"Rodeo Days" is the seventy-second episode of King of the Hill. It was first aired on January 16, 2000. The episode was written by Jon Vitti and directed by Cyndi Tang-Loveland.
Summary[]
When Bobby and Joseph enter a rodeo competition, their friendship nearly falls apart when Joseph becomes a rodeo star and Bobby decides to become a rodeo clown who takes his clowning everywhere he goes.
Plot[]
Bobby goes to work with Hank out in the country on a propane run. This is where Hank's customer tells Hank of an upcoming Calf Wrangle at the Heimlich County Rodeo. Hank tries to encourage Bobby to join, stocking his wardrobe with cowboy clothes and getting him to practice roping with Joseph. The day comes, though and, unlike Joseph and the others, Bobby cannot tip the calf and it drags him about. When he is able to get up, he is impressed by the rodeo clowns Zipped Willie and Chet Halley. He soon wishes to join them and confronts them about doing so. Although reluctant at first, they allow him to join them if he pretends to be a "midget" to avoid being discovered as underage. To make himself a costume, he steals Bill's underwear, a pair of Hank's glasses, Peggy's size 16-and-a-half shoes, and Luanne's makeup to complete the look before training with the clowns.
He keeps his act as a clown secret from Hank, who does not approve of rodeo clowns and finds them annoying and weird. Meanwhile, Joseph is succeeding as a young cowboy and begins to become embarrassed as Bobby uses his antics at school. Finally, one day Bobby performs in front of an audience when his father is in attendance. Hank believes Bobby is a cowboy and had not recognized his clown persona until Bill recognizes the underwear and shoes as respectively belonging to him and Peggy. At this time Joseph, fearing that his new friends will make fun of him for associating with Bobby, makes jokes with the other cowboys, and Bobby is emotionally hurt by his betrayal. At home, Hank takes Bobby's clown clothes and insists that he does not stay a rodeo clown. Peggy also reveals that her uncle, who she said was in the rodeo, was really a clown and not a cowboy.
Soon after, they return to the rodeo as spectators to watch Joseph ride a baby bull. When he falls off and the clowns are attacked before they can save him, Hank helps Bobby redress as a clown and encourages him to save Joseph. Using his routine, Bobby distracts the bull as they retrieve Joseph, and gets the audience to laugh. After the rodeo, Joseph and Bobby make up, and Joseph gives Bobby one of his belt buckles.
Characters[]
- Hank Hill
- Peggy Hill
- Bobby Hill
- Joseph Gribble
- Dale Gribble
- Bill Dauterive
- Boomhauer
- Luanne Platter
- Zipped Willie
- Chet Halley
- Rodeo kids
- Rodeo announcer
- Stuart Dooley
- Roy
- Roy's son
- Clay Henry
- Buckle Bunny
- Elderly spectator
- Lady Bird
- Nancy Gribble (non-speaking)
- John Redcorn (non-speaking)
- Uncle Boffo (mentioned)
- Hector (mentioned)
- Kerri Strug (mentioned)
Stinger Quote[]
- Willie: "Here's your ass pad, son."
References[]
- The rodeo announcer invokes Mister Ed and its theme song when he calls out the horse Mister Dead with "A horse is a hearse of course, of course."
- Hank refers to Bobby as Ben Cartwright, the main character of the long-running western series Bonanza.
Trivia[]
- This is the first episode to air in 2000, and thus the first episode to air in the 21st century.
- In this episode, we found out that Bill owned a pair of boxers that was discontinued for 20 years.
- The situation where Bobby becomes a rodeo clown while trying to keep it a secret may be a bow to the landmark 1927 motion picture "The Jazz Singer" where the son of a Jewish cantor becomes a performer of ragtime and jazz to the dismay of his orthodox father who wanted him to follow the family tradition and become a cantor. In the film, the son disguises himself with burnt cork blackface, while Bobby disguises himself with clown make-up. The film is famous for using a soundtrack and marked the beginning of the transition from silent films to "talkies."
- Peggy admits that she had an uncle name Boffo who was a Rodeo Clown.
- Bobby emphasizes his crush on Kerri Strug for the second time. In the episode "I Remember Mono", he was under the impression that Kerri Strug, whom he had a crush on, was his secret admirer.
- This episode marks the final time where Bobby uses the comedic shtick of endlessly repeating the phrase "Vat are you talking about?" in a Yiddish accent, which was first seen in "And They Call it Bobby Love."
- The music playing during the scene when Hank and Bill discover that Bobby is a rodeo clown is the finale of the William Tell Overture by composer Gioachino Rossini.
- Right after Joseph is carried away due to his injury, the pick-up men can very briefly be seen kicking one of the rodeo clowns.
- The episode uses the same fairgrounds, intercom announcer man and the same bleachers for the later episode "My Own Private Rodeo" (where Dale's father is discovered to be working in the Gay Rodeo circuit). This may have been intentional, or a way to reuse scenes and backgrounds to save money.
- Cowboys do not look down on rodeo clowns or bully them as depicted in this story. Rodeo clowns, typically called "barrelmen", actually have a great deal of respect for protecting people from dangerous animals. They go through rigorous training to learn how to properly do the job, and some even become minor celebrities (the most famous example being Flint Rasmussen, who was originally a math/history teacher and, ironically, from Montana just like Peggy's ill-rumored "Uncle Boffo"). The stereotype of the rodeo clowns in this episode being alcoholics, low-income and scruffy-looking probably came from old American imagery of circus clowns instead of rodeo clowns, such as Emmett Kelly, whose character he played was a scruffy, drunk clown called "Weary Willie," based on the hobos of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Kelly was originally an author and newspaper cartoonist (and, like Flint Rasmussen, actually had a lot of respect in his career, especially after an iconic photo was taken of him crying after he had aided in the rescue efforts of numerous people during the 1944 Hartford Circus Fire).
- If both clowns were indeed incapacitated as they were in the episode's last scenes, it is the job of the pick-up men to rescue Joseph. There would be severe legal problems if an underage, inexperienced clown like Bobby entered the arena, even if he just ran out there without permission. The Pick-up men would also not kick the injured clowns to roll their bodies out of the arena, and would also be expected to rescue Bobby rather than leave him behind with the angry animal.
- Hank has Bobby and Joseph training for the calf scramble together instead of independently. This later comes to make no sense as the scramble is an individual competition and the team training led to Joseph always being the one to do the heavy physical work while Bobby did the roping, leading to Bobby never developing the skill to actually flip the calf over prior to roping it.
- The "ass pad" Bobby receives from the clowns is played for comedy, but actually not exaggerated too much from reality. Professional rodeo clowns do have to wear numerous pieces of protective gear under loose-fitting clothes to avoid injury caused by large animals.
Goofs[]
- When Zipped Willie first appears, his green shorts appear to be hanging in front of his pants rather than being around his legs.