Why does everyone hate Hank Hill?

Liberal democrat over here. I love Hank. I actually enjoy every character on the show, including oft-cited Scrappies Peggy and Lucky.

Exactly. Making Lucky the scapegoat for Luanne's so-called "downfalls" is absolutely ridiculous. It's not like he forced her to be barefoot and pregnant. She has the job that she dreamed of since she was a child, she has her own home, she's had no run-ins with the law. So what if she married a redneck? She's not following in her parents' footsteps one bit.

I especially loathe it when people blame Lucky for Luanne taking a level in dumbass, something that started partway through Season 2 and was in full force by Season 3.

Hank Hill can be too much of a disciplinarian without having any lessons to give or a sympathetic ear toward's Bobby's side of the story, like "The Buck Stops Here", where he has Bobby work for Strickland, constantly chastises him for something or other, and in the end grounds him without telling him what he did wrong. This is especially dangerous for a simpleton like Bobby, and reminds me too much of the occasional disproportionate punishment I received, except here, again, Hank is designated as the Voice of Reason, even though suffice to say he could have handled things a lot better.

Not sure about Dale being a more sympathetic character though. Most of it may be him being downright cuckoo, but sometimes he just plain trolls Hank, like when the latter was raising a stink with the DMV for screwing up his gender.

I like Hank Hill. He's probably my favorite character on the show next to Bill Dauterive. I never understood why everyone talked about how awful of a father he was when Cotton and even Education Papa Kahn are much worse. He just has some old-fashioned values, that's all.

edited 25th Jan '14 3:27:08 PM by PPPSSC

An interesting duality in the show was how they bounced back and forth on Cotton's redeeming qualities. Sometimes it was a hard "no, this guy is an irredeemable jerk" (and unfortunately that was the note they chose to go out on, quite solidly, in the episode he died), but he had a lot of redeeming moments, like at the end of the Japan episode, or when he helped Peggy rehabilitate herself.

I think it's obvious that Cotton's hard-nosed upbringing is part of what screwed Hank up into the stick-in-the-mud he became, so it's an interesting concept.

I'm very liberal as well, and Hank is the only part of the show I really like.

Considering that almost everyone on show most likely leans politically to the right, I don't think it's conservatism that people dislike Hank.

Not everyone hates Hank Hill. Some people just don't enjoy him as a character anymore. now why they would hate Hank, ask the guys who hate them.

Now I personally don't hate Hank Hill. In fact, I praise him as probably one of the sanest cartoon characters we have in this world, right now. Though I am not that big on the show however, because King of the Hill just doesn't have as big of an appeal as the Simpsons, Family Guy, or American Dad does.

I don't hate Hank Hill. He may be a bit on the uptight side with some things, but he gives off a reliable vibe. Plus he has his faults, and has slipped up a good couple of times. Like that one episode where he was supposed to put in a good word for Buck, who was too busy carousing with his long lost son, and he would up drunk on the stage and lost it all over an important lady.

"The boy ain't right!"

But seriously, I like Hank well enough but there were episodes like with the Stage Magician and the episode where he essentially guilted Bobby into being a mascot and getting beat up by the rival team that made me cringe.

In the Arlen of the batshit insane, the semi-sane man is King Of The Hill.

As I and others have said here, Hank may have gotten used to reacting to the way his circle handles things, and it just made an old-fashioned man ever more uptight, seeing a town/county/state/country in flames every time one of them gets an idea, and IMO, this was not a wholly invalid fear. Hank was only always right (when he was) in comparison to how unbelievably wrong everyone else could be. I think exactly one Peggy scheme ever worked out without Hank stepping in. We see Hank getting all upset when Bobby suddenly wants to be a florist. What we don't see is inside Hank's mind, as Bobby somehow plants species never meant to be in this hemisphere, with RE-style mutant plants eating everyone while a local EPA official forbids the use of paraquat, and Bill dates Poison Ivy.

Bill : She calls me her little fertilizer.

Hank is one of those character archetypes that leans erratically between having lucid or extremist qualities, so I suppose it's kinda hard to get his side of the argument down. When he's right, he's Rightly Self-Righteous, but when he's wrong, his point of view is humanized enough (and the other's insane enough) that he's a Designated Villain. I'll give credit the show often tried hard to be grey toned and show the blessings of a compromise, but of course given Hank's character, you know he's too stubborn to ever change ultimately.

edited 25th Jan '14 10:26:04 PM by Psi001

The stage magician was one of the more fun moments with Hank, because you knew he was wrong and it was fun watching something really get to him like that. The whole thing with locking Peggy in the trunk was Refuge in Audacity, especially since it was clear that he didn't really intend to leave her in there for any length of time.

I agree with the moral of that one episode, that apparently it was Bobby's duty to get beaten up by the other school's band. Not sure what that episode was going for, unless the idea is that we were simply supposed to accept the Serious Business of Texas middle-school football as a given, and cheer on Bobby bravely accepting what is expected of him.

What really got me about the episode though was not so much Hank, but the freakin Teacher's at Bobby's school started bullying the kid.

Biggest Warped Aesop I've ever seen in a show. And it was played straight.

Essentially he is always portrayed as right when he is incredibly obviously wrong. Like the mascot or stage magician episodes. He also constantly has Strawmen opponents without looking at it from any other side. For all the talk about how "realistic" the show was Hank's opposition never seemed human even when they really should have been. I could've forgiven that if he did more funny things as a character but more often than not his family was funnier in scenes without him as a Straight Man.

The show had it's moments but when it focused on Hank it was preachy to no end.

edited 26th Jan '14 6:32:16 PM by Wildcard

Again, i don't see what the issue with the stage magician was. He was wrong and the show portrayed him as wrong, and that was what made him funny. He did not understand how that trick worked, and he couldn't stand it, driving him to lock Peggy in a trunk to squeeze the answer out of her (but, again, i don't see the abusiveness there, since he was right there with her. If it had been something like "i'll come back in an hour and see if you're ready to talk," *that* would have been abusive)

No that was still abusive. Locking someone in a closet for information is awful. I could've forgiven it if it was dark comedy. It wasn't even funny though.

Hank had some raging Jerkass moments, to be certain. But it always seemed to me like his comeuppances led to some very minor changes on his part, while all the rest either ran in place or Flanderized further.

As to Lucky and the snake, I might point out he bought it without the permission of or checking with the boy's parents, and he flatly did not know how to handle it before it got away. As to Straw Men like the exterminators, they were the show's stock in trade. I think Jimmy Carter was the sole reasonable authority figure in all of the show's time.

I also think some may be missing the point of the Canadian renter ep, at least as I see it. Hank and company tried to be obnoxious towards him in various ways, but he was much better at it and smarter about it to boot.

Hank can also be both right and wrong. The Scoutmaster he disliked for his usual reasons lambasted him for exposing his (possibly overprotected) boys to things he didn't approve of, including things possibly dangerous to their health. But this man was happy to push his beliefs on all the other boys, and pointedly had not told Hank of these medical conditions. Hank not only looked like a fool, but it was against someone who proved to be little if any better.

Arlen is a town that turns on a dime, and on that dime they will turn on Hank, usually when he's at his most reasonable, relatively speaking. It could easily make an uptight man more uptight—and did.

Oh, absolutely. There are many episodes where everybody turns on Hank, such as "Apres Hank, Le Deluge" (the Arlen flood), "Racist Dawg" (where Lady Bird and Hank hate repairmen, but everybody assumes Hank was a racist), the snake episode, and when Hank moved Bobby to a different league and everybody hated that Hank was so "mean" to Bobby when, in reality, Hank was being a realist who was trying to tell people that Bobby will be the worst player.

The problem I have more than those episodes where Hank ends up becoming viewed as a Designated Villain is that the episodes where he is presented as being in the right, even though he presented himself as being intolerant at times. The balance, as some users have commented, is that the person that represents the thing Hank doesn't light isn't presented in a positive light; they are a "Jackass".

I didn't like Hank in the epsiode where he didn't like Bobby taking after a rich entrepreneur, where it was implied it was simply because the guy cleaned up after people's dogs. He went so far as to pay the guy to demerit himself infront of Bobby. The guy wasn't even giving a Bobby any bad advice ! He was giving him really good advice on how to make a living off of something as trivial as cleaning dog poop. "Find something nobody else wants to do". That's good advice. But Hank's reasons for dissapproval were petty and selfish

My biggest concern comes from all these instances piled together, which makes it seem like Hank just tends to devalue anything Bobby takes a liking to that is remotely unconventional. While Hank is obviously based on the archetype of someone who believes a living is through modest old fashioned hard work and challenge, he seems to take this to extreme that if Bobby finds some form of eccentric happiness in his life, he must destroy it because suffering builds character (similarly he spearheads anything Bobby is clearly unhappy with).

edited 31st Jan '14 11:04:01 AM by Psi001

I'd like to know how Hank was before Bobby displayed his tendency for taking things too far. This is not to say Hank isn't way uptight, and often intolerant. But the way Bobby often approaches his newest thing seems to be at a constant eleven to Hank's berserk buttons - and he has a lot of those. Again, Hank is a curmudgeon and stuck in the past. But I still have to believe half of his leaping to action to stop the other characters' latest escapade is also steeped in where he knows they will take it, and how its likely to splash back on him. Cotton is a foolish old man whose chances of getting to Castro (IIRC) were dead nil. The Emperor's security could likely have held him down before he even saw Cotton. But Hank knows he's just as likely to start a war. Translate that to anyone else in the main and extended cast. Hank may be very much disinclined against therapy - but add Bill to that, and he hates it, for what Bill is likely to do with almost any advice. And so forth.

One moment I hated was when Hank with Peggy's aid (and that of a few others) successfully pranked Dale with a phony conspiracy after a real rampage of Jerkass on Dale's part. Nancy, his bestest enabler evers, shames Hank for doing so because Dale is an easy target and friends aren't supposed to do...ohhh, the kinds of things Dale does on a regular basis. Hank could stand to be a lot more supportive. I just see, along with his judgmental behavior, him wondering just what it is he'd be supporting in each case. The man has a redeeming quality in being able — on occasion — to step back from himself. I think only Bobby, at the series tail-end, also managed to accomplish this. Sometimes, in the face of truly blatant and unapologetic stupidity, even a stick-in-the-mud is right. I still remember Lucky and Luanne's wedding, and how Hank's insistence they buy a house instead of having a magazine wedding could not have been more correct.

Oh, and 'Apres Hank, Le Deluge' is my rock-bottom Anti-Hank ep, while the fashion show was my rock-bottom Jerkass Hank ep.

edited 31st Jan '14 3:34:34 PM by Gojirob

I really like it when Hank's way of doing things blows up in his face, like when his attempt at fixing Bill's holiday depression lead to the poor guy breaking completely and insisting he's his own wife.

I do appreciate the fact that, while it doesn't always rightfully assume who should be the moral superior of each episode, the show did at least bother to show that everyone has the opportunity to be right or wrong. Hank and other could be insufferable, but they weren't enabled constantly, nor were they the Designated Villain of every short, and despite those episodes they got away with crap, they at least had some moment they were viciously kicked off their pedestal in a cathartic fashion. Many episodes also bothered to make a middle ground, Hank or another was shown to have a point, but realize they'd catch more flies with honey. It never stuck of course, but it shown they could display humility for a while.

Compare this to many shows, which generally have the 'always right vs always wrong' chemistry (and with similar bad executions), with maybe a couple odd forced role reversals if generous enough.

edited 31st Jan '14 6:52:05 PM by Psi001

Maybe it's due to some of his more jerkish or insensitive moments ("Texas City Twister" and "Pretty Pretty Dresses" come to mind).

Maybe the Hank-hate (where it exists) comes from him being more sane than the others, but still leaping headlong into insanity just like them? As much as I despise his actions at Bobby's fashion show, seeing Bobby gleefully seeking the approval of his stuck-up peers was kind of off-putting, and thuggish boys like the vandals were perhaps inevitable at some point. It's still Cotton-esque on Hank's part, without the sort-of leavening honesty Cotton brought to his objections. As time went on, Hank became less devious and more openly self-righteous and picky.

I thought the ep with the overwhelming Home A/V system was ridiculous. They're not that off-putting to set up, and it showed Peggy in yet another My Beloved Smother moment regarding Luanne. Yeah, Mike (or controller at that time) - Luanne's dumb. We may have picked that up from other eps.