Season 7 Episode 10: Death of a Shoe Salesman

Al’s hero, a Western star named Fuzzy McGee, has died, and Al discovers that the cemetery plot next to him is for sale. For a man who owns almost nothing and expects nothing, spending eternity beside John Wayne’s stand-in is the first ambition in years he can actually afford, and he buys it. Peg’s reaction is that if Al is going to be buried next to somebody, it should be her, and she sets about arranging a plot nearby. The quoted prices are the problem. The funeral director, played by Dan Castellaneta, walks the couple through a cost structure that reaches twenty-seven thousand dollars, with a discount available if they are willing to dig the graves themselves, and Peg’s requirements include a bubble-top coffin to accommodate her hair. Her eventual solution involves rearranging the existing occupants, which she explains at the graveside while tapping Fuzzy’s headstone. Elsewhere, Seven has moved out. He has been living with Marcy and Jefferson for three days, having walked in and declined to leave, and the Darcys arrive to ask the Bundys to come and collect him. Neither parent is especially bothered. Marcy would like to rename him Henry, and Peg agrees without hesitation. The reason the Darcys want him gone turns out to be the names he has started calling them. It is one of the show’s better uses of the Bundy-Darcy relationship, because for once both couples want the same thing and neither will do anything about it. The cemetery material, meanwhile, lets Al be sentimental about a man he never met while remaining completely unsentimental about his own family, which is about the right balance for him.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 22, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 10
• Overall episode number: 141
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: November 13, 1992
• Production note: Seven is discussed throughout but does not appear.
• Title note: From Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

Guest Cast

• Dan Castellaneta as the funeral director
• James R. Sweeney as the priest
• Emilio Borelli as the Italian man
• Laurel Lockhart as Lorraine
• Robert Ackerman as Harry
• Bill Applebaum as the voice of the newscaster

The Plot Next to Fuzzy McGee

Dan Castellaneta is the best thing in the episode, which is saying something given that by late 1992 he was already three seasons into voicing Homer Simpson on the same network. He had also appeared on this show before, as Pete in season 5’s “The Dance Show.” His funeral director delivers a brutal price list in the tone of a man reading a weather forecast.

The cold open has Al and the children watching a fictional John Wayne picture with a title the show could not possibly use today, and the joke is entirely at the film’s expense: the kids notice a white actor playing an Indian and another playing a black man. It is a sharper piece of criticism than the series usually bothered with.

The Darcy subplot gives Ted McGinley his best lines of the episode, reporting on Seven’s progress as though filing a developmental assessment. The boy still cannot read, write or use cutlery, but he has learned to chant with the other neighbors. The thing that has actually broken the Darcys is what Seven calls each of them.

Marcy’s habit of calling out her ex-husband’s name is the other recurring joke, and Jefferson’s response, which involves marching her out of the Bundy house, is immediately revealed to be the point of the whole exercise.

Famous Quotes

• Marcy, on their houseguest: “He’s been living with us for the last three days. He walked in and wouldn’t leave.”
• Jefferson, with a progress report: “He’s improving slowly. He still can’t read, write, or use a knife and fork, but he has learned to chant ‘kill the Bundys’ with the other neighbors.”
• Marcy, getting to the actual complaint: “He’s irritating. He calls us ‘Dad’ and… ‘Little Dad’.”
• Jefferson, after Marcy kisses him and uses the wrong name: “Steve?! We are going home and I am gonna ROCK the ‘Steve’ out of you, BA-BY!” Marcy, to Peg: “It always works!”
• Peg: “Why don’t you ever ‘rock’ me, Al?” Al: “‘Cause I’d rather stone ‘ya!”

Notes

• Marcy mentions she would like to be buried next to Steve Rhoades, which is a fairly direct admission for a woman on her second marriage.
• Peg reveals that Al’s gift for their thirteenth anniversary in 1979 was a three-pack of underwear, which puts the wedding in 1966 and contradicts both the sixteenth anniversary in season 1 and the twentieth in season 6.
• Bud and Kelly reveal their own plan for their parents’ remains, which involves the barbecue grill and the toilet.
• Al sings “Happy Trails” at the graveside and then “O Sole Mio” for an Italian family who overhear him.
• Buck makes a brief appearance at the top of the staircase during the opening scene.
• Bill Applebaum, the newscaster announcing Fuzzy McGee’s death, had appeared back in season 3 as the senior class president in “Married… with Prom Queen.”