Having made it clear that this show is not a Simpsons clone, the rest of the pilot can concentrate on the other important task (apart from the usual pilot tasks of introducing the characters and their relationships), getting us to accept Hank Hill as a heroic figure.
#Hank hill yep series
That sense of being different may have helped to deflect the “Simpsons-wannabe” accusations that every cartoon was subject to - and when you consider that the basic plot conceit of this episode (a series of misunderstandings lead child services people to think the hero is a child abuser) had already been done on The Simpsons, this pilot needed all the differentiation it could get. It was a surprise, and it instantly differentiated the new show from the king of prime-time animation. Instead, the first thing they saw after The Simpsons was a scene that could never have happened on that show. People were used to seeing prime-time cartoons that were more or less like The Simpsons in their approach. But I think the way he and Mike Judge did this cold open may have helped contribute to the show’s success. Greg Daniels says on his DVD commentary for the pilot that, watching this scene shortly before it was due to air, he was worried that it was too slow, that people would tune out.
It doesn’t even identify who the main character is Hank Hill sort of comes off as in control of the scene because it’s his truck, but we don’t clearly know he’s the hero until director Wes Archer’s famous main title begins. The topic of discussion, fixing a truck, is mundane there are long, non-comic silences the background noise of birds is amped up to make it sound more like a real outdoor scene. Since no one knew yet except the creators that “Yep/Yep/Yep/M-hm” was going to be a running gag, it’s almost a minute until the first line that’s clearly identifiable as a joke (Dale thinking “Fix It Again, Tony” forms the acronym “FORD”), and a minute in a 22-minute show is a lifetime.
The first thing anyone notices upon watching the King of the Hill pilot is that the opening is slow - the slowest opening scene of a prime-time cartoon and possibly any prime-time comedy in the modern era. Presidents, including one who was governing Hank Hill’s state when the series began. And it was a mildly political show that was on the air through three different U.S. version of The Office or Parks & Recreation are not made all that often, but their approaches have a lot in common, not to mention the writers they share. It’s had a lot of influence on live-action comedy, through the differing projects of its creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels comparisons to the U.S.
It seems like the obvious choice for a retrospective, because it’s one of those shows that has a lot of cultural and pop-cultural baggage associated with it: it was the first post- Simpsons prime time cartoon to become a big hit (though it didn’t get back the genuine smash status it had in its first two seasons), paving the way for all the other Fox cartoons. But it’s been a while since I’ve watched most of the episodes. King of the Hill was somewhere near my favourite show in the early ’00s, when I was in law school watching the new episodes and catching up with the older ones back when The Comedy Network showed them. I’m going to try it with King of the Hill, at least the first 12-episode season if it works I’ll move farther along in the series.
#Hank hill yep tv
I’ve been meaning to do a series of episodic retrospective reviews (the way The AV Club and some other TV sites do), where I look at a show that’s no longer on the air and revisit the episodes from the beginning, two at a time.
0 kommentar(er)
