Season 2 Episode 18: The Great Escape

Kelly is grounded over her grades, and because the house is being fumigated for termites, the entire family has to spend the period at Gary’s Shoes. This puts a teenager under her father’s direct supervision in a shoe store for the duration, with a concert she intends to attend, and the episode becomes an escape picture conducted around the stockroom.

It is one of the better early uses of the shoe store as something other than a place where Al suffers. With the family installed in it the location has to work as a set rather than a punchline, and the episode fills it out considerably: a rival establishment called Morty’s Shoes operating in the same mall, an aerobics studio next door supplying customers, and the beginnings of the store’s own small ecosystem. Season five’s “All Night Security Dude” later relocated that studio to the floor above.

The half-hour also introduces Jade, the strikingly attractive woman who walks in and talks to Al, a recurring figure across the next four seasons in three further episodes. Kelly establishes that she is in the tenth grade, and the episode reveals that Bud is known to the Polk High football team as the Masked Lover Lane Peeper and wanted accordingly.

There is a nice piece of scheduling trivia attached: the episode aired the same night Christina Applegate guest-starred on FOX’s 21 Jump Street, playing a teenager in a rehabilitation programme, meaning she was on the network twice in one evening in two very different registers. Cliff Bemis, the termite boss here, returned nine seasons later to play Al’s father in a flashback.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 21, 1988
• Season 2, Episode 18, and the 31st episode of the series
• Written by Ellen L. Fogle
• Directed by Linda Day
• Neither Steve nor Marcy appears

Guest Cast

• Teri Weigel as Jade
• Cliff Bemis as the termite boss
• Hope Marie Carlton as Heather
• Kim Anderson as Jackie
• Barbara Lee-Belmonte as Trish
• Barbara Schillaci as Mitzi

Grounded at the Shoe Store

The cost comparison Peg lays out for her daughter, pointing at the exterminator and then at Al, is the single most efficient summary of the Bundy household economy in the first two seasons.

This is also the first appearance of Jade, the customer who comes in specifically for Al. Teri Weigel played her four times between here and season 5, and the joke never changed: a woman openly propositions Al and he turns her down because he is married.

Famous Quotes

• Peggy: “$1750 a job. $1750 a year.” Al: “Suicide. Reason.” Peg comparing the exterminator to her husband, and Al finishing the thought.
• Kelly: “When am I ever going to need to know math?” Bud: “You may need it for your career. You know, three Whoppers, large fries and a Coke.” Bud, on Kelly’s prospects.
• Jade: “Don’t you think you should get me a shoe?” Al: “Us real pros understand the need to hold a foot.” Professional standards at Gary’s Shoes.

Notes

• The title references the 1963 film.
• This aired the same night Christina Applegate guest starred on 21 Jump Street.
• Cliff Bemis came back in season 11 to play Al’s father in a flashback.
• Kelly is in tenth grade here.
• Goof: Kelly unlocks the shoe store door with a key, then locks it from the outside with the same key, and pushes a door marked PULL.