User Reviews

The King of the Hill episode "To Kill a Ladybird" is truly a gem. I'm hard pressed to recall any that delivers laugh out load moments so consistently. When it comes to KOTH I'm not sure it gets much better than this one. The plot involves Bobby befriending a raccoon eating out of the Hill's garbage When Hank discovers the animal's presence his initial reaction is hilarious; it's pure Hank Hill. Dale is put on the case and needless to say things don't go very well. The neighborhood eventually finds itself searching for a potentially rabid Ladybird and Dale. The 4th Season KOTH was, in some ways, the high water mark of the series. The show was firing on every cylinder with writing to beat the band. "To Kill a Ladybird" has a storyline that is unique compared to most KOTH episodes. There isn't really a B story (I'm not counting Dale's bizarre exploits in the woods). Everything is directly related to the main plot. It's actually something KOTH should have done more often. It's clear the episode's writers knew they had something good and used every second to tell the story. It's more or less Dale-centric which is usually a very good thing. Good TV, just like good films, is about creating moments and this episode happens to have a lot of them. I won't spoil anything by providing context but the humor, subtle and overt, lands just about every time. Hank's alternative to throwing a full can of Alamo, an aborted attempt to find the raccoon à la Ridley Scott's Alien, a "rabid" Dale getting caught after breaking into his own home to prepare food, a mushroom induced psychosis that turns Dale into a low rent Colonel Kurtz.... I could go on all day lol. "To Kill a Ladybird" distinguishes itself as an apex predator amongst the entire 13 season run of KOTH. If I was to introduce the series to someone unfamiliar with it, this is probably it the one I'd choose. It somehow manages to encapsulate just about everything that made KOTH click so wonderfully on a comedic level.

Anyone who has ever dealt with a real raccoon in the wild knows that this plot device is pure Disney bull, concocted by exactly the type of clueless "city folk" that Hank himself is frequently disparaging for their lack of real-world knowledge and experience. Wild raccoons, cute as they may be, are aggressive and vicious. They kill chickens in their coops and can kill a cat or small dog if they get it cornered. There's no way you'd ever be feeding one out of your hand. A more realistic story line would have been Bobby getting bitten by the raccoon and subsequently enduring a painful course of rabies shots as the consequence of his naivete and narcissism, which frankly, have been getting on my nerves lately.