Bobby Hill (King of the Hill)

Robert Jeffrey "Bobby" Hill is a character on the animated series King of the Hill and is voiced by Pamela Adlon. Born September 29, 1985^[1], he is the 13-year old only child of Hank and Peggy Hill.^[2]

Bobby is short, overweight, extremely impressionable, lacking strength and a late bloomer, Bobby is not suited for sports, nor is he useful with his hands (though he is a gifted marksman), making him a comic foil to his ex-high-school-football-playing, tool-savvy father. Different as night and day, they eventually form a relationship in spite of their differences. Bobby was once sent to Fort Berk, a military academy which his highly-decorated grandfather Cotton Hill attended as a young man. He is also friends with Joseph Gribble and next-door neighbor Connie Souphanousinphone. Innocently sensitive and good-hearted, Bobby wants more than anything to be a prop comic like his hero "Celery Head" (a parody of Carrot Top), but has also aspired to be a ladies' man, runway model, proctologist, comedian, shaman, and a salesman of propane and propane accessories; he may even be the reincarnated Buddhist Lama "Sanglug".

In later seasons he served as the mascot for his middle school football team, the Tom Landry Longhorns. His father is occasionally embarrassed by Bobby's sometimes effeminate mannerisms ("That boy ain't right"), but Bobby most of all wants his father to be proud of him. Hank was deeply concerned for years by a suspicion that Bobby was gay. This fear was put to rest though when Connie's father caught her and Bobby together half-naked (prompting Kahn to tell Hank) and while Hank was obligated to yell at Bobby, he was also pleased by this development. He started the traveling sensation known as "The Propaniacs." Bobby is a very kind, caring, lovable, and good hearted character. Although his personality disappoints Hank, Bobby is at the same time a crack rifle shot and a professional level golfer. Further Bobby can be pushed into spontaneous anger, as when he punched the larger, more muscular Joseph for kissing Connie. Bobby has many of his irritating grandfather's more positive traits, such as joviality, body design and the knack of romancing girls with surprising ease.

[edit] Middle name

There is some debate over Bobby's middle name. Some believe it to be Jeffrey, as stated in the episode "Bobby Slam" when a very drunk Peggy said she wanted to name him Jeffrey but Hank would not let her. While some claim his full name is revealed on a trophy shelf built by Hank when Bobby was a baby to be Robert "Butch" Hill in the episode "Torch Song Hillogy", however Hank merely hoped his son's nickname would be "Butch.", and also in "Pregnant Paws" it is revealed that Bobby doesn't know his middle name and in "Love Hurts and So Does Art" Peggy while filling out forms for Bobby at the hospital says "We sure gave him a dumb middle name".

[edit] Late bloomer

While he is older than Connie and Joseph, Bobby is a classic example of a late bloomer. He has not yet experienced puberty and is jealous that Joseph is tall, dark and surprisingly handsome and sometimes mistaken for an adult. It is uncertain whether the writers will ever let Bobby enter puberty or not, since the changes to the character would most likely cause Pamela Aldon to be replaced as the voice for Bobby for a newer, deeper voice (that is what led to the change of the voice actor for Joseph from Brittany Murphy to Breckin Meyer). In the more recent episodes Bobby is very immature, even more so than the earlier episodes, and he also seems to have shrunk down to the height he was at the beginning of the series. With the news of the show's cancelation and no finale being produced, it is most likely the loose end of Bobby not beginning puberty will never surface.

[edit] Eating habits

Bobby has a penchant for eating unusual things and getting himself in trouble for doing so. Bobby once ate a 72-ounce steak (done rare at that) in 37 minutes after a breakup with his vegetarian girlfriend Marie (voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) for the sake of spiting her, then later vomits it up while talking to Connie.

In another episode, "Love Hurts and So Does Art", Bobby became ill with gout after repeatedly consuming chicken liver sandwiches at a New York-style deli in the local mall. Although the gout eventually requires him to use a senior citizen-style electric scooter, he still rides it to the mall to eat more chicken livers.

Bobby also ate an entire dish of lutefisk, a very smelly fish dish, that was prepared by the town's new female Pastor. His over consumption resulted in a fire that destroyed the church his family attends (albeit indirectly, as it was the matches he lit to cover the smell that burnt the church).

In "Peggy's Turtle Song," Bobby eats too much sugar one morning and is mistakenly diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. In "Westie Side Story" Bobby makes reference to eating Bible leather while chewing on a dog's leash. In "Hank's Choice," when the family discovers Bobby is allergic to Ladybird, the family dog, Bobby lives outside the house. He stays there even after he discovers his medication is alleviating his symptoms so he can stay outside and keep ordering pizza for dinner.

Bobby has also displayed talents for cooking and homemaking in general, to the chagrin of his mother Peggy. In the episode "Goodbye Normal Jeans," Bobby takes a shine to his new homemaking class where he learns, among other things, to become a culinary whiz. Peggy becomes jealous that Hank now prefers Bobby's cooking to her own and goes out of her way to sabotage Bobby's Thanksgiving turkey. In the event, she failed.

One constant throughout the entire run of the show has been Bobby's affinity for fruit pies. In the episode entitled "Junkie Business," Hank tries to persuade Bobby to come to work with him by listing all the items in the vending machine. Bobby responds tearfully by saying, "You had me at 'fruit pies'." In the episode "Little Horrors of Shop," Peggy extracts information from Bobby by bribing him with a fruit pie.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site for King of the Hill
• Bobby Hill official bio
• King of the Hill at the Internet Movie Database