Season 8 Episode 11: Change for a Buck

Buck has had enough and walks out, and the joke that powers the episode is that it takes the Bundys an extremely long time to notice. He ends up in a municipal dog pound, where he meets Floyd, an older and more experienced resident who explains how things work there, and where an employee named Mustafa has a schedule to keep. The pound storyline is played almost entirely from the dogs’ point of view, with Cheech Marin back as the voice of Buck for the second time and Dom DeLuise as Floyd, and it is a surprisingly affecting half of an episode. A bloodhound plays harmonica. Floyd has advice. The clock is running. Back at the house nobody is looking for the dog because nobody has registered that he is gone, and when the family finally does notice, Al’s position is that Buck has probably simply left, which he describes with real envy as something he has considered a million times himself. Al’s eventual attempt to resolve the situation by bringing home a different and much smaller dog and presenting it as Buck is the sort of solution only he would attempt. The scene that breaks him is the family whistling the Lassie theme at him until he cries. It is a genuine oddity: a Married with Children episode in which the most sympathetic character is the dog, and the most honest speech in it is Al’s, explaining why leaving would be the sane thing to do. Amanda Bearse directs the pound scenes with far more patience than a sitcom B-plot about a lost dog normally gets.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 28, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 11
• Overall episode number: 168
• Written by: Kim Weiskopf
• Directed by: Amanda Bearse
• Production note: Marcy does not appear, as Amanda Bearse directed.
• Production note: Cheech Marin’s second turn as the voice of Buck, after season 5’s “Look Who’s Barking.”
• Title note: A play on asking for change for a dollar, and on Buck changing his situation.

Guest Cast

• Cheech Marin as the voice of Buck Bundy
• Dom DeLuise as the voice of Floyd the dog
• Ralph P. Martin as Mustafa
• Jeanine Jackson as the mother
• Lenny Wolpe as the father
• Joshua Boyd as Little Timmy

Buck and Floyd

Dom DeLuise is a genuine coup for a sitcom dog part. He had done Blazing Saddles, the Cannonball Run films and All Dogs Go to Heaven, and his voice carries the pound scenes almost single-handed. His son David later worked with Christina Applegate on Jesse, and another son, Peter, starred on 21 Jump Street, which Applegate guest starred on.

Giving the episode over to the dogs for half its length was a real risk and it works because the show does not soften it. Mustafa has a job to do and announces it plainly, and the studio audience’s reaction to the line is audible on the broadcast.

Al’s speech about why Buck might have left is the best writing in the episode, because it is not about the dog. He imagines Buck eating a steak, drinking a daiquiri and enjoying himself for the first time in his life, and he makes clear that he has entertained the same plan a million times. Kelly’s two-word reply shuts it down.

The opening scene between Bud and Kelly is one of their better exchanges, built around the dedications each of them receives on a radio request show. Kelly’s list for Bud is brutal and specific, and her indignant response when her own turn comes is undercut by the DJ within three seconds.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly, listing her brother’s radio dedications: “Three, actually: ‘Lonely Boy,’ ‘Like A Virgin…’, and ‘When A Man Loves A Rubber Woman.’”
• Kelly, a moment before the DJ proves her wrong: “Now whatever gave you the idea that I am some cheap tramp?”
• Peg: “Now if you were a dog, where would you go?” Al: “Well, that depends… are you a dog too?”
• Al, on the dog’s likely whereabouts: “Did it ever occur to any of you that Buck might have just run away? I’ve thought of it myself a million times. He could be eating a steak right now, drinking a daiquiri… Our dog, Buck, might for the first time in his life be truly happy!” Kelly: “Who cares?! We want him back!”

Notes

• The dog food box Peg empties is decorated with a white cat and advertises “50% more cat parts.”
• This is the first episode in which the entire wall behind the Bundy television is visible, revealing two curtained windows and a painting.
• Peg, Kelly and Bud whistle the Lassie theme at Al until he breaks down.
• Jefferson mentions an event at the Nudie Bar which the newspaper under Buck places at a club called Hooters, suggesting the Nudie Bar is a generic term rather than one establishment.
• Joshua Boyd, here as Timmy, had appeared earlier in the same season as the boy in the dinosaur costume in “Take My Wife, Please.”
• A goof: Bud says he is going to the frat house, which “Luck of the Bundys” had established was burned down and closed for the semester.