Season 8 Episode 3: Proud to Be Your Bud?

Bud has one more plan. He comes down the stairs in full country and western outfit, having decided that country is in, and explains the preparation he has put into the persona, which includes chewing his weight in tobacco and learning a short list of country phrases. Kelly’s assessment of the look is immediate. The attempt fails, and it fails in a way that leaves him physically damaged and the outfit destroyed, and when he gets home he announces his retirement: he will neither seek nor accept a date from any woman for the rest of his life, and he will live out his days in the basement as the gnome his family has always said he is. He means it. He moves down there. And then he starts building something, a structure he describes as a portal, in the expectation that somebody will come through it, which is enough to convince the rest of the household that Bud has finally broken. What comes through is Cool Bud, a separate and more confident version of himself that only Bud can see, and the episode plays the relationship between them as a straight homage to a 1960 Twilight Zone episode about a man arguing with his own reflection. Meanwhile Al is trying to buy an alternator for the Dodge, which means a protracted battle with an automated telephone system. It is one of the more inventive Bud episodes the series made and the one that gave the character his second personality, which the show would come back to.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: September 19, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 3
• Overall episode number: 160
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Tony Singletary
• Production note: The last appearance of the Grandmaster B persona, visible hanging on Bud’s wall.
• Production note: The two-Buds material is an homage to the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room.”
• Title note: A play on the Budweiser slogan launched that year.

Guest Cast

• Michelle Nicholas as Libby

Enter Cool Bud

Cool Bud is the episode’s lasting contribution, and the show had been laying groundwork for him without announcing it. Bud had already argued with himself on the staircase and referred to himself as “we” back in season 7’s “T-R-A-Something-Something Spells Tramp,” and this is where the second personality gets a name and a face.

The best sequence is a clip reel titled Bud Bundy’s Greatest Hits, assembled from four years of the character’s humiliations and scored to Paul Anka’s “Lonely Boy.” It pulls the Incense Berkowitz slap from “Kelly Bounces Back,” the mannequin from “What I Did for Love,” the Reginald Bundy attempt from “Movie Show,” and the collapsing mannequin date from season 3’s “The Dateless Amigo.” Watching them back to back is genuinely sad, which is the point.

Al’s subplot is the first time the series got a full storyline out of hold music and a phone menu, and it dates the episode precisely: automated systems were new enough in 1993 to be a premise on their own. Listen closely and you can tell there is a live performer on the other end rather than a recording, because the voice keeps pausing for the studio audience.

Bud’s explanation of the country persona is the funniest writing in the episode, particularly his list of the sayings he has learned, the second of which is not a saying.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly, as Bud comes downstairs: “Let me guess, Billy Ray Bundy.” Bud: “Damn straight, missy. Country is in.” Kelly: “Well, then what country are you?”
• Bud, on his preparation: “I’ve learned my country sayings like ‘ornery’ and ‘I thought you was 18.’”
• Bud, returning in ruins: “What are the odds of running into a Native American pride parade marching half a block from our house?!”
• Kelly, with advice: “You keep trying to change the clothes that you wear. But what you really need is a new head. And while you’re at it, a new body to put it on!”
• Bud, announcing his retirement: “I will neither seek nor accept a date from any woman for the rest of my life! Instead, I shall live out the rest of my days in the basement, as the gnome you’ve always said I was!”

Notes

• Al mistakes Bud’s outfit for a Yosemite Sam costume as he walks past.
• The chewing tobacco brand Bud names had also been mentioned back in season 5’s “Wabbit Season.”
• A goof worth looking for: in the over-the-shoulder shots of the two Buds, the man in the green shirt is clearly not David Faustino, with a different haircut, a fuller beard and a rounder face.
• Another: nobody but Bud can see Cool Bud, yet Peg, Marcy and Jefferson all appear to hear him from the living room, and simply assume Bud is talking to himself.