King of the Hill: The Complete First Season (1997)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Series Created by Greg Daniels and Mike Judge
Starring the voices of Mike Judge, Kathy Najimi, Pamela Segall, Brittany Murphy, Johnny Hardwick, and Stephen Root

Features:

• Over 50 Deleted Scenes
  
• Selected Episode Commentaries by co-creator Daniels, director Klay Hall and characters from the series
  
• Barenaked Ladies Music Video
  
• Animatics, Alternate Ending and Promo Spots
  
• Behind-the-Scenes featurette
  
• "Meet the Hills" Gallery
  

Released by: Fox Home Entertainment
Rating: NR (some stuff might be unsuitable for young audiences)
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format

My Advice: You'll own it if you are a fan of the show, everyone else should at least rent it

Hank Hill (Judge) is just a simple man just trying to get by in life by selling propane and propane accessories. However, life always seems to be getting in the way. His son, Bobby (Segall), is not always everything he hoped his child would be and he's got his niece, Luanne (Murphy), always running around the house nearly naked. Not only that, but his friends all just want to come around, drink his beer, and get him into more trouble. It just seems that it's not as easy to be a good old boy in the 21st Century.

Well, the first season of this show was an absolute riot. The characters were well developed and voiced by some very talented actors. Judge and Najimi play off of each other very well just like the rest of the boys play off of Judge. It's really not a surprise that Mike Judge created the show and was the person chosen to voice its lead character. It's very obvious that he studied his subject matter very closely. The situations that these characters are placed into are fantastical and yet grounded in some kind of reality. And, no matter what the circumstance, the focus is always to make Hank Hill feels as uncomfortable as possible, and it just works.

The DVD is very well done, too. The casing, for example. Each of the DVDs is enclosed in a slimline DVD case which means that it takes up less space on your DVD shelf. Honestly, I wish that more studios would shift to this size.

The commentary tracks are a unique blend of real people and characters from the show. These are either good, just plain silly, or a complete waste of time. The ones from the real people are usually the ones where you can get the meat of the behind-the-scenes information. The commentaries with the characters are simply not worthwhile. The behind-the-scenes featurette is pretty good in that it focuses most of the interview on Judge and the rest of the actors in the cast. What's nice about it is that they don't spend time sugar coating each other and licking it off.

The deleted scenes are like any other on any other DVD. It is obvious why they were cut in the first place, still it's nice to have them on the DVD--especially in such a legion. There are also the television spots that were used to advertise each episode, but I just find these to be a "feature" that they added to pad out the list. There is also a gallery of still shots of the Hill Family that are drawn from the episodes. So, what this set is lacking in quality, it at least attempts to make up for in quantity.

You will want to own this one if you are a fan of the show. Everyone else will want to rent it, because the show itself is funny enough to at least have this in your home temporarily.