My father did this EXACT same thing with John McCain. He has never watched KOTH. He has no idea. But he did. He was completely disillusioned because McCain’s hand shake at a campaign rally was not firm enough with sufficient eye contact. He was all about the man, but he never liked him again. He’s a Boomer like Hank, and he could not be reasoned with after this.
Trauma can literally impede and stifle someone’s potential, like in Bill’s case. It’s like what Bruce Springsteen said, “End up like a dog who’s been beat too much that you spend half your life just covering up.”
Bill is beaten down by life. When we see him younger he is fit, handsome, quick witted, and full of potential. The army, his ex-wife, and his abusive codependent friends did a number on him after all the abuse his father seemed to heap on him. If Bill had a better upbringing and support network, he'd be a lot better off. I think Bill is one of the smarter people but his trauma has destroyed his potential.
@BigDogHDSPB This has got to be one of the biggest own-goals I've ever seen. There was no "big vocabulary" in that comment, and you just outed yourself as having a 5th grade reading level at best.
@@BigDogHDSPB I was gonna come back with a retort but I realized you're probably just in a crappy mood because I leave comments like this sometimes when I am. Wish you the best, and truly not trying to impress. I just write verbosely when stoned, and also thought it'd be a funny contrast with "everyone just ignores it lol"
I can't believe that Bill made a really solid and coherent point about what is and isn't an issue of character. Like, it's so easy to forget that despite all that has happened to him in his life, he is still actually a solid judge of character.
@@ClubbingSealCub Basically Hank dragged Bill down. Remember when they went to that punk rock club in Dallas? Hank can't handle his liquor and starts a fight with some punk rockers, Bill was able to calm them down after catching a punch mid flight and held the guy's fist with minimal effort, lowkey showing he could handle his own against the guy but didn't want to fight, just squash it. Hank then starts it up again and Bill has to hold these two angry guys ready to kick Hank's ass back as he also had them get Hank out of there.
Dubya was a silver-spoon daddy's boy from New England who moved to Texas and adopted a fake persona as a southern everyman. That handshake makes perfect sense.
To this day, it blows my mind how many people bought into such an obviously fake, manufactured persona. I got into more than a few discussions with people in my younger days who were totally convinced that he was a born and bred, gun toting Texan cowboy, something they loved and made them certain that he was "one of them" or "salt of the Earth." Only to be blown away when I was like "He was born in Connecticut, you fool! For God's sake, he was a legacy alumni at fucking Yale!"
Yeah Republicans have a weird habit of picking those considering they all claim to want manly men. Trump is another silver spoon baby who spent his entire life either in Manhattan or on golf courses
I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t over aggressive handshake. Dubya wasn’t insecure. Unlike ol shrimp fork hands, bone spurs on my foot draft dodgin Donnie
As weird as it sounds, Hank kinda has a point… after reading in depth about The Tehran Conference (the meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin towards the end of WW2), I’m absolutely BLOWN AWAY by how much posturing and subtle demonstrations of strength goes on when world leaders meet. A weak handshake actually probably would lower our president’s negotiation powers in critical meetings. Crazy as it sounds.
As long as there are world leaders who do think that it's important, it will be. Imagine someone trying to negotiate a ceasefire with Putin after giving him a limp handshake, there's no doubt it will at least subconsciously affect his perception of that person in a negative way.
@@Caprikel-ov2odGoes to show that no matter how rational we believe ourselves to be, we will always be subject to irrationality in cases like this. That's just how humans work.
I like the lowkey implication that Hank deliberately refuses to help Peggy work the VCR because he probably thinks “Scent of a Woman" is a chick flick, which it demonstrably is not, to put it mildly.
He may like it, but the bigger issue is that he's afraid of being marked as an 'undutiful citizen', and sometimes, as practical as he is, his imagination gets away from him
I work for a corporation and a few weeks ago I met with the VP for the first time, he's a guy I'd heard great things about about but on both entering and exiting his office I got the limpest handshake I've ever experienced in my life. Was like shaking hands with an octopus. Never been able to look at him the same way .😂 Immediately made me think of this episode. This man has met with CEOs of companies all over the world and I can't imagine what their impressions were
What makes this extra funny is the fact that Texas's current governor, Greg Abbott, has an EXTREMELY firm handshake. I've met him multiple times, and he'd earnestly impress Hank, guy has a death grip.
I love the cultural aspect of this episode. It’s so deep for no reason. It’s just a handshake but like Hank said “a man’s handshake is an issue”. I can recall multiple bad handshakes and they left me with a weird feeling, and I never knew how to describe it until I watched this episode. So I understand Hank a lot lol
People who do hard work with their hands like farmers, cattle ranchers, truckers, mechanics, loggers ect actually develop a leather like texture to their palms as time goes. So the fact that hank was able to noticed from a handshake, that bush was just another out of touch texan millionaire politician pretending to be a texan farmer is just brilliant writting. This also kind of explains why many times the shows writers have said multiple times that if king of the hill was still running, hank would've definitely not voted for trump, as he's very good at spotting any politicians fake appeals to the working class struggles and probably would've been able to see right thru him almost instantly.
Just had to find a way to spread your MSDNC propaganda against Trump in here and try to fit it in here where it doesn’t belong. Trump Derangement Syndrome is absolutely a real sentiment. That or you’re just grotesquely misinformed. As are the show’s own writers apparently about Trump. The largest tax cuts in history which objectively boomed the middle class in this country for the better and I’m happy to debate you on that if you disagree, was just an appeal to the working class. Yeah, I’ll let my paycheck do the talking and I think Hank would too.
As a kid, I just thought I just thought this was Hank being an uptight traditionalst. Watching as an adult, I find the story much more meaningful. Not that I care about the firmness of the handshake debate, actions speak louder than words. What I noticed as an adult is Bush hardly even shook his hand, he basically just held it. Hank is right, it is a character issue. It's not that he needs a firm shake, but it shows that he doesn't feel personal about his constituents, he just cares about votes and cameras. Of course, Hank made it about how strong he is, so maybe that's not how he took it, but it's something noteworthy I noticed
“…He doesn’t feel personal about his constituents, he just cares about votes and cameras” yes, that’s how all of them feel about us. You & I, along with everyone else in America are just votes. Numbers on a piece of paper. Data to be collected and recorded. Nothing more, nothing less. Always have been, always will be to every single politician or hopeful politician elect out there. To assume they’d act any differently is akin to still believing in The Tooth Fairy.
@@itsAmeOFPno I'm going to put my trust in the handshake, not in people that cry and whine and moan because someone is complimenting something that they obviously don't have, in other words if you had a respectable handshake you wouldn't be crying
Bill is right, A handshake is such a trivial thing to obsess over, I mean so a man has a limp handshake big deal most people would just ignore it and move on. Not only that, But the fact that Hank thought that Bush was an incapable person all because of his handshake was just as idiotic. I mean you know the old saying "A man can't be judged by the color of his skin?" well in the case of this episode the saying should be "A man shouldn't be judged by the weakness of his handshake" I know it's a dumb comparison but surely some of you know what I mean by it.
If you were born at least in the 80s you were taught to look somebody in the eye and give a firm handshake. Also stand up if sitting, and take your hat off if you want to get really proper. So most that age and older who recieved a weak eyes away handshake just view it as a fake gesture pretty much. Like you insult them for even offering the handshake if thats how you were going to give it.
Ngl for all we know Bush had probably been shaking hands for hours at that point. I wouldn’t be surprised if his grip would get less and less tired throughout that day
In all fairness to Hank, in this particular case, he should have trusted his instinct 😂 Bush was the rare president that ended up hated by everyone lol
I can honestly say I know exactly how Hank feels. First day of our store getting a new store director I put out a car fire in the parking lot. Said store director went to greet and thank me with a hand shake and it was like shaking hands with a marshmallow. I physically felt ill for a brief moment after the hand shake.
I heard that politicians always give limp handshakes in public. When you shake hands as often as they do you put yourself at risk of Carpel-Tunnel. What Hank felt was just a 'buisness' hand shake.
The best part about it isn't even Hank's obsession with Bush's handshake, but the comment section's ironic obsession with judging a cartoon character, lmao.
FYI in case you’re doing business in places like China. In China it’s the opposite. While you don’t want to be too limp wristed. A “firm” handshake is not necessary and in fact is a trait the Chinese would almost negatively deride as so “American”
@@heytherebatoI hate to break it to you, but that shit is dying. It’s not longer a mainstream thing. Young men nowadays arguably don’t give handshakes anymore.
A handshake is serious business! I feel absolutely betrayed when I want to give a strong handshake, but on the other side there is no response, so I have to interupt to prevent damage, else it's like squashing a ripe banana.
Gotta love the humor. Earlier in the episode Hank was belittling Luanne because she was voting for a Communist candidate for no other reason than he has a nice tie… something so dumb and petty. Now here’s Hank *not* voting for his candidate because of a handshake… something equally petty
Never mind that he enjoyed killing people by dishing out the death penalty throughout the Texas prison system BEFORE going to war in Iraq under false pretenses, Bush’s weak handshake was the one thing that made Hank second-guess voting Republican! 😂
A perfect example of how our political choices are mostly emotional and not practical. And how those emotions are so easily manipulated. We don’t want to think too hard. We just want to feel good. What has always been uncomfortable and I think cringey and sad to me about this show, is that these are American ‘low brow’ or ‘low culture’ characters and stories, but created by urban writers and producers. Meaning they created a recipe that they thought would work and people just ate it up. I’d hope that the masses would be able to smell a fake and spit it out.
@@Wadiyatalkinabeet_ I’m a graphic designer my friend - a professional propagandist. I have a college degree in propaganda history (governmental and commercial). Am I susceptible to it? Less than u, my cute little trump-humper.
I can understand where Hank is coming from, but I can understand where everyone else is coming from too. Im a millennial and I was raised to always have a firm handshake, so I fully understand why Hank thinks its important.
I grew up in Texas and it’s definitely a sign of character when you shake a man’s hand. However, I will say that it’s dying and no longer being practicing amongst the younger generation in my age groups (20s). It’s becoming a thing of the past by each year passing by and that’s just how it is. As for Hank? Some of you are forgetting that while Hank is an old-fashioned man, he is also the most gullible character and always assumes that people are well-meaning like he is in the show next to Bill. Seriously, he put his trust in the system which we all know is a joke and he really thought that a politician would care about his values and integrity? Come on Hank!
1:16 Hank ⚠️ warned us about 9/11 about a year before it happened! And what did Hanks friends do??... They're Laughing! They're Laughing!! 😂😂😂 it wasn't so funny on 9/11/2001 now was it??? Hank was right!
A firm handshake is NOT that difficult. We're not talking about soft hands and we're not talking about squeezing the life out of a man's palm, we're talking about taking the initiative to show decency and respect after an encounter. Hank is 1000% correct. If you flounder some man's hand, it says something about you that I can't get passed either.
This is a real deal. I always judged a mans character off of a firm handshake. Its a subtle sign of respect. I had a buddy when id say hello and shake his hand it was like a limp noodle i felt like he couldnt put in the effort to have a solid handshake. I have had people comment on my handshake, its firm and confident, and can throw people off if they are not expecting it.
Biden's handshake is either alzheimer's old man strength or incredibly limp now. In general, I'd assume most Republican and Democratic presidents and candidates in my lifetime have decent handshakes.
