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It's Thanksgiving in Arlen, so the Hills head to the one location that, at the time, was quickly becoming a hotbed of holiday activity: the mall! While the rest of the group shops (and sleeps), Hank and the guys take part in a lawnmower focus group that may also be an extended metaphor for his relationship with his mother. Come for the classic movie parody, stay for the touching mother-and-son reconciliation. It's all happening on TalKing of the Hill: the only podcast that warms your can!

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nina matsumoto

Unrelated to KotH but just wanted to clear up the "creepy writer inserted himself into Powerpuff Girls" myth (brought up in the news segment). Other crew members inserted him as a joke and made him voice the character as well. Full details in this article: https://gizmodo.com/this-creepy-powerpuff-girls-theory-isnt-true-thank-god-1795730698

Jessica S

That’s a relief. I was in my twenties during PPGs original run, so I had never seen an episode until I turned it on one day for my daughter to watch. I remember she must have been four at that point, b/c her fifth birthday was coming up and as we all now mark time as before/after COVID, it was the last normal birthday she had until last year when she turned eight, lol. I remember when we would walk home from seeing brother off to school and sometimes there would be a break in the traffic on street and I would always say “wow, it’s really quiet!” and she would agree. One morning during one such pause, after a marathon weekend of PPG, I said “wow, it’s really quiet”, and she agreed. Then, without skipping a BEAT she said “a little TOO quiet if you ask me”. 😱😂 A better parent would’ve decided she’d had enough TV for awhile; as for us we went home and picked up where we left off. She preferred the original series to the resurrection, which is good in its own right but I have to say I felt a bit of pride that my preschooler had such refined taste, lol. The newer version is much more colorful and appealing to her generation, I would imagine, but there is something really special about the original. I read an article written around the time they brought it back, and the author pointed out how female-forward it was for its time, and not only that but (correct me if this is wrong) also that there was no police or army that they had to work around to save the world (before bedtime, natch). Even the mayor was a ineffectual figure head, Ms. Bellum being the real brain (har har), and HIM was a villain that might as well have been written as a gender inclusion character today, in a lot of ways.

Jessica S

BTW - I have to brag about the one and only awesome bday cake I’ve made (I’m a very lazy parent - last year she wanted a mermaid theme so I bought a premix of sprinkles from Etsy and tossed them on a store bought cake, lol.) But the PPG was EPIC: I bought the mini figures for each girl and posed them (tried to) like their flying pose and used blue, green and pink colored sugar crystals as the trails leading to its corresponding girls. Now I want cake. Lol.

Mark D Myers

This episode should be called talking dads.

Patrick McClafferty

1998 was the first time I really became aware of Black Friday as an actual thing. My mom had gotten up extremely early to get a reasonably priced (for the first time that I remember) DVD player for my dad for Christmas that day. Then the family went to the mall later in the day and, related to something Henry brought up, we tried to go to a movie and everything was sold out.

Frank Grimes

The focus group is still one my part of this episode.

talkingsimpsons

Oh no, I think fell for the anti-new PPG contingent of social media from about a decade ago and just kept repeating the myth instead of reading up on it. I’ll stop defaming that innocent party from now on. - Henry

Thad Komorowski

"Sexist"? C'mon. Everyone expects Hank to stand up to Cotton because *THAT'S HANK'S OWN MOTHER COTTON IS ABUSING*. It's an all too common familial scenario, the chickenshit adult child standing by doing nothing, they're illustrating. That's why it's a powerful moment at the end when he finally *does*... and why it's immensely satisfying.

Michael Branson

I did a focus group in a mall once for cigarettes. They gave us 4 blank packs and we had to smoke them and fill out questionnaires. At the end of the month(one pack per week), we got $100! Not bad for a possible cancer outcome!!!!

Michael Branson

It’s kinda sexist cause they do just expect Hank to say something. Peggy could have said something. Bobby stood up to him but he was the only one. Yeah the episode is about Hank finally standing up to his father, but if gender roles are supposed to be equal, Peggy or Luanne could have said something. But Cotton would have just called them names so maybe your right.

Frank Grimes

Your focus group discussion reminds me of the time I did one at Universal studios city walk. I was killing time and i was approached if I wanted to make a quick 20 bucks. Turned out i had to watch and react to trailers. One of the trailers I remember turned out to be the movie Ma, with Octavia Spencer. It would be released a year or two later after I did the focus group...and the place in the mall you're thinking of is called hot dog on a stick.

Thad Komorowski

This is "forced offense". If a parent is being out of line, especially about the other parent, it's their adult kid's responsibility to call them out. The women aren't Cotton's kids - Hank is. When my father was making crass comments on Facebook, I called him out in person to not talk about my mother like that publicly. Gender doesn't have anything to do with it - it's all to do with integrity and human decency. That's why Peggy does it more often than Hank in the series.

Anonymous

can we get a $1000 patron live-stream where Henry tells off his dad?

Michael Branson

Hmmmm that should really be a private thing for Henry. Unless it gets him his old tapes!!!

Blake R.

Thanksgiving is easily one of my most hated holidays. too close to Christmas, an obligation to travel within a much smaller window of time, and just stoking the fires of family arguments all under the sake of togetherness! if anything I always like when tv episodes about it embrace the "doesn't this holiday SUCK?" aspect and King of the Hill has some of the best. "Oh, but the food!" i'm a grown ass adult with a job. I can get turkey and mashed potatoes and pies whenever I want without having to sit through passive aggression!

Burt Stanton

I would like to think in a real life situation, everyone at the table would jointly tell someone who is behaving like that to fuck off.

Burt Stanton

My memory of the 90s era Dallas Mavericks is that they were often one of the worst teams in professional basketball. They really became well regarded in the 00s once comedy punching bag Ross Perot sold them to Shark Tank superstar Mark Cuban.

Anonymous

I could be wrong but I always assumed Hank didn't want to hear Celine Dion sing the national anthem because she's Canadian

Thad Komorowski

I would too, but it so often is not the case with a Cotton-type present. Which is why this is such a painfully real depiction of family dysfunction.

Riley Hall

Riley the budtender here and 4/20 is our black Friday. Except it's not the only profitable day for my store. We work from open to close and have to wait until after work to partake. It can be overwhelming but you're so busy, the day kinda flies by. Then my coworkers and I have a celebratory smoke sesh and hit up the local watering hole. I can confirm that most regular users don't realize that it's 4/20 until they ask me why we're so busy.

Colton

Just wanted to clarify that Urasawa’s multiple manga series were made digitally available in Japan as of December 2021 (including Billy Bat), which opens the door for the English editions of his works to be made available the same way in the US eventually. Also I’m with Henry, I REALLY want to read Billy Bat.

Alex Atchley

Growing up and basically still living in Arlington TX - Six Flags Mall was down Highway 360, not attached. I bought a lot of anime tapes from their Suncoast back in the day, but the mall died a slow, slow death, and barely held on until its 2016 death. It was demolished and there's just an industrial park there now.

Joe Hodgson

I'm going to agree with Henry on the dinner scene. I didn't see everyone looking to Hank to defend his mother as a sexism thing, but just as deference to his status as Tilly's only child. It would be almost a breech of etiquette to rush to Tilly's defense ahead of Hank thereby making him look bad for not sticking up for his mom. It's sort of like the Seinfeld episode where George extends a "God bless you" when a woman sneezes in front of her husband. With Hank though, his toothless defense of his mother just makes the situation more awkward as now anyone who defends Tilly will make Hank look worse than he already does which is why the situation is all together uncomfortable. I think if the genders were reversed with Hank and Peggy the scene would have played out the same.

Anonymous

You know (ignoring Cottons comment’s obviously) but I always found it cute and nice that they go through with the meal and all eat together. My parents have only ever shared a meal 1 time that I can remember, on my 18th birthday, & it didnt just end with light disappointment let me tell you.

Anonymous

The lemonade place in the mall is actually a parody of Hot Dog on Stick, a staple of malls in Los Angeles and on Venice Beach. It's where you would go to see their primarily female staff pump up and down on a handle to press and mix the tubs of lemonade every 1-2 hours. It was the perfect place for dirty old men like Cotton to leer at high school girls and make suggestive comments while ordering corn dogs.

Ian Stratton

Im surprised neither of you made the connection that Billy Bob Thornton and Dwight Yoakam were both in Sling Blade together.

Bob Mackey

I saw that but didn’t think it was important enough to mention