Season 6 Episode 15: Just Shoe It

An athletic shoe company called Zeus is casting a commercial built around former athletes, and Al Bundy believes this is the opportunity he has been waiting twenty-five years for. His qualifications, as he presents them to his family, consist of four touchdowns in a single game to clinch the 1966 city championship and two hundred yards against Garfield High. Jefferson’s response to both questions is Shaft. Al gets the job anyway, and the bulk of the episode takes place on a commercial shoot alongside three men who were actually famous: Steve Carlton, Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Sugar Ray Leonard, all playing themselves. Al, surrounded by genuine professional athletes and a director with a vision, does what Al does, which is talk himself into the biggest possible version of the job and then discover what the job really is. The shoot includes a boxing ring. Sugar Ray Leonard is in it. Al is also in it, and the result is exactly what anyone outside the production would predict, with Leonard putting him down with one punch and Peg arriving at ringside to ask whether he would mind doing it again because she missed it. The payoff comes when the family gathers to watch the finished commercial on television, and Al discovers how much of his performance survived the edit. His feet are in it. His feet are played by someone else.The episode works because it gives Al exactly what he has always wanted and then shows him the invoice. He gets to stand next to real champions, he gets his name on a call sheet, and what reaches the air is somebody else’s feet. It is the single cleanest statement of the Al Bundy proposition the sixth season produced, and it arrives without a word of commentary.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: January 19, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 15
• Overall episode number: 120
• Written by: Lisa Chernin
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: January 10, 1992
• Production note: Al’s feet in the finished commercial are played by Frank Lloyd, who had appeared in earlier seasons as Al’s friend Norris and served as the show’s resident stuntman.
• Title note: A play on Nike’s “Just Do It.” The fictional Zeus brand follows the same naming logic, Nike being the Greek goddess of victory and Zeus the king of the gods.

Guest Cast

• Steve Carlton as himself
• Ed “Too Tall” Jones as himself
• Sugar Ray Leonard as himself
• Steve Vinovich as the director
• Elizabeth Giordano as the receptionist
• George C. Simms as the casting executive
• Tom Reilly as the caterer
• Frank Lloyd as Al’s feet
• Jay Gardner as the commercial announcer (voice)

Ex-Jocks and the Zeus Campaign

Three real athletes in one episode is a lot even for this show, and the casting is well chosen. Carlton is a Hall of Fame pitcher with over three hundred wins. Jones played fifteen seasons on the Dallas defensive line. Leonard had retired for the third time the year before this aired. All three play along without winking at the camera, which is what makes Al’s presence among them funny rather than merely sad.

The boxing ring sequence is the one everyone remembers, and the family’s reaction afterward is better than the knockout itself. Bud’s first concern is whether Leonard hurt his hand. Kelly wants to know how he came to be called Leonard. Peg’s contribution is to ask him to do it again, and Leonard agrees without hesitation.

The Shaft exchange is one of Ted McGinley’s best runs in the season. Al asks twice who accomplished these feats, clearly expecting his own name, and Jefferson answers with John Shaft both times, then starts on the theme song and has to be cut off.

Bud’s football tutorial for his mother is the other standout. Peg correctly identifies the center and the defensive end, and then correctly identifies the place kicker from a description that has nothing to do with the position’s actual job.

Famous Quotes

• Al, building to his point: “Ex-Jocks! Who’s the most famous ex-athlete in Chicago?” Bud: “Ernie Banks?” Al: “I said ‘athlete’! You should know that means football!”
• Al: “Who’s the man who scored 4 touchdowns in a single game to clinch the city championship in 1966?” Jefferson: “Shaft, John Shaft.”
• Bud, quizzing his mother: “Now, who’s the little foreign guy who can barely speak English, never gets hit, and is taking yet another job away from an American?” Peg: “The place kicker.”
• Peg, arriving at ringside after Sugar Ray Leonard has flattened her husband: “Uh, Sugar Ray, I blinked and missed the whole thing… Could you hit him again?”

Notes

• Al implies that Peg used to be a brunette. Katey Sagal is one in real life.
• Al mentions that he was MVP of the “20 Stores and Under” Mall League.
• Peg is banned from the house during both the Super Bowl and the Bud Bowl.
• Buck gets a Dirty Harry line, adapted as “Are you feeling lucky, punks?!”
• A goof: Peg answers Al’s question about Chicago’s most famous ex-athlete with Merlin Olsen, who played his entire NFL career for the Los Angeles Rams and his college ball in Utah.