Season 7 Episode 19: Go for the Old

A cashier at the movie theater assumes Al is a senior citizen and charges him accordingly, and Al, after a brief crisis of self-image, works out that this is the first unearned advantage anyone has ever handed him. He gets hold of a senior discount card and begins using it everywhere, aggressively and without shame. The crisis comes first, though, and it produces the best scene in the episode: Al asks his family whether he genuinely looks old, and his children devise an on-the-spot test based on Kelly’s theory about what happens to men’s bodies with age. Al submits to the examination confidently and then has to listen to Bud’s assessment of his trousers. Peg supplies the answer to where it all goes. Having established his new identity, Al takes it to its logical conclusion and enters a senior athletic championship, which is the show letting Al Bundy compete in sport one more time, against opponents he can actually beat. The events include a pole vault that ends badly for a woman in the stands and her cat. Whether Al, given the chance to let an elderly opponent take the win, will do so is a question the episode answers with an on-screen caption directed at anyone who has not been paying attention for the previous seven years. The senior discount premise is one of those ideas the show could have played purely for cruelty and instead turns into something closer to wish fulfilment, since the one thing Al has always wanted is a sport he can win. Nothing about the episode suggests he deserves it, which is exactly why it is funny.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: March 28, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 19
• Overall episode number: 150
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: February 26, 1993
• Production note: The closing freeze frame is not the usual shot of Al and Peg on the couch, in use since season 4, but Al on the couch with Buck in his new clothes.
• Title note: A play on “go for the gold.”

Guest Cast

• E.D. Miller as Ira
• George Feinstein as George
• Mario Roccuzzo as the vendor
• Kevin Brief as the official
• Peggy Gilbert, Georgia Shilling, Jerrie Thill and Marian Wells as the cheerleaders
• Todd McLaren as the stadium announcer

The Senior Championships

Peg’s account of Al’s athletic career is the single best thing in the episode and one of the great Peggy Bundy speeches. Asked by her children whether their father was ever actually any good, she describes a play in which he threw a fake, broke four tackles, straight-armed a man in the teeth and ran for daylight, and then reveals that this was at their wedding and that he would still be running if one of her uncles had not clubbed him with a shotgun butt and dragged him back. Her verdict, that he was a great athlete but was never any good, is the whole character in one sentence.

The caption that runs after Al’s decathlon victory is the show breaking the fourth wall to make a point about itself, and it is not wrong. Seven years in, anyone expecting Al to let an old man win had not been watching.

The “Chariots of Fire” cue returns for the final event, having already been used for Al’s confrontation with Spare Tire Dixon in season 5. The cheerleaders, a quartet of genuinely elderly performers, sing the last verse of the national anthem.

The brother and sister exchange about what will happen to their respective bodies is one of the nastier things the series let Bud and Kelly say to each other, and both of them land their shot.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly, proposing a diagnostic: “I know the sure test! Old men have no heinies!”
• Bud, after the examination: “Look at his pants! They just go straight down! Where do old guys’ heinies go?” Peg: “To that strange, far off, magical place called their bellies.”
• Kelly, on her father’s athletic record, asked of her mother: “Was he ever really a great athlete?” Peg: “He’d still be running if my uncle hadn’t clubbed him with the butt of his shotgun and dragged him back to the wedding! So, in answer to your question: Yes, he was a great athlete, but no, he was never any good.”
• Bud: “Hope I never lose my butt!” Kelly: “You wouldn’t lose your butt in prison!”

Notes

• A dream sequence reveals that Al once slapped his own coach and took over the team after the coach suggested giving up.
• A goof: Bud and Kelly cook popcorn on a stove burner that is visibly switched off.
• Another: Peg is sitting between her children at the start of the championships and has relocated to the edge of the bleachers by the pole vault, presumably so Katey Sagal could reach Al faster after the landing.