Season 5 Episode 4: The Unnatural

Al’s softball team reaches the championship and decides it would rather not have him in it. The vote to replace him is unanimous, which matters because his wife and both of his children have votes and use them. His replacement is better than he is in every measurable way, and the team is better off, and nobody pretends otherwise.

Then the replacement gets hurt, and Al goes in, and the episode gives him the moment it has spent twenty minutes denying him. His speech before crossing home plate is pitched as the big emotional payoff and is undercut by the fact that it is a neighbourhood softball league.

What makes this one worth seeking out is the ending, which is unlike anything else in the series. The final scene, a game between two other teams, plays with no laugh track and no audience applause at all. The show simply switches the audience off and lets the last image sit in silence. For a series built on a live studio crowd, running a closing scene dry is a deliberate and genuinely strange choice, and it is the only time they did it.

It is also the final appearance of the New Market Mallers, who had been introduced back in season 2, and the last time the show has the Bundy family playing a sport together. Watched now, the episode reads as the show closing a door. Softball had been one of the few things the Bundys did together without it ending in a fight, going back to season 2, and after this it is gone. Al does organise a team again in season 10, but it is NO MA’AM rather than his family, which is a different thing entirely.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: October 14, 1990
• Season 5, Episode 4, and the 84th episode of the series
• Final appearance of the New Market Mallers
• Written by Katherine Green
• Directed by Gerry Cohen

Guest Cast

• Reid Shelton as Roy
• Steve Susskind as Barney
• Frank Lloyd as Norris
• Dan Blom as Sven Hunkstrom
• Ian Ziering as the kid
• Greg Lewis as the old codger
• Derek Sellers as Hardy

The Scene With No Laugh Track

Ian Ziering appears here in a small part, shortly before Beverly Hills 90210 began.

The Cremators, one of the opposing teams, have “We Burn Your Loved Ones” printed across the back of their jerseys.

Al puts his own batting average at .400.

The Mallers were first seen in season 2’s How Do You Spell Revenge?, which was also a softball episode.

Famous Quotes

• Marcy: “It’s too bad some men don’t know how to give up their sports gracefully instead of lingering on like big babies.” Marcy, opening.
• Al: “If we could only be comfortable with our age like you darn gals.” Al, responding at length.
• Al: “Today, I consider myself…” Al’s speech at home plate, in a neighbourhood softball league.

Notes

• Goof: the closing caption reads Kankakee, 1991, and there are mountains visible behind the field. Kankakee is in Illinois.
• Goof: Al refers to the game as baseball throughout, and the pitching shown is not consistent with softball.