Season 8 Episode 21: Nooner or Later

A radio station is running a contest in which wives call in and get their husbands to do humiliating things on air, and Peg enters. Her targets are modest by the standards of this show: she wants Al to sing a particular power ballad over the phone, she wants him to say aloud the nickname he has for her chest, and she wants him to come home from work in the middle of the day. He declines all three, repeatedly, at increasing volume, and the reason the episode works is what is happening behind him while he does it. Al is at the shoe store with a temporary assistant named Dexter, and over the course of Peg’s phone calls Dexter is first injured by a customer, then collapses, then becomes the subject of a full resuscitation attempt by two paramedics, complete with chest compressions and a defibrillator, all of it visible in frame while Al holds the receiver and argues with his wife about the nickname. The cutting between the two is the whole joke and it is relentless. Meanwhile Bud and Kelly are queuing for concert tickets, and the episode is a steady procession of strangers identifying each sibling’s particular weakness and using it to move them further back in the line. It is one of the most purely well-constructed episodes of the eighth season, and the shoe store sequence is a masterclass in letting a background emergency do all the work while the foreground argues about nothing. Bud and Kelly’s queue, meanwhile, is a short catalogue of every weakness the two characters have.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: April 10, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 21
• Overall episode number: 178
• Written by: Nancy Neufeld Callaway
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Production note: The first episode in which Katey Sagal’s second pregnancy is deliberately hidden behind props, including a bag of chips, a cereal box and a telephone. After the season 6 miscarriage the show had chosen not to write a pregnancy in again.
• Production note: The only appearance of Dexter, Al’s temporary assistant. No explanation is given for Aaron Mitchell’s absence.
• Title note: A play on “sooner or later,” with the other term defined in the episode.

Guest Cast

• Chi McBride as Dexter
• Rick Dees as himself (voice)
• Fergie as Ann (credited as Stacy Ferguson)
• Peter Steinfeld as Pete (credited as Pete Steinfeld)
• Christopher Douglas as Kevin
• Al Sapienza as Paramedic #1
• Helen Siff as Leona
• Kelly L. Goodman as Barbara
• Nicole Nagorsky as Penelope
• Helen Faraday as Frieda
• Steve Graham as the B.B.R. fan

Meanwhile, at the Shoe Store

The construction of the shoe store sequence is the best thing in the episode and one of the better pieces of staging in the late seasons. Peg’s demands get smaller and more absurd as the emergency behind Al gets larger, and the show never has Al acknowledge it. He is annoyed about the phone call. The paramedics are shouting clear. Al’s reply about what Mrs. Iacocca does or does not ask her husband is delivered over the sound of a defibrillator.

Fergie is in this episode, credited under her own name, as the woman who talks her way in front of Bud in the queue. She was a few years from Wild Orchid and nearly a decade from the Black Eyed Peas, and one of her future bandmates had appeared on the show a few episodes earlier as Bud’s date in “Get Outta Dodge.”

Chi McBride gets one episode as Dexter and makes the most of it. He went on to Boston Public, Pushing Daisies and a long film career.

Peter Steinfeld makes his third appearance on the series, having been a lifeguard in season 3’s “Life’s a Beach” and Rock Turboman in “Kelly Does Hollywood.” Here he is the man in the biker vest who throws Bud across the shop.

Rick Dees, who voices the radio host, was running the morning show on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles at the time, and had contributed a cake recipe to the official Married with Children cookbook.

Famous Quotes

• Bud, finding his sister at the back of the queue: “What the hell are you doing here?!” Kelly: “I got us backstage passes. All I had to do was trade places with some guy.” Bud: “Kelly, these are bus transfers.”
• Kelly: “Hey, not only can we get backstage, we have a way to the concert!” Bud: “You can’t be this dumb.” Kelly: “I can be anything I wanna be. It’s the 90s.”
• Peg, on the phone: “Al, this is very, very important! You know my boobs?” Al: “Yeah, they’re standing in line for concert tickets.”
• Al, as the paramedics work behind him: “Peg, do you think Mrs. Iacocca calls Lee and says ‘Lee, before you go back into the boardroom, what’s that cute little nickname you have for my ASS?’! I’M TRYING TO WORK!”

Notes

• Leona and Barbara, the two customers Al insults, both return in season 11’s “Crimes Against Obesity” as part of the group that takes him hostage.
• Gary Simpson, one of the paramedics, comes back a few episodes later in “Assault and Batteries” as the paramedic taking Jefferson to hospital.
• Goofs: a boom microphone is visible beside Bud’s head in the wide shot of him calling to Kelly, and one of the men who pushed him back in the queue is somehow only two places ahead of him later.
• Some cable prints cut the opening scene with Penelope and her mother.