This Filthy ‘King of the Hill’ Animation Error Is Against Everything Hank Stands For

King of the Hill star and Strickland Propane salesman Hank Hill’s most firmly held food belief is that, when hosting a barbecue, the grill master must use a clean-burning fuel so that his guests can “taste the meat, not the heat.” Once Hank learns about this grill gaffe, the animation department is going to tase his boot in their ass.  

The many advertised advantages of propane over other grill fuels are basically the Ten Commandments on King of the Hill — the holy gas does not alter or mask the flavors of the meat and its seasoning, it has exceptional ease of use and it doesn’t leave soot under Bobby’s fingernails like that filthy devil rock that Luanne so thoughtlessly introduced to the Hill house. And, most importantly, exclusively grilling with the clean-burning gas prevents the other members of the Hill family from invoking the wrath of the patriarch whose pride in propane cannot abide the suggestion that wasting all day getting a charcoal fire going while dealing with all the detritus and corruption that comes with it is worth the rich, smokey flavor.  

With Hank’s feelings on filthy fuel sources well-known by the writers and fans of King of the Hill, why, then, is Hank shown barbecuing on a charcoal grill with neither propane nor propane accessories anywhere in sight in the King of the Hill Season Three episode “Hank’s Cowboy Movie?”  

You can see it clear as day — the grill that Hank built himself out of two other grills doesn’t have a propane tank attached. It doesn’t even seem to have any butane burning, and we all know how Hank feels about the bastard gas. No, the fuel for that grill could only possibly lie inside the drum itself, which leaves only pellets, wood chips or the dreaded black death charcoal as possible heat sources.

In the context of “Hank’s Cowboy Movie,” Peggy commissioned a supercut of all the central characters’ home movies to make a “commercial” that probably wouldn’t help Arlen secure a deal to become the home of the Dallas Cowboys’ training camp, but it did warm the hearts of the Hill family and their friends as they watched Hank heat those poor steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs with ashy, burning garbage chunks.

Given that the video of Hank hosting a charcoal barbecue like it’s a Black Mass is from a home video with no identifying date at the bottom, there is some degree of plausible deniability that we owe the animators responsible for the offending scene. After all, the video may very well have been shot while Hank was still a salesman at Jeans West, long before Buck Strickland turned him on to the glory of propane.

Still, if that was the canon explanation for the gaffe, it’s hard to imagine that Hank wouldn’t have destroyed all evidence that he ever so much as touched a sack of Kingsford, let alone grilled and ate meat with the contraband coal. Most likely, this was just a case of outsourced animators ignoring the most sacred rule of the series. It’s like if The Simpsons ever aired a scene in which Homer ate a salad. And you don’t win friends with salad.