(S04E06) "I think I can understand how difficult this must be, keeping a secret." - Bill on discovering that Dale has been having an affair with Alby
"You can't imagine." - Dale

Some of the season's most interesting plot lines came to a screeching halt this week and by screeching, I mean literally just that. The stench of burning rubber won't come out of my couch no matter how well it's been Scotchguarded.

Of course, just because some problems have come to an end doesn't represent their means to an end. They only serve to create new and bigger ones.

(S11E12) In my other King of the Hill review I mentioned that the secondary characters can be just as fleshed out as the main characters, and I think the same holds true for Lucky, who is still a rather new addition to the King of the Hill universe.

Lucky started out rather one-note, a kind of street-wise redneck whose only means of support stemmed from a cash settlement he received for slipping on a puddle of urine at a local store. This season, however, we've gotten to know Lucky a little better, and while I love his character, I'm pretty sure I would loathe him if he were an actual person.

(S11E10) Holy crap! Nancy loses some of her hair in this episode, just like Marge did in The Simpsons episode "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious!" Quick, somebody make a video so we can expose how King of the Hill is ripping off The Simpsons!

Anyway, this wasn't a bad episode, but it wasn't anything that great either. It felt like a snapshot of a typical day in Arlen, which means it's probably not a bad episode to show someone unfamiliar with the series, but for long-time fans, it took us places we've already been to many times before.

As usual, Dale is obsessed with aliens, and his constant yammering about the vernal equinox and his pestering Nancy about cooking the right food for the aliens has stressed her out so much her hair starts falling out. Naturally, going back to the bliss she once felt with her former lover John Redcorn starts to seem like a good idea.

(S11E09)

Peggy: I'll bet Minh likes foreign movies, she's a foreigner. To her, it's just a movie.

I've watched enough episodes of King of the Hill over the years to know that Dale Gribble sometimes uses the alias "Rusty Shackleford' to fly under the radar of all those conspiratorial entities that only exist in his head, but this is the first time I've heard the story behind it: "Rusty Shackleford" was the name of a kid from Dale's third grade class who passed away. At least, that's what Dale thought. It turns out that Rusty just moved away.

(S11E02)

Dale [in the sewer]: It's kinda spooky down here. Do you think poop has ghosts?

This episode actually reminded me a little bit of Tom Goes to the Mayor with its focus on a city council being taken for suckers by two guys who really don't have the city's best interest in mind. Mostly, I just found it interesting how different shows can tackle the same issues in wildly different ways.

(S10E14)  When you're young, there's usually only one way to deal with a bully, and that's to give them a taste of their own medicine. It gets a bit more complicated, however, when you're a grown adult and your bully is a ten year old kid. In last night's episode, new neighbors move into the neighborhood whose unruly child, Caleb, begins harassing Hank by calling him "dusty old bones, full of green dust," trashing his work space, and, the most unforgivable crime of all, riding his bike on Hank's lawn.

If beating your own kids is frowned upon, beating other's children is probably more so. Hank thinks he has a solution when he takes Caleb's bike until Caleb learns to behave better. Unfortunately, Caleb's parents don't see their son as a troublemaker, but rather a feisty young sprite with a "precocious sense of adventure." When Hank swipes Caleb's bike to teach him a lesson, they don't make Caleb apologize, they call the cops. Hank finally realizes that the trouble lies with the parents, so he sicks Bobby on them to taunt and harass them as Caleb did. It's not until the parents actually start being parents that Caleb starts to behave. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the children of inattentive parents knows how frustrating it can be. I used to babysit for extended family whose children were so unruly the only thing I could do was try and keep as many sharp objects away from them as possible while they ran amok.