"Nancy Does Dallas" is the 13th episode of the the 13th season of King of the Hill and the 248th episode overall. It originally aired on March 22, 2009. The episode was written by Tony Gama-Lobo and Rebecca May, and directed by Michael Loya.
Summary[]
Nancy cheats and backstabs her way to being top news anchor when her news story about a possum being brought to school nets her a job in Dallas. Still, she finds the ride downhill to be a bumpy one—especially when she appears at the Thanksgiving Day parade drunk. Meanwhile, Dale tries to remodel his house to prepare for global warming's effects, but he ends up being injured by Bobby.
Plot[]
Nancy yearns for a more meaningful career after her producer tosses one too many fluff piece assignments her way. Transforming a story about a kid bringing his pet possum to class into a panic-inducing exposé on the lack of security in schools which nets ratings (with Hank the only one who realizes it wasn't a proper news report), she receives a job offer that takes her to a major news station in Dallas. The panic is so far-reaching that Tom Landry Middle School begins teaching self-defense classes, and Bobby and Joseph appoint themselves as security monitors for the neighborhood. Dale and Joseph react with enthusiastic support to Nancy's career advancement, though it means that the two of them will be on their own with Nancy away in Dallas.
Nancy quickly falls in with the newsroom’s backstabbing, hard-partying ways. Developing a fondness for drinking, she teams up with her co-anchor Gwen St. James to get rid of the lead anchor Wade Bixby and ride the station's float in an upcoming parade without him. But when she invites Peggy and Minh to a gathering of high-profile Dallas personalities, she reveals to their appalled astonishment that her ulterior motive is to get both Wade and Gwen fired and take over by herself. Meanwhile, without Nancy around to keep him in check, Dale becomes enmeshed in his various conspiracy theories, and while using an array of air conditioners to attempt to acclimate himself and Joseph for a hypothetical ice age, he blows his house’s circuit breaker. He sneaks into the Hills' home to steal their electricity, only to be assaulted by Bobby, who mistakes him for a prowler and causes a bookcase to fall on him, breaking his leg. Hank and Peggy's pleas for Nancy to return home at this point fall on deaf ears, as Nancy has meanwhile successfully schemed her way into a position on the station's parade float, riding solo.
On the day of the big parade, Nancy arrives drunk, and in her alcoholic stupor eventually tumbles off the float in full view of the cameras of every news source in town. Having disgraced her new station, she is fired and sent back to Arlen, where she at least manages to get her old job with Channel 84 back. She begins plotting her next move immediately, thinking of squashing the local competition until she’s offered a spot in Houston. But Dale's latest mishap distracts her, and Peggy and Hank realize that taking care of Dale keeps Nancy too busy to be as backstabbing and ruthless as she had been in Dallas and that Nancy needs Dale to get into trouble more than Dale needs her to bail him out. The episode ends with Dale telling Nancy that, even though she gained a lot of fame for being an Arlen newscaster who went to Dallas, he did miss having her around the house and apologizes for the house smelling like walrus from his global warming/climate change experiment.
Characters[]
- Hank Hill
- Peggy Hill
- Bobby Hill
- Nancy Gribble
- Dale Gribble
- Bill Dauterive
- Jeff Boomhauer
- Joseph Gribble
- Coach Kleehammer
- Minh Souphanousinphone
- Bret Winslow
- Gwen St. James
- Wade Bixby
- Tom Chick
- Octavio
- Russian man (voiced by Stephen Root)
Stinger Quote[]
- Wade Bixby: "I'M WADE BIXBY!"
Trivia[]
- The episode title is a play on the 1978 adult film Debbie Does Dallas.
- Dale is revealed to be completely fluent in Russian, as also shown previously in the Season 6 episode "Tankin' It to the Streets".
- In the scene of Dale discreetly speaking with the Russian men at night, the Russian man tells Dale, "Это на самом деле честный образец" (Eto na samom dele chestnyy obrazets), which means, "This is indeed a genuine sample." In that sentence, the first vowel in the word "честный" is incorrectly pronounced unstressed instead of stressed, and the soft consonant "с" is incorrectly pronounced like the hard consonant "з". Likewise, the word "образец" is incorrectly pronounced with English phonetics rather than Russian phonetics, and the man incorrectly pronounces the consonant "з" using a "ж" sound.
- In turn, when he speaks with them, Dale responds, "Мне сперва нужно посмотреть на это" (Mne sperva nuzhno posmotret' na eto), which means, "I'll need to look at it first." As he says the adverb "сперва", he incorrectly places the stress on the first vowel instead of the second vowel.
Quotes[]
To be added.