Season 6 Episode 5: Looking for a Desk in All the Wrong Places

Two separate plots here, and both of them are about people behaving very badly about a baby. On the Darcy side, Marcy has decided that her own childhood furniture will be good enough for her child, and the centerpiece of that collection is a small pink desk. The problem is that the storage locker holding all of it was auctioned off, because Jefferson never paid for the unit. Marcy, pregnant and off the medication she had been taking for her moods, sets out with Peg to track the contents down, and the version of Marcy that errand produces is genuinely unhinged. Her reminiscence about holding tea parties at that desk for her imaginary friends is one of Amanda Bearse’s best moments in the entire series, mostly because the imaginary friends did not enjoy it. Jennifer, the popular girl, was made to drink four or five cups. Robert, the cute one who normally threw milk in her face, spent his visits on the floor kissing her four-year-old feet. Back at the house, Al, Bud and Kelly have convened what they are formally calling the Anti-Baby Meeting, complete with minutes, a secretary and a required opening salute of “hail baby.” The minutes are read aloud. They are not supportive. Al floats name suggestions that his own children consider cruel, and offers his broader policy proposal for the relocation of every pregnant woman in America to a renamed Idaho. Jefferson, having been found out about the locker, ends the episode in the backyard singing to the dog.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: October 6, 1991
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 5
• Overall episode number: 110
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: September 13, 1991
• Production note: The only appearance of the Bundy Anti-Baby Meeting.
• Title note: From the lyric “looking for love in all the wrong places” in Johnny Lee’s 1980 single “Lookin’ for Love.”

Guest Cast

• Robert Lesser as Edwin Johanson, the bum
• Terri Hoyos as Mrs. Garcia
• Lisa Saxton as Bathsheba
• Tonya Lawson as Salome (credited as Tonya Offer)
• Renee Tenison as Topsy
• Rosie Tenison as Mopsy
• Seth Dillon as Jorge Garcia (credited as Seth Dillion)

The Anti-Baby Meeting

The Anti-Baby Meeting is the episode’s best idea and the show never used it again, which is a shame. It has officers. It has minutes. It requires attendees to rise and say “hail baby” before proceeding, a formality Kelly complies with under protest and records her feelings about in writing. Bud is pressed into reading her notes aloud after she falls asleep at the table, and what he finds is a running account of how cheap the whole exercise makes her feel.

Marcy’s desk monologue works because Bearse plays it completely straight and then lets it curdle. She starts out wistful about tea services and imaginary friends, and within about thirty seconds she is barking at a remembered four-year-old boy to lick her feet like a dog. Peg’s explanation, that Marcy has come off her mood medication for the duration of the pregnancy, is offered almost as an aside.

The fantasy sequence belonging to Jefferson, and later inherited by Al, is populated by four women all drawn from the same talent pool the show had been using since season 4. Renee Tenison was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year for 1990, and her twin sister Rosie appears alongside her here. Lisa Saxton had been the vendor at the Paternity Ward three episodes earlier. Tonya Lawson, credited as Tonya Offer, completes the group.

One scene has been cut from some cable reruns: the bit where Peg asks a man she takes for a vagrant whether he wants a job, and he turns out to be a schoolteacher.

Famous Quotes

• Marcy, remembering her childhood desk and the imaginary friends she entertained there: “Normally he’d just throw his milk in my face, but not at my desk. Ahh, I can see him now, kissing my four-year-old feet. ‘Lick ’em, baby! Lick ’em! Lick ’em like a dog!’”
• Bud, reading his sister’s minutes from the previous Anti-Baby Meeting: “I can no longer write down the insane bellowing of what used to be my mother. This baby is a curse to us all. Wait, I’m supposed to rise and give a ‘hail baby’. There, I’ve done it. I feel cheaper than I’ve ever felt, and that’s saying something.”
• Al, outlining his legislative agenda: “I’d get me a big, empty state no one’s using. You know, a state like Idaho. Then I’d get every pregnant woman in the country, I’d stick ’em into a donut truck, and I’d convoy ’em to Boise. And since nobody cares any about Idaho anyway, I’d change the name to ‘Pregnaho’.”
• Al, on his own neighborhood under the same scheme: “But where we live is ‘Breast Virginia’.”

Notes

• Peg reveals that she broke Al three days into the marriage, after he made the mistake of requesting three meals a day, clean clothes and pillows.
• Marcy’s imaginary friends are named Jennifer and Robert, and neither of them had a good time.
• The store Marcy and Jefferson visit is The Sharper Infant, a send-up of The Sharper Image.
• Al suggests naming the baby Piscopo, which Bud and Kelly consider a low blow.
• Al tells Jefferson “goodnight, sweet prince” after Jefferson tries to talk his way out of the locker situation.
• Jefferson spends the end of the episode in the backyard singing Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles” to Buck.
• A geography goof in Kelly’s minutes: Bud’s proposal involves floating the baby down the Ohio River to Cleveland, which the Ohio River does not reach.