Season 4 Episode 14: A Taxing Problem

An audit notice arrives, the fault is entirely Peg’s, and the consequence is Al’s. He needs five thousand dollars he does not have and no legitimate route to it, so he finds an illegitimate one: there is a buyer for his wife’s hair, and Peg has a great deal of hair. The plan requires her to be asleep, which Al explains to her in advance while standing behind her with a comb.

Bud guesses what has been sold inside one line, without hesitating, which tells you how normal this is in that house. Peg does not believe it until she sees her husband’s face. Al meanwhile spends part of the episode packing a suitcase for prison, and Steve turns up mid-pack to announce that he has quit the pet store and is considering becoming a rodeo clown before settling on living out his days in Yosemite.

That line is doing more work than it appears to. This was the final episode David Garrison taped before leaving the show, and Steve’s talk of disappearing into a national park is the groundwork for how the character actually departs. He appears in the following episode, which was shot earlier, and then he is gone from the regular cast. It is also the last episode of the series filmed in the 1980s, which gives the whole thing an accidental end-of-era quality it was never designed to have. Worth noticing on a rewatch is how little the audit itself matters. The IRS is a device to get Al into a corner, and once he is there the episode is about what he is willing to do to his wife to get out of it. The answer arrives fast and without much deliberation, which is the joke and also, in its way, the point.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: January 14, 1990
• Season 4, Episode 14, and the 71st episode of the series
• The last episode David Garrison taped as a regular cast member
• The last episode of the series filmed in the 1980s
• Written by Paul Diamond
• Directed by Gerry Cohen

Guest Cast

• Paul Coufos as Leo Privett
• Coleen Maloney as Marie Privett
• A.J. Freeman as the mailman

Five Thousand Dollars of Hair

The title came from Ron Leavitt. The writer pitched the episode and asked what to call it, and that was the answer.

Kelly’s algebra homework at the top is a genuinely unsolvable trick question about dividing fifty potatoes among a fraction of six children, and the joke is that she does not notice it cannot be answered.

Kelly also refers to a foil-wrapped package in the fridge, which the show later names Peggy’s Mystery Pack in season 5’s “My Dinner with Anthrax.”

Marcy volunteers that she paid her male cousin five dollars to take her to the prom on condition he kept quiet, and that he did not.

Famous Quotes

• Peg: “You’ll never guess what your father just sold for $5,000.” Bud: “Sure I would. He sold your hair.” Bud, guessing first time.
• Peg: “No, silly. The lawn furniture. Right, Al?” Al: “We’ll just discuss that when you wake up in the morning.” The plan, revealed.
• Al: “Oh yes. Oh… oh no!” Al’s menace, interrupted by his own digestion.

Notes

• Goof: Marcy states that women never lose their hair, which is not true, though the episode needs it to be.