‘King of the Hill’ Fans Complain About the Peggys in Their Families

Before you judge the overconfident, unknowingly unilingual substitute teacher in your life, try walking una milla in her size 16 chanclas.

Peggy Hill is a divisive figure in the King of the Hill fandom — in stark contrast to her stoic, self-effacing husband, Peggy’s got an ego the size of her stompers and she’s more than willing to make it everyone else’s problem. From her co-opting of conventional wisdom as if it’s a fresh take — “In my opinion, the day after Thanksgiving is one of the busiest shopping days of the year” — to her absolute butchery of Español, the gap between Peggy’s estimation of herself and her actual intelligence, attractiveness and linguistic abilities is where most of her storylines take place. For that reason, a significant contingency of the King of the Hill fandom has a deep hatred for the woman whom Cotton Hill calls “Hank’s Wife,” while the rest of us realize that the audience’s love/hate relationship with the Hill family matriarch is an intended effect — but not many of us would want to eat her cooking every night.

Over in the King of the Hill subreddit, fans with their own Peggy-esque family members commiserated in a recent thread from user MikeRasmusenNavyVet titled, “Do You Have a Real Life Peggy Hill in Your Family?” Here are their stories…

“My mother-in-law. Terrible cook, but thinks she’s great. Gets really insulted personally if anyone else tries to cook anything. Thinks she speaks fantastic Dutch, but is really on Peggy’s Spanish level. Gets confused about a lot of basic facts, but has the ego of a toddler, you cannot correct her. According to her the Hague is a building in Amsterdam, not a whole separate city that is the Netherlands' political capital.” — ItsNotMeItsYourBussy

“My wife had a weirdly meta Peggy moment on vacation a few years back. We were riding Amtrak to Seattle from Chicago, and as we’re passing into Montana, I nudge her and gesture out the window as I said, ‘Ahh, Montana, land of Peggy Hill.’ She looked me dead in the eyes like I had said the stupidest thing on earth and replied, ‘Honey, those are called plateaus.’” — Alchemist_92

“If we’re talking about a family member who always has totally real, intimate knowledge on any topic imaginable despite not having any formal education in any of those topics then may I introduce you to my entire family lol.” — gnocchibastard

“My in laws. I almost feel bad because they are genuinely nice people. But good Lord they just regularly say confidently incorrect things about nearly everything and equate being good at word games with actual intelligence.” — BenOnTheTextLine

“I went to law school with a lot of Peggy Hills.” — alpha_rat_fight_