TalKing of the Hill - As Old as the Hills
Added 2024-11-18 05:00:05 +0000 UTCAfter two full years of covering season three, we've finally reached the end of this very long (and very good) season! When a dud of a 20th anniversary party causes Hank and Peggy to realize the spark has left their marriage, they get catastrophically drunk—then realize skydiving is the answer. But when Peggy's chute doesn't open, Hank could very well become a widower! Listen in and take a trip back with us to the summer of 1999, when a prime-time viewing audience spent three long months wondering "What will be the fate of Peggy Hill?"
Comments
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that this episode aired five days before pro wrestler Owen Hart fell to his death from the arena ceiling during a WWF pay-per-view on Sunday May 23, 1999. Wrestling superfan Henry will instantly recall this tragedy, I'm sure. Peggy's fall makes this the second KOTH episode this season to air prior to similar eerie circumstances, along with "Dog Dale Afternoon" airing a week before Columbine, as Bob and Henry mentioned on that episode's podcast. I was in attendance at Kemper Arena and saw Owen Hart's 78-foot fall and subsequent CPR and life saving measures, and I can still recall almost every moment to this day. And then the show went on, because Vince McMahon is a fucking prick bastard, that's why. Oh, would I have loved for Owen to somehow land on a ring canvas that was spongy and absorbing of most of the impact, like Peggy did.
Steven Bellah
2024-12-01 08:06:37 +0000 UTCDallasite here, I know rotating restaurants are fairly common but there might be a bit of extra Texas storytelling in this episode because Reunion Tower (large building with ball top in Dallas skyline) famously rotates. So the joke might be that a Texas viewer would assume the restaurant guide was referring Hank and Peggy to Reunion Tower but instead of was a crappy place that only rotates for lunch. As a kid I remember learning about Reunion Tower and how my parents would go there for their anniversary and thought based purely off the novelty alone it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard.
Saya Clarke
2024-11-22 13:36:43 +0000 UTCI was thinking the same thing, that it sounds technically correct but wouldn't translate to a saying. Google Al tells me: The Spanish equivalent of "hair of the dog" is "un clavo saca a otro clavo" which literally translates to "one nail pulls out another nail" and is used to express the idea of curing a problem with a little bit of the same thing that caused it, like drinking a small amount of alcohol to relieve a hangover.
littleterr0r
2024-11-20 20:36:56 +0000 UTCStranger to me in ‘Death Picks Cotton’ was the absence of Bobby. In real world terms his wife and child are a more glaring omission but Bobby was the character he was closest to. Also, Didi returns in ‘Serves Me Right for Giving General George S. Patton the Bathroom Key’ to bequeath Hank some of Cottons belongings and explains that she is already engaged to a professional wrestler, so at least we know GH will have a father figure and it would be hard to do worse than Cotton.
Joshua Marchant
2024-11-20 05:54:31 +0000 UTCfacts! It's very freeing. I need to go again too
Frank Grimes
2024-11-20 02:22:47 +0000 UTCI've been skydiving before and I've never been as relaxed or calm as I was during free fall. It was an unbelievably tranquil and peaceful experience. Bob is right, after you step out of the plane, the tandem jumper and gravity do all the work. You just have to enjoy the ride and the scenery. I honestly want to go again.
Dave Nelson
2024-11-19 21:45:17 +0000 UTCI've gone skydiving twice. It's pretty fun ..I was actually more scared of the controlled bungee jump at the stratosphere in Vegas, lol. I've also tried the fake wind tunnel one and it's prob the weakest experience of the bunch. It doesn't compare to the real thing
Frank Grimes
2024-11-19 16:42:00 +0000 UTCThere's an indoor skydiving place near where I live that my niece wanted to try for her birthday. For a 6 year old in a wind tube with an instructor, it looked pretty damn fun. They do it in groups with each person getting about a minute and I can safely say I have no desire to do it after watching the adults in the group go. A little kid flies in there, but for the adults it looks cumbersome and you have some instructor hanging onto you at all times. Once everyone is done they crank the turbine for the instructor to basically zoom around in the thing and that looks pretty fun, but I guess you would have to spend hours in there to get to that level.
Joe Hodgson
2024-11-19 15:44:05 +0000 UTCI think it's more likely that it's a joke about how untalented Hank was at football compared to a collegiate or professional athlete, despite how great he was in his mind.
Joe Hodgson
2024-11-19 15:35:52 +0000 UTCIn the vein of "weird old men with a deformity that use it to scare children," my grandfather ("Pop") had a hook in place of his right hand. He was a bomber pilot in WWII, and was shot down over Germany and had to parachute out (hey, speaking of parachuting out of planes.) So, as you can surmise, he then lost his hand in a completely unrelated fireworks accident 30 years later. If any of us grandkids were misbehaving or just being too rowdy around him, he'd threaten to pinch our noses/ears/fingers/whatever have you off. But, in true "Cotton before GH came along," he would actually just spoil us and make sure to give us whatever random change he had in his pocket, candy, etc...
Andrew Bouvier
2024-11-19 13:20:17 +0000 UTCFrom what I recall before tandem skydives were popularized you couldn't skydive at all without taking a series of lessons that cost over a $1000. So Hank and Peggy wouldn't have been able to sign up and jump on the same day. I went skydiving because a work friend's wife worked there and got me a free jump. It was a tandem skydive. They said "It's the most fun you'll ever have strapped to another man", which as a gay man, made me chuckle. The other guy basically did all the work. We were in freefall for a whole minute although it felt much shorter than that. Floating towards the ground after the chute opened felt as serene and awe-inspiring as Hank said. I haven't skydived since but would feel safe doing so with experienced divers. Per Wikipedia, there are about 7.5 deaths per million jumps, so what happened with Peggy is exceedingly rare.
PurpleComet
2024-11-19 05:27:07 +0000 UTCHad to laugh at Henry saying we all know Hank would never rent a porno when there is a whole episode about that earlier this season.
Joshua Bassett
2024-11-19 05:17:23 +0000 UTCI had somehow missed the news of the King of the Hill revival doing a time jump (and thus the leak of the adult Bobby picture), but I'm pretty excited hearing that honestly since it fits with the shows much more grounded tone and subject matter versus something like Simpsons. That adult Bobby design looks pretty good too! I hope we get some kind of official news and a release window on it soon
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2024-11-19 00:04:19 +0000 UTCMaybe not as a percentage of total dives, but 23 total skydiving deaths last year seems like a lot, just in terms of raw numbers! Anecdotally, my parents knew a couple who went skydiving on their anniversary and their chutes failed and they both died. So you'll never catch my ass jumping out of an airplane.
burro
2024-11-18 22:33:15 +0000 UTCHenry once again confirms that I’m the dork.
Shawn Frieler
2024-11-18 18:34:51 +0000 UTCI watched this ep when I was nine in 1999 just flipping around while my Mom was probably busy. It always stuck with me because I thought Peggy had died--there was a loss of innocence moment for me. I pretty much went: Oh shit! This isn't SpongeBob, the cartoon lady isn't okay! Nobody told me death could happen in cartoons outside of Bambi! lol
Adam Azzalino
2024-11-18 18:15:53 +0000 UTC"I ran the 40 in 5.9 seconds but my fellas haven't reached the end zone in 12 years". Given that Hank was a good high school football player, that's a terrible time for the 40 yard dash, so I think Hank is using a metaphor to say his dick is 5.9".
Faux Macho
2024-11-18 18:13:49 +0000 UTCGreat episode as always, I appreciate that KotH had big cliffhangers for season 2 and 3. Peggy's Spanish for "dog hair" is technically correct, but it's not an expression, just a literal translation. Houston only being two hours away from Arlen doesn't make any sense, especially since canonically they're a about a hundred miles from Dallas, and Kahn mentions his commute is a "3-hour drive," but next season we'll find out that you can float a river and end up in Downtown Houston, so Arlen is warping closer to Houston as the show goes on. Hank mentions he ran a "5.9 40," which is worse than 300-pound lineman do these days- unclear if this is a joke or just an error by the twig boy writers- even a 4.9 would be pretty bad. Y'all didn't mention it, but there's clearly an additional joke in Hank's "I guess I'll be the designated driver" line. Hank is 220 pounds and plans to let Peggy drive him home after 1-2 Alamos (probably 4% alcohol). At his weight and after 90 minutes at dinner, a blood alcohol calculator estimates he would be at 0.01%, 1/8 of the legal limit after two beers.
Chris Dobson
2024-11-18 15:57:27 +0000 UTCThat 7 restaurant is a sporting goods store eight episodes later
Langdon Alger
2024-11-18 09:50:23 +0000 UTC
