggy decides to take a poetry class at Arlen Community College, which fits pretty well for her character, finding something to do in retirement. She always fancied herself a good writer with her musings, and I loved the reveal that she kept every newspaper that ever had one of her musings published in it. Very Peggy Hill thing to do, and I love that the writers got a chance to write some new Peggy Hill musings here. There's such an art to these like perfectly plain observations that Peggy finds profound, but most everyone else kind of shrugs at. >> The difference between summer and winter is what you are wearing. It makes perfect sense. >> It was also nice to actually see Arlen Community College again. Most of the time we spent here previously was when Luann was a student, but I thought Minh's motivations here were pretty interesting, because it definitely seems like there's a degree of competitiveness with Peggy, which has always been lingering between the two, really ever since Minh's introduction. But on top of this, it's a pretty constructive way for Minh to work out some of her emotions dealing with the divorce. And poetry is such a funny place to showcase Peggy's overconfidence. Honestly, my favorite bit the entire episode might be Peggy ending every poem by attributing herself and then snapping. >> Peggy Hill. >> I thought this episode did a fun job juxtaposing Peggy and Minh, while also connecting them in a way that we don't see too often. The teacher finds Minh's post-divorce fury far too dark and heavy, but finds Peggy's musings-styled poetry far too light and meaningless. So, she forces them to write poetry together, which I'm not sure a poetry class would ever do that, but it's a really fun premise. And honestly, while I'm no poetry expert or anything, I did find the way Peggy and Minh fused their styles together to be pretty entertaining. The sort of bland brand of Peggy's observational writing lulls you, while Minh's biting and heavier punchlines really subvert the setup. I mean, I might have just described how jokes work, but it still made me giggle. >> Windows are the eyes of the home. And sometimes you just got to shut the blinds. >> And I appreciated that Minh's attitude here is largely rooted in pent-up frustration giving that her divorce has been years in the making and kept a complete secret. But I think the real compelling aspect of the story here, as is often the case, ends up being Peggy's selfishness. With their success in class comes some romantic interest in Minh from a fellow classmate and since she's sort of riding high on this, she struggles to access those dark feelings that were juxtaposing with Peggy's so well. I think this is a pretty smart Peggy plot. Peggy doesn't have a particularly close friendship with Minh. They're friends for sure, but it always felt like Nancy and Minh were closer. They also had that lingering competitiveness that I mentioned. And here is a circumstance and opportunity for them to actually become genuinely closer through a shared experience and creative skill. But Peggy sort of just sees the success and not the connection being formed. Obviously, a friend should have been happy for Minh to break out of that dark angry cycle she'd been experiencing, but because it negatively their poetry writing collaboration, Peggy did not see it that way. This is for sure the worst thing Peggy has done in the revival. She just fully sabotages Minh's date and happiness so that she can get her angry poetry partner back by letting slip to Khan what's going on about her date. Okay, side note, I loved this joke where early in the episode Minh complained about Khan getting the Crock-Pot in the divorce, upset that he was going to be having soup parties with it. And then when we catch up with Khan later, he is actually having a soup party. >> Ain't nobody like a Khan soup party. >> a Khan soup party? That's not >> This was so funny, but also this little scene is something I was hoping we'd see for post-divorce Khan. He's integrating into the alley gang a bit more and this genuinely seems like they're all having a pretty time together as friends. It's cool growth rooted in that slight status quo shift. Okay, back to Peggy. I always find it funny when Peggy thinks she's slicker than she is. As Minh unloads about her date being ruined, Peggy accidentally lets slip that she basically had something to do with it, and Minh shifts that unloading onto Peggy. And I found this actually quite emotionally affecting, which says a lot cuz Minh is a character who can largely be pretty nasty to everyone else. But after years of parading the corpse of a doomed marriage around, and now finally separating, Minh has her first real opportunity to have some fun outside of that, and Peggy ruins it for purely selfish reasons. I do think the revival has had a great handle on Peggy. They've given her a good variety of these Peggy Hill scenarios. Some where she is confidently wrong and reconciles it, some where she is trying and overconfident but still gets a deserved win, and of course times like this where she just goes pure selfish mode. And I actually quite like that this episode sort of gives Peggy a pseudo win in the end here with a super positive reception to her poem in class, but that win comes because the poem she reads is her reflecting on her own behavior, focused on her own treachery that ruined a blooming friendship. I like that her quote-unquote win only comes with really reconciling with that selfishness, leading of course to the apology, giving Minh half credit for the poem, and sharing the prize money. Honestly, there was a lot to love in this subplot. Overall, it's just another pretty great episode. Hank at a sci-fi convention was the kind of premise this revival was made for, and they did a great job not just using it as a vehicle for Bobby and Hank's father-son growth, but tying it back to Bobby's career as well. The Peggy story was pretty separate but gave us a really fruitful pairing with Minh and explored her post-divorce life in some interesting new ways. Not to mention Kahn in the soup party. It's the name of my new band. And that is what I've got to say about season 15 episode 4, Hank Encounters of the Nerd Kind. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please stay tuned because I have breakdowns for every season 15 episode on the way. Maybe even subscribe if you're interested, and also consider checking out my Patreon where you can see my uncut reactions to the episodes. Hey, I also have plenty of other King of the Hill videos across the channel if that interests you, including coverage for every single season 14 episode from last year, which I threw into one big compilation for your watching convenience. Stay tuned for more. Peace. >> I stay mellow watching Johnny 2 Cellos. He talks cartoon teasers, really cool fellow. He keeps you posted [music] on adult cartoons. If that's what you're into, then grab a spoon and a very big bowl of your favorite cereal. Feels like Saturday morning cartoon material. Johnny [music] 2 Cellos, watch him on YouTube. Now, enjoy this Groove fan bust a move.