Luanne Platter
| Luanne Platter | |
|---|---|
| File:Luanne Platter.jpg Luanne Platter (Left), her aunt Peggy Hill (Right) | |
| First appearance | Pilot (episode 1.01) |
| Portrayed by | Brittany Murphy |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Hair stylist at Jack's Barbershop |
| Spouse | Buckley (deceased ex-boyfriend) Rad Thibodeaux (ex-boyfriend) Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt (husband) |
Luanne Leanne Platter Kleinschmidt (voiced by Brittany Murphy) is a character in the animated series King of the Hill. She is the niece of Peggy Hill and Hank Hill (her father is Peggy's brother) and a cousin of Bobby Hill. She is drawn voluptuously, with an hourglass figure that she highlights with her standard outfit of green tank top, red spandex cycling shorts, and white athletic shoes. In more professional settings, she may wear a reddish orange t-shirt with jeans, or a low-cut yellow dress for church.
Character
Luanne, as a character, has undergone some drastic changes as the show progressed. In the first season, she was portrayed as being somewhat intelligent (in one episode, she easily diagnosed and repaired a complex vehicle malfunction), had a husky voice that closely resembled Joseph's (perhaps due to Murphy also providing the voice of Joseph at the time), and would easily stand up to people who wronged her (she even threatened Cotton at one point).
However, the show has since changed her character significantly, raising the pitch of her voice and portraying her as a completely naïve character who is easily swayed by ideas presented to her. She has almost become a dumb blonde stereotype. She is unaware of even some simple words such as the meaning of "ignorant" (at one point in the show she attempts to assert herself by stating that she is a "proud, ignorant woman"). She briefly joined a Jack Chick/Fred Phelps-inspired evangelical movement, registered as a communist when a recruiter informed her that George W. Bush devours puppies, and was lured into a cult that wanted her to work in a jelly factory.
During the initial seasons of the show, Luanne was presented as somewhat promiscuous, though in an episode midway through the series run ("Luanne, Virgin 2.0"), she became a born again virgin who puts on a puppet show (she is a Methodist, like most other characters on the show) and vowed not to have any more premarital sex. However, in a 2006 episode she announced to Hank, Peggy, Bobby and Lucky that she was pregnant with Lucky's child. Throughout the course of the show, her character and that of Joseph Gribble (who hit puberty in season 5) are two of the few characters on the show to "grow", and Luanne is arguably the only character to have a character arc.
Coming to live with the Hills
In the pilot episode, Luanne stays with the Hills while her parents sort out some marital issues; near the end of the episode, a tearful Luanne informs Hank that her mother stabbed her father with a fork and that their trailer home has capsized. She apparently moves in with the Hills permanently between the first and second episodes, turning Hank's beloved den into her bedroom, and remained with them for the majority of the series' run.
In an early episode (Texas City Twister), Hank, wanting to get Luanne out of his den and help her become self-reliant, tried to get her to move back into her trailer. He, Dale Gribble, Bill Dauterive, and Boomhauer attached a winch to the trailer and righted it, much to Luanne's consternation. A tornado struck shortly thereafter, tipping the trailer back over and nearly killing the Hills and Luanne in the process. The near-death experience changed Hank's views on his niece staying with him. Nevertheless, Hank wanting Luanne out of his den became a recurring theme (though he does love her).
Puppetry
In another early episode (Meet the Manger Babies), a glum Luanne discovered a box of cheap sock puppets at a garage sale and used them to create a Christian-themed puppet show called "The Manger Babies", about the adventures of the animals who witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ. Oddly, the Manger Babies include a six-legged octopus and a penguin. The popularity of Luanne's show got her a part-time job putting on weekly shows for local TV station channel 84, a job she has maintained throughout the run of the series.
Relationship with Buckley
For the first two seasons, Luanne dated Buckley (voiced by David Herman), a monosyllabic, rude, and idiotic clerk at the Mega Lo Mart. Their relationship was apparently based around sex, as Buckley's romantic zenith was presenting Luanne with a birthday present that consisted of some old CDs that he didn't want anymore. They were rarely seen speaking, and when they were presented engaging in conversation, it usually consisted of Buckley making vague sexual remarks. It was very clear throughout the series that Hank didn't like Buckley and thought of him as a loser.
In the second season finale, Buckley ignores Hank's advice not to drag around propane tanks by their nozzles, causing a gas leak that eventually blows up the Mega Lo Mart. Luanne, Buckley, Hank, and Chuck Mangione were trapped inside and, in the third season premiere, we learn that Buckley was killed in the explosion. Luanne survived, though the flames vaporized her hair. She claimed that because she "did not look back" at Buckley after she broke up with him seconds before the blast, that she was able to retain her eyebrows. She was more upset at the loss of her hair than Buckley's death, but she came around at the end of the episode.
In a rare instance for an animated series, Luanne's hair did not "magically" regrow by the next episode; instead, each successive episode featured Luanne's hair steadily becoming longer and longer until it had grown back to its previous length. Her hair did realistically regrow within the episode from smooth bald to fuzzy stubble over a couple days. She decided to quit beauty school and stop "making the world look pretty," and instead become a photo journalist. She briefly became an outspoken activist for starving Irish children in a send-up of Sinéad O'Connor. Eventually she realized her anger was a result of her pain over Buckley's death.
Later relationships
Following Buckley's demise, Luanne briefly dated self-proclaimed genius Rad Thibodeaux (TIB-uh-doh, though he pronounced it phonetically as Thi-bo-DAY-ux), voiced by Matthew McConaughey. She later became a "born-again virgin", participating in a church ceremony in which she vowed not to have any more premarital sex. Initially, Luanne buckled under stress and nearly married Rhett Van Der Graaf (Owen Wilson), an insecure, neurotic boy of 22 just so that she could have sex again, but eventually decided against this and remained celibate.
She nearly got married a second time to a meat-packing tycoon named Trip Larson (Michael Keaton). Luanne eventually learned that Trip was attracted to her because she was a dead ringer for the woman in the company's advertisement featuring a Swiss girl and a mountain climber posing with a pig. Trip, a schizophrenic, had fantasized since childhood of being the pig in the advertisement, and planned to turn Luanne into the Swiss girl by dying her hair red and forcing her to dress in a frilly blue and white pinafore, so that she could care for him. Trip was subsequently killed in a bizarre accident in the slaughter shed when he tried to lure Luanne into committing suicide with him. In a bit of tragic irony, he finally became sane after suffering an electrical accident which served as ad hoc electroshock therapy seconds before his death.
In the last two seasons of the series, Luanne became the girlfriend, then wife, of Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt (Tom Petty), a sleazy, lazy, stereotypical redneck who makes his money by intentionally injuring himself inside stores and then suing the owner. He sometimes also plays in local rock bands, including the one led by John Redcorn. Luanne is apparently attracted to him because of his resemblance to the trailer people with whom she grew up.
Lucky, though, is clearly far more stupid than Luanne and many fans protested the pairing of the two. Several Internet forums dedicated to King of the Hill were flooded with Lucky hate threads, protesting the pairing of Lucky and Luanne and calling for the creators of the show to at least break the pair up, with some fans vocally insisting that Lucky be killed, lest any future storylines involving him ruin Luanne's character. However, the Season 11 finale "Lucky's Wedding Suit" ended with them marrying.
Luanne is often seen with "in" girls who wear trendy clothing. On one occasion, Luanne seems to mutter "Lucy" and a blonde, trendy, teen turns around but she goes off into a group of more girls before a conversation ensues. Lucy was rumored to be Luanne's sister but the creators just left the appearance as a cameo. After a time, Lucy can be seen as a background character in mall scenes, school scenes and so-forth. No other friends have been named personally by Luanne other than Lucy.
Education
When the series began, Luanne was beginning classes at the Arlen Beauty College, with the ambition of becoming a Hollywood makeup artist and successfully hiding the bags beneath Michael Douglas' eyes. Following Buckley's death, she had visions of Buckley in angelic form, who informed her that Jesus wanted her to take a different path in life. During one of these visions, Luanne crashed her car into the parking lot of a community college, where she was mistaken for a student. Luanne took this as a sign to begin pursuing a higher education and dropped out of beauty school and enrolled in the community college. What she was studying was never made explicit, though in one episode she mentions "pre-med", in another she states she is a "pre-education major", and in yet another, implies that she's taking psychology, though her definition of the word to Peggy ("the disease of psychology") indicates she was probably failing the course.
Luanne's enrollment in college provided the impetus for her to move out of Hank's house, a move made easier when Bill's next door neighbor, an angry old man, suddenly died of a heart attack while mowing his lawn. Luanne moved into the home with a trio of arrogant slackers and radicals, who chastized her for not accepting their lifestyles and personal philosophies while at the same time refusing to clean up after themselves or pay the rent. Luanne's roommate problem was apparently solved when Cotton Hill arrived at her house in the middle of the night looking for his friend (the previous owner) and instead was greeted by one of Luanne's roommates, who accused Cotton of being a Nazi; enraged, Cotton attacked the roommate, and neither he nor any of Luanne's other roommates were ever seen again.
Reduced role
Shortly after Luanne began attending college, her role in the series was diminished, almost to the point that the character was written out of the show (for an extended period, she didn't appear in any episodes). This was due to Brittany Murphy's increasing popularity at the box office and her pursuit of a movie career. One prominent episode that came around the time of Murphy's temporary departure was a 2000 "election special" in which Hank encouraged her to become involved in politics so that she could vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election. During voter registration, though, Luanne was informed by a "lady in a poncho" that Bush ate puppies; Luanne took the woman on her word, and registered as a communist.
Career fulfillment
After a few seasons, Luanne became a full-time character again, as she began working part-time at a hip unisex salon called "Hottyz" with Hank's friend Bill Dauterive, where her ability earned her the position of First Chair (the closest chair to the door, reserved for the best stylist in the salon). Bill was only permitted to work at the salon because the other employees believed him to be a homosexual, under the assumption that only gay men can properly cut hair, and because they wanted to use him as a status symbol. When the manager of Hottyz found out that Bill was a heterosexual, he and Luanne were fired. Hank approached his mentally-ill barber, Jack, about giving Luanne a job. Upon discovering that he would be "stealing" Hottyz' first chair, Jack happily accepted. Luanne left college and became a full-time hair stylist for Jack, and moved back in with the Hills (after an offer from Peggy) in order to save money.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (June 2007) |
- A running gag in the series is for Luanne to sob hysterically in front of Hank who has only the faintest idea how to react to a distraught woman.
- She is named after the "Lu Ann Platter" dish served by the Luby's Texas cafeteria chain (parodied as "Luly's" in the series). The dish is a half-portion entree with vegetables.
- In the Season 10 finale, "Edu-macating Lucky", Luanne's middle name was revealed to be "Leanne", apparently sharing her mother's first name.
- In several episodes, Luanne is seen driving a white 1997-up Geo Metro or Suzuki Swift two-door hatchback.
- Luanne is a member of the Propaniacs, a comedy troupe dedicated to making jokes and gags based around propane and related material.
In other media
A clip from Fox's Funniest Outtakes shows Luanne talking to Hank and her breasts popping out of her green top, accidentally exposing herself to Hank and his friends in the alley and causing Hank to remark "Come on, Luanne; you already got the job!"