Floor Plans and the Neighborhood

Allowing that animated shows should not be overanalyzed and that there are a number of technical errors of continuity and fact in _King of the Hill_, are the floor plans of all the houses in the Hill neighborhood identical (or nearly so) or are some mirror-images of the others or are there several variants?

Each house has a street side and an alley side. The Hill house (at least) has two (or three, depending on how you count) sections to it: the garage/bedroom section has a roof line perpendicular to the street, and the family-room/kitchen section has a roofline parallel to the street and connects with the other section between the garage and the bedrooms in a "T" shape. There is at least one bathroom, Hank's and Peggy's bedroom, Bobby's bedroom, and a den turned into Luanne's bedroom, all apparently in the bedroom section nearest the street with two sets of sliding windows on the street side and one or two sets of sliding windows on the side facing the Gribble house. The garage has its vehicle doors facing the alley, and maybe a door on the side facing the Gribble house. The family-room/kitchen section has two sliding-glass door entrances (one for each room) on the alley side and regular door and maybe two sets of sliding windows on the street side. The Gribble house (at least) has a basement (and at least three bedrooms). The Souphanousinphone house appears to have rain gutters on the slanted edge of the roof (the ones Hank cleaned out after Kahn lost his job), which strikes me as a little odd (but as odd things go on the show it's about normal).

Why is all this important? Maybe it's not, but for instance the one time that John Redcorn was shown exiting through a window (and it struck me that he went out back first as if physically being thrown out) it was from the section with a roof line parallel to the street (which in the Hill hous would be the room adjacent to the kitchen, which I would assume to be the dining room, though the surface impression seems to be that he was leaving from a bedroom window.

And who lives where? From the street side, the Gribble house is to the right of the Hill house, and the Souphanousinphone house is to the left of the Hill house, aren't they? Boomhauer's house is across the alley from either the Hill house or the Gribble house. Is Bill's house next to Boomhauer's house across the alley (there were only a few seconds between the time Bill left with Peggy's wastebasket and the time his own door could be heard closing), and which side is it on; or is it on the Hill side of the alley beyond either the Gribble house or the Souphanousinphone house?

Dude, you went screaming past THAT mile marker a long time ago...

Jarret Cooper wrote:

] R J Valentine wrote: ]> ]> Allowing that animated shows should not be overanalyzed ] ] Dude, you went screaming past THAT mile marker a long time ago...

You may have a good point here. Let's see if I can figure out what you mean. Are you saying that the scene of John Redcorn falling or being pushed from the Gribble's dining-room window into the front yard while Dale Gribble is standing right there is conclusive evidence of something? Or are you saying that it was Hank's, Minh's, and allegedly Kahn's opinion that did it for you? Or did you mean that Mike Judge has never misled his audience about a plot point? Or did you mean that he so underestimated the viewing audience's ability to get the implied incongruity in the series premiere that he has been clubbing them over the head with it in fifty-seven percent of the episodes since, just to bring that last viewer on board? Or are you saying that he and his colleagues put no effort into the continuity of the show, other than that one running joke? No, wait, it seemed more personal than that; did you mean that I am disturbing the tranquility of a quiet newsgroup devoted to discussing the TV show _King of the Hill_ by presuming to go beyond the approved "What's your (least) favorite episode?" or "Who's your (least) favorite character?" Have in your opinion the floorplans of the houses in the Hill neighborhood been overdiscussed? If you can support whatever it is you are saying, all the better.

Thanks for sharing.

I think the point is made, re-made, and made again. Thanks.

Couldn't have put it better. Thanks for keeping everything in perspective.

j c

Jarret Cooper wrote:

] Couldn't have put it better. Thanks for keeping everything in ] perspective.

Yup.

MMM-hmm.

j c

In the series premiere the Hill's driveway is shown immediately adjacent to the driveway next door, implying that the floor plans if similar are mirror images of each other.

In the wrestling episode, Bobby's bedroom (presumably as usual on the garage end of the house) is directly opposite Connie's bedroom with a clear view for homework help over the fence.

Doesn't the Gribble family live on the garage/bedroom side of the Hill house in other episodes?

R J Valentine wrote:

] In the series premiere the Hill's driveway is shown immediately adjacent ] to the driveway next door, implying that the floor plans if similar are ] mirror images of each other. ] ] In the wrestling episode, Bobby's bedroom (presumably as usual on the ] garage end of the house) is directly opposite Connie's bedroom with a ] clear view for homework help over the fence. ] ] Doesn't the Gribble family live on the garage/bedroom side of the Hill ] house in other episodes?

In the archaeology episode, Nancy Gribble is shown coming out of the (person) door on the side of the garage adjacent to the Hill's garage and getting into John Redcorn's car for the weekend migraine seminar in Corpus Christi, so there's not a lot of continuity as to who is living on that side of the Hill house. In the tornado episode she is shown through a bedroom window on that side getting ready for a special broadcast about the tornado, the bedroom being about where Connie's bedroom was in the wrestling episode.

Earlier in the archaeology episode, the street side of the Gribble house is shown with the front door between the two windows (as in the series premiere, where the other side of that door is the Gribble living/dining room) and John Redcorn comes from the dining-room end to explain that he is there giving Nancy a therapeutic massage to help her migraines. The front of the house isn't especially consistent with the back of the house, though.

Other items for continuity calibration:

Bill's sergeant stripes tended to point up in the front views and down in the rear views in the tornado episode.

Kahn's reflection appeared to be on the wrong side of him in the last shot of the rest-room scene in the episode when he lost his job.

On the sliding-glass-door wall of the Hill kitchen, there is room for the counter with the coffee maker and a refrigerator between the door and the end of the house on the inside, but less than the width of a refrigerator on the outside of that wall.

In the opening-credit scene the telephone pole is about three boards short of the end of the fence (to coin a phrase), but there is room for an entire couch/sofa between the end of the fence and the pole in at least the one episode.

I mention these not to be picky, but as a cautionary note about attaching significance to small details.