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Peggy Hill
Margaret Josephine "Peggy" Hill (née Platter) is a fictional character in the Fox animated series King of the Hill, voiced by Kathy Najimy. She is the matriarch of the Hill family and the wife of the series protagonist Hank Hill, mother to Robert Jeffrey "Bobby" Hill, and aunt to Luanne Platter. Character biographyThe character of Peggy was born in Billings, Montana to cattle ranchers. She moved to Texas during high school,[1] where she meets future husband Hank Hill. She is 5'7". She wears glasses and is generally seen wearing sleeveless blouses and culottes. She wears a size 16½ shoe on her left foot, and a size 16 on her right. Her disproportionately enormous feet are the one trait she is deeply insecure about, despite it being stated by a doctor that such feet give her exceptional confidence, perfect posture, and incredible athletic ability. She is a gifted pitcher in softball, and talented in other sports as well, including roller derby. She is also skilled at playing the dice-based word game Boggle and once won the Texas State Boggle Championship. Within the household, Peggy provides a voice of reason and a buffer between Hank and Bobby, who have difficulty relating to each other. Peggy has taken Hank to task about their relationship, or the lack thereof. Peggy's devotion to family extends to her niece Luanne, whom she thinks of as a daughter. Peggy freely encourages Bobby and Luanne to express themselves, sometimes to Hank's distress. Peggy's high opinion of herself is often quite an annoyance to her family and friends. She usually considers herself smarter than everyone she meets and knows; more attractive than Luanne, Nancy, and many other more conventionally attractive women; and constantly takes credit for things she has never done. She also assumes that everyone else thinks as highly of her as she herself does. She believes that she can do anything if she commits herself. This often gets her into trouble. Peggy often plunges into things, disregarding her own complete lack of skill; for example, during the episode "Phish and Wildlife," she walks onto a crime scene expecting to become part of the investigation just because she is "on a roll." Her inability to understand the potential consequences of her actions has led to the harm of those around her. Peggy prides herself as a cook, although others consider her cooking to be average. Her family dinners are a regular rotation of a few menu items: Frito pie with Wolf Brand Chili on Mondays; fried pork chops on Tuesdays; and on Wednesdays "Spa-Peggy" and meatballs,[2] the one dish which, according to Hank, "she's kind of made her own," though it is simply spaghetti with meatballs with "just the right amount of sugar and grated parmigiana cheese."[3] She is also proud of her Apple Brown Betty to which she adds a spoonful of orange juice.[4] As the series progresses, it puts increasing emphasis on Peggy's superiority complex. As her egotism grows to extremes, other characters become more aware of it but seem to tolerate Peggy's behavior. Hank truly loves Peggy and usually tolerates her ego. But at one point, he has enough of Peggy's ego and directly confronts Peggy after she attacks Randy Travis in public, claiming he stole a song she wrote. Ironically, Randy Travis did indeed steal the song, but because Peggy often takes credit for things she never did, not even her own husband could believe her.[5] Peggy's desire for importance and excellence often reveals a competitive side, leading to pettiness when she feels overshadowed. During the episode, "Goodbye Normal Jeans," Peggy begins to feel threatened by Bobby when she discovers that his newfound talent for domestic skills means that she is out-shined by her own son. She began trying and failing to outdo him, culminating in her stealing the Thanksgiving turkey he prepared. These traits can also make her susceptible to manipulation if her ego is stroked. In "Death and Texas", a death row prisoner tricked her into smuggling cocaine into prison after he pretended to be a former student of hers. Even though the man was almost as old as she was, she was too blinded by his praise to see the truth. Despite this, Peggy is a kind person at heart who often works from the best motives. She is completely devoted to her husband and family. She refers to Hank as the love of her life and has demonstrated her love for and protectiveness of him several times. However, Peggy makes no secret of her contempt for her father-in-law, Cotton Hill, particularly because of his neglectful, cruel behavior toward Hank. Cotton shows even more disrespect towards Peggy herself, including only referring to her as "Hank's wife" instead of her name. She dislikes him so much that she accepts his offer to literally dance on his grave. This hatred between the two even continues when Cotton is on his deathbed. While Hank is out of the room, Peggy tells Cotton exactly what she thinks of him just before he dies. When Hank returns, she lies and says Cotton said kind things about Hank before his passing. FamilyEarlier episodes such as "I Remember Mono" and "Transnational Amusements Presents: Peggy's Magic Sex Feet" depicted Peggy's parents living nearby and being on speaking terms with her, with her mother as a homemaker. This changed in later episodes (beginning with "A Rover Runs Through It", which depict Peggy's mother as emotionally cold towards her, her father as constantly speaking in riddles, and both of them living in Montana). These later episodes suggest that Peggy left her parents behind when she went to Texas. Both depictions show Mrs. Platter as being critical, unappreciative, and dismissive of her daughter. Peggy thinks of Luanne as a surrogate daughter and does her best to give her guidance and encourage her, always wanting the best for her. With this in mind, Peggy is openly critical of Luanne's choice to get involved with Lucky, who Peggy views as not being good enough for Luanne. At first, Peggy sabotages Lucky's efforts to better himself by getting a GED. But, in the end, Peggy accepts the relationship, realizing that Lucky makes Luanne happy and is a genuinely good man. She is protective of Luanne, and has defended her niece from her abusive and alcoholic mother, Leanne. Peggy has a brother named Hoyt, who is Luanne's father. She lied to Luanne by telling her that Hoyt was working on an oil rig when he was actually in prison. When Hoyt returns to Arlen, Peggy tried to help him out and gave him money, but eventually realized Hoyt was an incorrigible criminal and would destroy the entire family. Hank then tricked Hoyt into committing an obvious crime and convinced him to confess to it along with an earlier robbery. This would send him to prison for life, but maintain Luanne's false impression of her father as a good and hard-working man. Peggy and Hank then told Luanne that Hoyt had accepted "a lifetime contract" to work on an oil rig. JobsAt the start of the series, Peggy works as a substitute teacher at Arlen High School and Tom Landry Middle School, typically teaching Spanish. Briefly, she works as a full-time teacher at a Catholic school by pretending to be a nun. A running gag in the show is her overconfidence in speaking the language, when she in fact speaks it poorly and doesn't understand it as well as she believes she does. For example, in "Lupe's Revenge" her poor understanding of the language caused her to mistakenly bring a young Mexican girl back to Texas after a school field trip across the Mexican border, confusing the child by saying "Yo vivo en México", which means "I live in Mexico" in Spanish, with "Viva México", which means "Long live Mexico". Her own egotism makes her believe she is better at speaking it than native Mexicans. Peggy often remarks she won the "Substitute Teacher Of The Year" three years in a row. But for the third year, she claimed an award for the school itself that was really for Hank. In the third season, she starts writing a column for a local newspaper, the Arlen Bystander and is occasionally seen sub-editing. In season 11, she gets dismissed from the newspaper after writing a scathing piece about a local real estate agent, but she is subsequently hired by the real estate agent, where she works for the rest of the series. She is a somewhat successful real estate agent who is prepared to go to extraordinary measures to make a deal, including overzealous self-promotion on her part.[6] Character analysisAlthough Peggy is often cited as "the hated wife and mother of adult animated TV" due to her arrogance and character flaws, Austin Jones of Paste argues that she is one of the most complex characters in the series, calling her a "keen satire on the way Southern suburbia mollifies women with talent into embittered sidekick roles to mediocre men".[7] According to Jo Johnson of McGill-Queen's University Press, Peggy differs from the usual depiction of women in adult animated sitcoms due to the fact that she is both a mother and homemaker while also being employed. In most other animated sitcoms, such as The Simpsons, regular employment is "bestowed upon male breadwinners or single unattractive females". Johnson argues that Peggy's ability to comfortably juggle her role at home with a career "sets her apart from other animated mothers".[8] Lara Karaian of Fireweed states that the characters of King of the Hill represent stereotypes of working class southern communities. They describe Peggy as the "liberal feminist of her southern town", and is "someone who stands by her man while still remaining a strong and independent Texas woman", comparing her to Hillary Clinton.[9] See alsoNotesReferences
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