How About That Thing?

Sometimes, hyperfocus has its downsides. For example, I still remember overhearing one of my co-workers explain to one of his friends about how “gay behavior has increased because nobody spanks their kids anymore”, and spending ENTIRE DAYS trying to figure out how the hell he got from A to B on that. Hell, it’s almost been five years later, and I’m still finding myself coming back to that every now and then.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is another example of one of those times when my hperfocus locks on to something, and I can’t explain why. Seriously, brain, of all the King of the Hill episodes to hyperfocus on, why the hell does it have to be this one? Other than the possibility I might be a pervert, which… We’ll get to that in a minute.

Honestly, I tried avoiding talking about King of the Hill IN GENERAL for the longest time on here. I know this is all about whatever thing I happen to be hyperfocused on at the time I’m writing this, but there’s plenty of reasons I didn’t want to get into KotH, let alone this specific episode.

For starters, when I was considering topics for the original YouTube version of this project, King of the Hill ended up getting ruled out pretty quickly due to the fact that there were already several other YouTubers talking about it already. Johnny Two Chellos, Shady Doorags, Squirrel Tactics… Pretty sure Kitty Monk did a few King of the Hill video essays at one point… And those are the ones I know of. All the ones I listed are good at what they do, too, and if I did King of the Hill, I feel like I’d either be encroaching on their turf, or talking about stuff that’s probably been done to death by people who are most likely smarter than I am.

But hey, I haven’t seen anyone talking about THIS episode. Not as of this writing, anyway. And try as I might, my brain just can’t gravitate away from this episode. So why not? Let’s look at the episode known as “Transnational Amusements Presents: Peggy’s Magic Sex Feet.” Oh, and quick note before we get too far into this: I’m not going to have much in the way of screenshots this go-around due to the fact my usual method of obtaining screencaps won’t work here. Fucking Hulu.

Join us again next week for a better, less awkward article. Until then, courage.

Our episode begins with everybody going to the bowling alley. Any King of the Hill fan will tell you that one of Peggy’s greatest shames is her shoe size. When she sees that the only size-16 shoes have a big 16 printed on them where everybody can see them, she finds a way to get out of bowling with the rest of the gang.

To make matters worse, her favorite specialty shop informs her that she might actually be a size-16.5. Needless to say, this is shocking. She goes running out of the store, locks herself in her car, and cry her eyes out. There’s also a flashback showing just how hard it was to shoe shop when Peggy was little, having to settle for nurse’s shoes at one point.

Before long, a random woman spots her crying in her car, and decides to chat with her. In due course, she convinces Peggy to see this guy.

This is Grant Trimble. By day, he’s a doctor of some sort. By… Uh, the rest of the day, I guess, he makes films. And he convinces Peggy to be in one of his films.

And I think you know where this is going. Unfortunately, intypical fashion, Peggy doesn’t. Everybody else does, though. Hell, even I had a feeling this guy wasn’t on the up-and-up, and I didn’t even know foot fetishism was even a thing till this episode debuted on TV.

It’s right about here that Dale brings the boys over to his house to show Hank the “film” Peggy has been featured in. IE, peggysfeet.com.

And no, even if I COULD get screencaps of this, I probably wouldn’t be posting pics here. Granted, it’s my website, and I can do whatever I want with it, but I figured I’d make you people work harder for that kind of sad sack gratification.

Bill tries to explain to Hank that this isn’t a porn site, it’s a fetish site. What’s the difference, you ask? Well, I don’t really know how BILL would define the difference, but here and 2024, I can give you the easy answer right now. The difference is that, depending on what’s going on in the video, you can actually post fetish videos on YouTube. You kind of have to be a little creative at times, and it can’t be anything especially graphic or disgusting (IE, women using the toilet), but some of the tamer fetishes, like women in leotards, can make it past a lot of the filters.

Hank is outraged, as someone who found out their wife got tricked into porn probably would, and does what Hank does best: heads over to Trimble’s place and declares that he’s here to kick ass and drink beer. And he’s all out of beer. In typical fashion, though, it doesn’t work in Hank’s favor, so Hank goes with Plan B, and shows Peggy the “film” she’s appeared in.

Now when it turns out that you’ve been lied to, or grossly misinformed, there are two paths you can travel down from here. A logical person would realize they’ve been deceived, or were grossly misinformed, and go about repairing their reputation. Or you could do what Peggy does here, and double down, insisting everybody around you is wrong. I can’t help but think there’s a Rachel Maddow joke in here somewher, but this article is already awkward enough to talk about as it is. let’s get back on task.

Peggy chooses to double down, and appear in MORE videos for the site. But even Trimble knows you can’t string them along forever, and when Peggy starts to catch on that something is askew, he offers to pay her from now on. And he instantly shoots himself in the foot when he begins talking down to her, and refers to her feet as ugly. Which honestly begs the question: if he’d stayed diplomatic while offering to pay her, explaining things more politely than “Get those ugly stompers out and let’s make some dirty!”, would Peggy have run away crying? It’s honestly a legit question I’ve been pondering.

In any case, Trimble has to be the villain of the week, and be a total dick. And as a result, Peggy runs out of the building crying, and goes into her usual Peggy funk she goes into when someone other than her is proven right.

She explains to Hank that he was right all along, which Hank uses as a launching point to lecture Peggy, and by proxy, the audience, on how foot guys are perverts. And it’s right about here I feel attacked. I get that Hank is the last angry boomer, and that he’s got a branch so far up his ass that he’s coughing up acorns every morning, but fuck you, Hank. Yes, foot guys do focus on feet. The same way titty guys focus on titties, and butt guys focus on dat ass, but we apparently decided that those are fine for some reason. If you ask me, butts are actually MORE disgusting than feet. True, feet can develop corns, bunions, fungus, and the like, but you kind of have to go out of your way to end up with those. That, or play a sport. Butts, meanwhile, produce gross odors and products as their primary function, and yet licking a woman’s ass is somehow less disgusting than licking her feet. I don’t get it.

Yeah, I keep forgetting I’m saving all my rants and observations for the end. Which we’re getting to, I swear!

Bobby comes in, and basically explains that he knows what Peggy is going through. After all, he’s fat. And when Peggy tries to assure him otherwise, he doesn’t back down. He’s fat, and he’s not ashamed. He’s been called every nickname for fat kids on the planet, and it doesn’t get him down. Peggy is inspired, and the next night, when the gang goes bowling, she takes the mic, and proudly proclaims she’ll take a size 16.5. And as the scene fades to black, someone in the crowd murmurs to his friend about how he thinks he might have seen her on the internet, wink wink, nudge nudge.

And this was “transnational Amusements Presents: Peggy’s Magic Sex Feet”. And whew boy, do I have thoughts

I have my kinks, but the genre of content Peggysfeet.com was producing isn’t among them. Oh yeah, there are genres of foot fetish content, by the way. And the genre Peggysfeet.com catered to was the “smoosh” crowd. Smoosh basically consists of videos of a woman stepping on things with her bare feet. IE, hamburger meat, toys, marmalade… I even saw one where two women were stepping on grapes.

Smoosh is not for me. I don’t find it gross most of the time, but I don’t find it sexy, either. To me, the smoosh genre is just kind of boring more than anything else.

Also, it’s come to my attention over the last couple of decades that the smoosh genre apparently goes into some pretty dark territory if you go too far down the rabbit hole, but I’ll let someone braver talk about that sort of thing. Or you could just watch the first few minutes of The Drawn Together Movie, and figure it out for yourself.

As far as this episode and its portrayals go… Honestly, compared to most portrayals of foot guys and foot fetish content, King of the Hill isn’t the worst. I mean yeah, it does kind of play on the “EEW! FEET ARE GROSS!” factor, but not to a cartoonish extreme like others would probably do.

And yes, Hank makes the declaration that foot guys are perverts because they focus entirely on one part of the body, but this is Hank we’re talking about. The dude’s obsession with propane and propane accessories could possibly qualify as a fetish in its own right, if you think about it. Not to mention that his idea of an attractive woman is Peggy fucking Hill for christ sakes. I mean you could do worse in the looks department, but even if she DOES have size 16.5 feet, she’s not exactly the first thing I’d go to when visiting the ol’ spank bank back in the day.

Really, the only thing I REALLY take any sort of exception to is that it implies that Bill might be a foot guy. True, you could argue that he’s more interested in Peggy as a whole, as has been a common theme in the show’s history, but even the vague notion that foot guys are getting compared to sad sacks like Bill? Yeah, fuck you too, writing staff.

Interestingly enough, though, if videos from Johnny Two Chellos and other YouTubers are anything to go by, the attitude towards foot guys here in 2024 has softened up quite a bit. Maybe it’s all part of Gen-Z’s fiendish agenda to make sure everybody feels included and nobody has to feel shame anymore. Maybe Gretchen from Your the Worst was on to something when she said something along the lines of “foot fetishism is the most vanilla fetish you can have now.” In this day and age where fucking vore is considered a legit fetish, it definitely puts things like watching a woman getting her feet licked into perspective.

All I know is when the episode was new, people were grossed out by the idea of people liking feet. Nowadays, though, people are a lot MORE grossed out by Trimble exploiting Peggy’s labor more than anything else. It’s… Definitely an interesting paradigm shift if nothing else.

I won’t lie: part of me wonders if peggysfeet.com actually existed at one point. Hell, I wonder if it exists now? Lord knows if it still does, it’d be an interesting time capsule of a website. I bet it even has a guestbook and a message board powered by PHPBB.

Knowing my luck, though, it probably takes you to one of those websites that tries to steal your credit card and social security numbers. Or maybe it’s like one of those “YOU ARE AN IDIOT” sites where it opens up ten-thousand little windows all at once and tries to crash your computer. Or hell, maybe it takes you to a real life woman’s real life smoosh site, for all I know and care.

Yeah, I really don’t know how to end this. I’m already very hesitant to let this article go live,. Hell, this has got to be, like, the thirtyeth revision I’ve made. But hey, this is one of those times where my brain wouldn’t focus on anything else. Hopefully, writing about this topic will allow my brain to move on.