The seventh season of ''

King of the Hill ''King of the Hill'' is an American animated sitcom created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It aired its original non-syndicated run from January 12, 1997, to September 13, 2009, and centers on the Hills, an Am ...

'' originally aired Sundays on the

Fox Broadcasting Company The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an Television in the United States, American Commercial broadcasting, commercial terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by Fox C ...

at 8:30–9:00 p.m. ( EST) and 7:30–8:00 p.m. ( EST) from November 3, 2002, to May 18, 2003.

Production

This was the first season that

John Altschuler John Altschuler (born 1963) is an American television and film writer and producer known for his collaborative projects with Mike Judge and Dave Krinsky. Early life Altschuler grew up in a Jewish family in Carbondale, Illinois. His mother was ...

and

Dave Krinsky David Krinsky (born February 27, 1963) is an American television and film writer and producer. Early life Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He then moved with his family to Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a teen, later attended the Univer ...

were showrunners, and they would remain in this position for the remainder of ''King of the Hills original run.https://www.macleans.ca/authors/jaime-weinman/a-koth-kronology/ The wackier stories from recent years began to be phased out. Series creator Mike Judge described the episodes from this season as "small personal stories like we did in the second season." In a 2007 interview with

Animation World Network Animation World Network (often just "AWN") is an online publishing group that specializes in resources for animators, with an extensive website offering news, articles and links for professional animators and animation fans. Specifically, AWN co ...

, Altschuler reflected that, "Mike was unhappy with the drift of the show around seasons four and five. Peggy just became crazy, Bobby just became gay, Hank started getting weaker and weaker until he was literally being ordered around by Dale." Altschuler added, "If you don't police characters on a daily basis, you go for jokes. 'Oh, it's funny that Peggy is mean to her family at this point.' 'Oh, okay, we're tired, let's do it again.' If you do it again and again, what happened was people started hating Peggy's character and felt distant from her. The show just kind of lost its way. What we've done since seasons six and seven was just work on getting the characters back to where they started and keeping them there." "Goodbye Normal Jeans", a

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...

episode, is the first episode from the 6ABE (

Season 6 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

) production line, and was originally supposed to air on November 18, 2001. However, Fox's NFL coverage ran late that night, so the episode was pre-empted, and since it was a Thanksgiving-themed episode and that was the last Sunday before Thanksgiving, the episode was held back until November 2002. "Pigmalion" takes place during Halloween, and came from the 5ABE (

Season 5 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

) production line. It was initially announced to air as a holdover for Season 6, that would have likely aired around Halloween 2001, although the episode was delayed for unspecified reasons (this may have been due to its disturbing content). "Pigmalion" was eventually shown as an "extra" episode for Season 7 in January 2003. At the time of airing, "Pigmalion" was absent from the episode listing on Fox's official ''King of the Hill'' website. In an early draft of the episode "Night and Deity", Dale fell for a woman who bared an obvious resemblance to Nancy. When the episode was originally announced, this plot point was mentioned on Fox's website.http://geocitiessites.com/arlen_texas/alternate.htm "Megalo Dale" was the second ''King of the Hill'' episode to be done using

digital ink and paint Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Pr ...

, after "Bobby Goes Nuts" from the previous season. Select scenes from "The Miseducation of Bobby Hill" also utilized digital ink and paint, with the show eventually switching over to this production method during the eight season. This was also the first season which did not include a

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...

episode, other than

Season 1 Season One may refer to: Albums * ''Season One'' (Suburban Legends album), 2004 * ''Season One'' (All Sons & Daughters album), 2012 * ''Season One'' (Saukrates album), 2012 See also * * * Season 2 (disambiguation) * Season 4 (disambiguati ...

which did not air any episodes during December.

Episodes

References

{{King of the Hill 2002 American television seasons 2003 American television seasons King of the Hill 07