Hank meddles in the affairs of the overprotected in this week’s King of the Hill, “Straight as an Arrow.”  Also, Lucky and Luanne use brute force to collect their missing wedding gifts.

 

Bobby’s peddling his bike down the alley as the episode opens – the front wheel has a flat.  Hank suggests that he might learn to patch it, but, typically, Bobby’s satisfied with his progress.  His father can only groan at this development, while Dale remarks, “Sorry about your boy, Hank.”  Hank goes on to express his concern regarding Bobby’s continued inability to take care of himself.  His boy will be handy, dammit!

 

At the Kleinschmidt household, Peggy, Minh, Luanne and Nancy are having a lunch-and-gossip-filled meeting by the pool.  Peggy shows the gathered the Bystander, which carries a headline about Arlen’s welcome wagon woman, Maxine, who’s been fired after getting caught swiping coupons from the committees’ welcome-to-town baskets - not to mention her infidelity.  Peggy instantly decides that she should take Maxine’s place.  Luanne finds all of this plotting and girl-talk quite enchanting – then calls Lucky and helps him lower the boom on her guests.    Some of them never handed over their gifts, and now it’s time for them to pay up – she’s tired of drinking out of Lucky’s “bachelor glasses”, a miss-matched set of shot glasses and beer steins.

 

In the Hill house, Bobby tries to use a loaf of bread to knock a box of cereal off of the top of the refrigerator.  Hank is, of course, dismayed by Bobby’s laziness.  At that moment, Peggy enters and announces that she’s been named head of the Arlen welcome wagon – and, of course, Hank is called upon to accompany Peggy on her first visit.

 

These Arlen newbies are the Cherishes, Annette and Wesley, who home-school their six children and are, we shall soon learn, extremely protective of them.  Hank initially gets along famously with Wesley, who asks if there’s an operating branch of the Order of the Straight Arrow in Arlen.  Hank explains that there was, once, but once American Idol became popular it became difficult to organize meetings.  Peggy tries to talk up the other youth activities Arlen offers – basically nothing.  Hank’s inspired to start Arlen’s Straight Arrow branch up once again, hoping to teach Bobby the art of self-reliance.

 

In Hank’s garage, he tells the guys about his plan to co-head the Straight Arrow chapter with Wesley.  Dale dismisses Hank’s offer to induct Joseph once more – he’s a level six survivalist who could kill, eat and use Bobby for shelter in the blink of an eye. 

 

At that moment, Lucky and Luanne show up to collect their debt from Dale, who manages to dodge them by hiding in the Bugabego.

 

At the first meeting of the Order, Hank is stunned by Wesley’s softening of the rough-and-tumble practices of the Straight Arrows.  Since Hank wants Bobby to experience the skin-blistering, knee-scraping glory of the childhood he experienced, Hank rapidly becomes dissatisfied with Wesley’s way of running the troop.

 

Hank expresses his dissatisfaction to Peggy, but she won’t have him wrecking her new relationship with the Cherishes.  He decides, on Peggy’s advice, to talk things out with Wesley.

  Wesley is, however, uberprotective of his children and refuses to consider Hank’s point of view. 

 

The Kleinschmidts attempt to corner the Soups, but Kahn and Minh are less than thrilled to hand over their gift at three in the morning.  This time, they’ve brought back-up in the form of Lucky’s friend Elvin.  Even though Kahn’s sure their hillbilly marriage is going to go belly-up, he forks over the requested gift.  They quickly amass a heap of presents, and then decide to use similar extortion to soak their loved ones for Lucky’s birthday presents.

 

Hank laments Wesley’s soft approach to the alley gang.  Wesley won’t even allow him the dignity of pants!   Because he’s stubborn, Hank heads back to the troop meeting, to which Bobby brings a handheld video game system and his copy of “Facekicker 3”.  Wesley doesn’t approve of the game, or of Bobby’s showing his two sons how to play it.  He dresses Bobby down in front of the other troops, and Hank quickly steps in to confront Wesley over his behavior.  Wesley denounces them both, and Bobby’s future in the Straight Arrows hangs in the balance.

 

At home, Hank formulates a plan that will both change the direction of their troop and ensure Bobby stays in the order.  Volunteering to supervise the midnight shift of the groups’ overnight camp-in, Hank waits until Wesley leaves to grab some rest before breaking out the sweets and letting the group horse around.  He eventually opens the back door and lets them play in the parking lot – and the Cherish boys run into the nearby woods, buzzed on sugar.

 

Hank quickly commandeers control of the situation, rounding up the troops to help him track down the two boys and sending Dale, Bill and Boomhauer ahead to the Cherish home to stall Wesley.  Originally planning to pretend that they’re stranded motorists, the three are pepper sprayed into incoherence by a frightened Wesley.

 

Meanwhile, Hank manages to teach the rest of the troop tracking skills, flushing out their quarry using Bobby as a decoy (and the sound effects of the Facekicker video game).  Hank drags the boys back inside, where Wesley has pulled the truth from Bill, Dale and Boomhauer.  He pulls his boys (one hypoglycemic, the other diagnosed with ADHD) out of the troop and presumably resigns.

 

Hank remarks his regret to Peggy, who buckles under the stress caused by her first failed welcome wagon experience and quits.  The rest of the troops gather around Hank, fascinated by what they’ve been taught – they’ve brought back driftwood, and Hank decides that now would be a good time to teach them how to whittle.  Bobby pricks himself with his camping knife, but all are enthralled with what Hank’s taught them.

 

A decently written but not particularly special episode of King of the Hill, “Straight as an Arrow”  is another “Hank-tries-to-bring-someone-around-to-his-way-of-thinking” sort of episode.  There is the surprising added twist of the Cherish boys having problems that Hank’s rough-and-tumble scoutmastering style cannot cure.  It’s nice to see the Order of the Straight Arrow being used in canon again after a long absence, and it was nice to see Hank realize that occasionally his view isn’t always the best one.

 

Your enjoyment of the Lucky/Luanne subplot may hinge upon how much of the Lucky character you can tolerate.  It’s surprising that they receive no payback for their aggressiveness in seeking their “due” wedding gifts.

 

An average, mildly enjoyable episode on all fronts.  It drew a 6.2 in the ratings, Fox’s third highest rated program of the evening.