King Of The Hill: Why Pigmalion Is Considered One Of The Show's Darkest Episodes
Mike Judge's animated comedy "King of the Hill" has stuck to generally lighthearted themes for most of its 13 seasons, mostly focusing on Hank Hill (Judge) and his beer-drinking buddies.
But one notorious episode featured the gruesome death of one guest character and also threatened the demise of a main character — Hank and his wife Peggy's (Kathy Najimy) niece Luanne (Brittany Murphy).
In Season 7, Episode 9, "Pigmalion," Peggy persuades Luanne to quit her job as a restaurant server after a disagreement with her boss. Peggy then enrolls them both in a seminar at the Harlen learning annex, where local pork magnate Trip Larsen (Michael Keaton) becomes entranced by Luanne and offers her a job at Larsen Pork Products.
While Hank and Peggy both initially try to dissuade Luanne from rushing into a relationship with Trip, Hank is won over by Trip's propane-powered hot air balloon and collection of football bloopers. At one point when Hank takes a ride in Trip's balloon, Trip makes a thinly veiled threat on the ground to Peggy.
"Mrs. Hill, I'm a guy who makes his own rules," he whispers menacingly. "Play by them, and everybody wins. Try to call your own game, not so terrific."
That night, a Larsen company truck drops a headless pig on the Hills' lawn — but the episode gets much darker. Trip moves Luanne into his mansion, shreds her clothes, drugs her, and dyes her hair red after she passes out. Trip later tries to render himself and Luanne into Larsen pork products, but Peggy arrives at the processing plant just in time to save Luanne, although Trip is impaled on a metal spike and is turned into one of his company's sausages.
Trip's psychopathic behavior turns out to be a product of his neglected childhood
The climactic scene in the Larsen processing plant takes place during Trip's Halloween party and is exceptionally harrowing and violent for an episode of "King of the Hill."
His death comes just after Trip tells Luanne why he dyed her hair and destroyed her clothing, replacing it with multiple versions of an outdated dress. He explains that he wanted to make her look like the girl in a Larsen pork products ad that had hung in his nursery during his traumatic, neglected childhood.
Fans weighed in regarding the episode in a thread on the r/King of the Hill subreddit, with most expressing delight that the writers took such a bold detour with the episode. U/Sabrefudge used a clever porcine pun in praising the episode, writing, "It takes something already weird and subverts expectations and goes REALLY hog wild with it."
U/4Ever2Thee was thrilled by how far afield from their usual fare the "King of the Hill" writers went for "Pigmalion," writing, "I love that they went there with it. I love shows that aren't afraid to entertain dark ideas like this in the writer's room." U/EcstaticCinematicZ pointed out exactly how much "Pigmalion" differed from the rest of the series up to that point, writing, "The weird thing about this episode is that there really aren't many jokes in it. It's just creepy and morbid. It's really the only horror episode of King of The Hill."