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"Keeping Up With Our Joneses" is the tenth episode of King of the Hill. This episode is one of the darker episodes of the series.

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Summary[]

When Hank catches Bobby smoking, he decides to teach his son a lesson, but the entire family find themselves suffering the consequences.

Plot[]

Luanne is outraged when she discovers Ladybird eating her "cruelty-free" cosmetics. Later, while digging through an old dumpster, Bobby and Joseph come across an unsmoked cigarette. The boys sneak into a men's room at a gas station and it light up. As luck would have it, Hank stops at the same station to use the bathroom. He pushes open the door and sees his son with a cigarette in his mouth. Determined to stop his son from becoming addicted, Hank forces Bobby to smoke an entire carton (thinking he won't be able to stand the sight of another cigarette when he is finished). As Bobby attempts to smoke them, Hank grabs a cigarette away to show how to inhale properly. As Hank takes a drag, a look of remembrance and relaxation washes over his face. By the end of the day, both Hank and his son are hopelessly addicted.

Ho yeah!

When Luanne catches Ladybird sniffing a makeup tin, she rattles a canister of pennies, scaring her off. Meanwhile, after sneaking cigarette after cigarette, Hank absentmindedly lights up in front of Peggy. Hank claims Bobby didn't finish a pack from the carton and insists he would hate to see them go to waste. Shortly thereafter, Hank and his wife go back to smoking cigarettes and feeling better than ever. Later, while eating a meal in the kitchen with Peggy, Hank recommends that the two of them should go eat at Smokey's Cafe, a place they use to go when they smoked.

Despite everyone's best efforts, Bobby discovers that his parents are addicted to smoking and vice versa.

The Hill's attend a Cigarenders meeting, but Hank quickly grows irritable and storms out with his family in tow. When they return home, Luanne attempts to make the Hills kick the habit by employing the same methods she used to keep Ladybird away from her cosmetics. When the family gets into a scuffle over a last remaining cigarette, Luanne locks them in a room together. The scuffle continues until Peggy, regaining her senses, throws the cigarette out a window. Despite experiencing a powerful nicotine withdrawal, the family makes it through a storm-filled night without smoking any cigarettes.

Characters[]

Trivia[]

  • During the credits, Boomhauer gives a demonstration on how lungs look when people smoke using a dirty air filter.
  • The Dionne Warwick song 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again' was featured during the flashback sequence.
  • "The Joneses", is a play on the saying 'keeping up with the joneses' (neighbors), and also a 'jones' is an addiction... in this case smoking addiction.
  • While Bobby is craving nicotine and going through withdrawal, he's seen hiding behind a public bench in which a man sits, secretly relishing in the secondhand smoke. The man on this bench is later seen among those attending the anti-smoking meeting at Motel Arlen.
  • A scene written for the episode (but not aired) featured Bobby meeting up with a bunch of anti-smoking kids, who get him to go into a store to buy cigarettes, to see if the shop owner enforces the smoking age limit. When the shop owner fails and Bobby gets the cigarettes, he runs away with them, with the kids chasing after him. While this scene never aired, it is included as a deleted scene in the Season One DVD set.
  • Jimmy Witchard makes his debut in this episode at the meeting to help everyone quit smoking. He's heard but not seen.
  • When the storm is hitting Arlen at the end of the episode, it shows a cigarette blow into a jail cell. The 4 male prisoners in the cell then jump out and fight over it. If you look closely, right before they all jump out of the bed, two of them are sleeping in a bed together (top left corner), with one bed empty.

Goofs[]

  • When the family goes to Hotel Arlen and the counselor tells the crowd, "look to the left," Peggy looks to the right. When he says to the crowd, "now look to the right," Peggy looks to the left. This might have been intended as a mistake on Peggy's part and not the animation team.
  • There are two scenes in which characters open doors and there is nothing but a black void on the other side.


Season 1 Season 2

Pilot · Square Peg · The Order of the Straight Arrow · Hank's Got the Willies · Luanne's Saga · Hank's Unmentionable Problem · Westie Side Story · Shins of the Father · Peggy the Boggle Champ · Keeping Up With Our Joneses · King of the Ant Hill · Plastic White Female
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