Season 8 Episode 19: Field of Screams

The city is going to pave over the Polk High football field to make room for a Trans-Mexican auto plant, and Al Bundy is not going to allow it. The field is where he scored four touchdowns in a single game, which makes it the only piece of ground on earth that means anything to him, and his campaign escalates from a city council meeting to handcuffing himself to a goal post and refusing to leave. The local news covers it, which is how the rest of the family finds out, and the reporter’s framing of the story as the lighter and more pitiful side of the news is about right. Al’s stated condition for leaving is that the project move or that Marcy grow lips. Running against him is the fact that the Darcys stand to make a great deal of money from the deal and are already planning to move out of the neighbourhood, which gives the episode a genuine conflict rather than just a protest. The other half belongs to Bud and Buck, who have been cast in a Verminator commercial for Kelly’s employer and get hit with an experimental compound, with results that affect Bud’s chest and cause Buck to keep changing species. It is one of the more interesting late-period Al episodes, because the thing he is defending is not a grievance or a scheme but a genuine piece of his own history, and the show lets him lose it. The Darcys standing to profit from the same deal gives the conflict some real teeth, and Marcy gets the best line of the episode out of it.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 27, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 19
• Overall episode number: 176
• Written by: Al Aidekman
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Production note: Al reveals here that he never played after halftime, because Polk High was always too far ahead.
• Title note: A play on Field of Dreams, which the series had already parodied earlier in the same season in “Proud to Be Your Bud.”

Guest Cast

• Hill Harper as Aaron Mitchell
• Julie Benz as Sascha
• Tiiu Leek as the TV anchorwoman

Chained to the Goal Post

Al’s speech about the country is one of the better serious-adjacent runs the character gets in season 8, and it starts from something concrete: he drove past the school to look at the scoreboard that once recorded his achievement, and found a sign announcing what is going to replace the field. Marcy’s interjection, offering an alternative reading of what the sign might have said, is the best line anyone gets, and Al’s comeback about her hair is a good enough return that Jefferson has to pretend to cough.

Kelly’s malapropism in this episode is one of the series’ most quoted, mostly because of the follow-up. She hopes her father will not make a testicle out of himself, is corrected, and declines the correction on the grounds that she is used to the other thing. Peg’s reaction once she sees the news footage settles the matter.

Julie Benz appears here as Sascha, several years before Buffy, Angel and Dexter. That is now three future Buffyverse regulars who passed through this series in consecutive seasons, after David Boreanaz and Nicholas Brendon.

The commercial subplot is the show at its most cartoonish and it does not pretend otherwise, with Buck cycling through animals and Bud developing a problem he spends the rest of the episode trying to conceal.

A nice bit of pedantry from the fandom: Aaron tells Al that teams change ends at halftime, which Al uses to explain why he never played a second half. In fact teams change ends every quarter.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly, on the council meeting: “I hope he doesn’t make a testicle out of himself.” Peg: “You mean ‘spectacle’, honey.” Kelly: “No, I mean, ‘testicle’. I’m used to the spectacle thing.”
• The news reporter, live from the field: “Self-proclaimed football legend Al Bundy is leading a protest against the proposed Trans-Mexican auto plant by handcuffing himself to a goal post on his old high school playing field.”
• The reporter, continuing: he has vowed to stay chained to the post until the project is moved or, quote, “Marcy has lips.” Peg: “What a testicle!”
• Al, on the state of the nation: “This country sucks, Peg! And I’ll tell you why: we’re giving it away faster than we can take it from other people.”
• Al, describing the sign on the fence: Marcy guesses “‘Life: 50, Al: 0’?” Al: “Hey Marcy, I see they drank a lot at ‘Zippy Cuts’.”

Notes

• The car being built on the site is a Jaguar, pronounced throughout by every character as “Haguar.”
• Goofs: the chain on Al’s handcuffs is cut at the post end, then appears intact behind the reporter in the next shot. Buck’s voice is audible through the Bundy television during the commercial, which should not be possible given that nobody can hear him speak.
• The news reporter visibly waits for the studio audience laughter to subside before continuing, despite the scene supposedly being a broadcast playing on the Bundy television.