King of The hill season 3 (1 Viewer)

[Casey Trowbridg]

It only takes one to mess things up. Its not the number of songs, but how easy they are to clear and how much it costs to clear them.

Thanks for the update Jaime.

 

[Eric R C]

Any new news? I am guilty of holding off on buying individual seasons for fear of the whole series not being released.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

There is no new news. The most recent news was a) The "holding pattern" e-mail above, and b) An interview with John Stanley of Fox International who mentioned KotH along with Malcolm in the Middle as a show being held up by music clearances. (See the Malcolm thread; I wasn't sure at the time whether he was talking about KotH season 3, but now I'm pretty sure he was.) Put the two together and KotH season 3 is clearly on hold until they can work out whatever clearance issues are affecting it.

Understandably, nobody I've written to will directly tell me that that's the problem. If anybody has heard different, I'd be interested to hear; until then I'll have to sadly conclude that we may be in for a Malcolm-style wait.

I'm kicking myself now for not having asked Peter Staddon about KotH season 3 in the last Fox chat... we might have found out about the delay earlier...

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

Gord Lacey at TVShowsondvd confirms that Fox is thinking about releasing it toward the end of this year.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

See, that shows me that at least the show is still on the minds of the studio which I consider to be a good thing.

I never doubted that we'd get season 3, even though the potential for it to be a year or so after season 2 is kind of disappointing.

Someone mentioned that they had been holding off on show to see if more than just the 2 seasons get released. IMO, and as we've discussed earlier that is really not a good strategy to employ. We had a thread on between release nervousness that was quite a fun discussion a few months ago, and I outlined a whole lot of reasons why that's not a good strategy. In order to make a point quickly I'll say that if everyone held out to see if more than 1 season of a show were going to be released than only 1 season of every show would ever get released.

 

[David Lambert]

"Thinking about" is too understated a way of putting it. If I understood Gord right, Peter told him that it IS coming out in the timeframe mentioned. Things can of course always get delayed or pushed around, but that's the plan as of today.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

Okay, then: It is probably coming out in November or December. I just didn't want to be too definite about it.

One thing I hope Fox will do with season 3 is put "From the creator of Office Space" somewhere in the promotions or at least on the back of the box. The descriptions for season 1 and 2 said "From the creator of Beavis and Butt-head," but given the huge DVD success of Office Space, that's an even better thing to call attention to. Particularly since KotH by itself does not have the kind of cult following (it's successful in syndication but that's not the same thing) that would enable it to sell on a level with Fox's other animated properties... so Fox might do well to at least piggyback on the name of their biggest cult property.

 

[Jeff]

Well, I don't know about that. I've never seen Office Space but I've seen every episode of Beavis and Butthead. Maybe they can put both.

Jeff

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

Well, I'm not saying they shouldn't mention B&B -- just that they should also mention Office Space, and maybe play up the "If you like Office Space you'll like King of the Hill" angle a little -- not that everyone who likes OS would like KotH, but they do have somewhat similar senses of humor. (There was even an episode of KotH where Kahn tells his boss that he filed his TPS reports this morning.)

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

BTW, anyone who doesn't think King of the Hill is funny should pick up season 3 (when it comes out) and take a look at the episode "A Firefighting We Will Go," a Three Stooges tribute in which Hank and his buddies become volunteer firemen. This is as great a wacky slapstick episode as any show could ever do.

KotH-skeptics might also enjoy the episode where Hank is sexually assaulted by a dolphin, and the episode with Matthew McConaughey, where Hank teaches Bobby a lesson by making him "marry" Luanne (Kahn: "Minh! Bobby Hillbilly marrying hillbilly cousin! You owe me five bucks!")

This is probably the best season overall.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

One other thing I'll add: if they do commentaries this time around, I hope they abandon the in-character commentary thing. It was a neat idea at first, as a way of getting voice actors to do a commentary (normally voice actors aren't much good at commentaries because they don't work on an episode for more than a few hours, with the result that they can't tell much about the production process) but by the second season it probably didn't add to the set's appeal as much as more "real" commentaries, by staff members, would have.

I know KotH doesn't have the cult following of the other Fox cartoons, but I think people who buy it are still interested in some nuts-and-bolts commentary. (I'm sure they'd like to get Mike Judge to do a commentary, but that just doesn't seem to be his thing, to judge -- no pun intended -- from the lack of progress on the Office Space SE.)

 

[Jeff Reis]

I agree on the in-character commentaries. I really love KOTH, but these don't do anything for me--they're just awkward and not funny. I'm sure getting commentaries on every episode a'la The Simpsons is unlikely, but a few more by Greg Daniels or some other folks (I wouldn't mind hearing voice actors out of character) would be nice. I just hope we get the full series, I'm sure music rights are the reason for the season 3 delay (and I still think it's the main reason we're only seeing one Simpsons set per year, despite what Groening says).

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

Quite a few King of the Hill people also worked on The Simpsons and therefore will be recording commentaries for Simpsons season 5 -- it would be nice if while they're in the studio they could also watch and comment on a KotH episode or two. I'm not only talking about Daniels but about writers like Jon Vitti, Richard Appel and Jonathan Collier, and director Wes Archer. (Even though KotH is sometimes considered the anti-Simpsons there have been a lot of writers who worked on both shows.)

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

I don't want to be a gloomy Gus (or a Negative Nelly), but since Fox has just announced a bunch of TV-on-DVD titles for November and December, do you reckon that KotH has been put on the back-burner again?

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Regarding the in character commentaries, since my chances of getting my Boomhauer track are somewhere between none and none...I agree its time for them to go.

As for season 3 being pushed back, I doubt they've announced everything for December yet, if I remember right M*A*S*H season 7 was also supposed to drop in December and I haven't heard anything about that, but that doesn't mean its not going to happen.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

M*A*S*H season 7 is among the official announcements for December. (Wonderfalls, however, is not.)

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Well, that's what I get for not reading TVShowsOnDVD.com before making that last post...however, I still say that it doesn't mean that it won't drop in December.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

After having looked at all of those announcements from Fox, I'd say that there is still no reason to be worried, the latest announcement posted was for 12/7, that still leaves 3 weeks in December for releases and I'm not sure that we've gotten all of the November slate either.

 

[Jaime_Weinman]

There may be other things to come (Wonderfalls was supposed to be December 7, and obviously it won't be), and I do think KotH season 3 will come eventually (Peter Staddon wouldn't have told TVShowsonDVD that it was coming if it wasn't, in fact, in the works), but I still have a feeling that we might see it pushed again, just because there's so much else on the slate and it's obviously not a top priority for Fox.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Now that Futurama is wrapping up, and it will be awhile before Family Guy's new episodes hit DVD, King of the Hill and the Simpsons are all that's left from the primetime animation lineup to release on DVD. If KOTH comes in December, I hope it comes like 12/14 and not 12/28 so it can be on my Christmas list, although 12/28 would mean it could be a birthday present for me in January.