Season 8 Episode 22: Ride Scare

The New Market Mall has signed up to an environmental initiative sponsored by Marcy’s bank, and the practical consequence is that mall employees must now carpool. Al’s assigned group is three professional models, and the scene in which he reads their names off the sheet, repeats them with rising delight and runs for the stairs is one of the better bits of Ed O’Neill physical comedy in the season, because the show then cuts straight to him wedged in the back of the vehicle discovering what kind of models they are. The carpool is then selected to front the city’s clean-up campaign, which puts Al in a commercial. Meanwhile Bud comes home with straight As and a place on the Dean’s List, and gets nothing: Al responds with a nostalgic monologue about cars that has no connection to what his son said, Peg asks whether the Dean is a nice boy, and the moment Kelly arrives to announce a raise and an employee-of-the-month award, the room turns to her. The series had run the same joke in season 5, when Bud’s invitation to meet the President was flattened by Kelly becoming Miss Weenie Tot. This is also the episode with the Seven gag, which has outlived everything else in it. It is a decent enough episode on its own terms and an immortal one for twenty seconds of it, because the milk carton is the single funniest acknowledgement any sitcom has ever made of quietly deleting a character. The Dean’s List material, meanwhile, is one of the clearest statements the show ever made about what it costs to be the only competent person in that house.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: April 24, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 22
• Overall episode number: 179
• Written by: Nancy Neufeld Callaway
• Directed by: Sam W. Orender
• Production note: This episode contains the milk carton gag, in which Seven appears under a Missing headline. It was ranked number 73 on TV Guide and TV Land’s 2005 list of the 100 Most Unexpected Moments in TV History.
• Production note: Marcy’s speech about people riding the bus in her America was lifted for Amanda Bearse’s clip in the season 9 opening credits.
• Title note: A play on “ride share.”

Guest Cast

• Sandra Taylor as Naomi (credited as Sandra Korn)
• Jane Abbott as Alexis
• Shannon Dunn as Monique
• Debra Christofferson as Paulina
• Paul Eisenhauer as Alderman Johnson

Seven on the Milk Carton

The milk carton is the single most famous thing in this episode and one of the most famous throwaway jokes in the show’s history. Seven had been written into the series in the season 7 premiere, appeared in twelve episodes, and then simply stopped appearing with no explanation whatsoever. Here, during a scene in the Bundy kitchen, one of the guests picks up a milk carton and the camera catches his photograph on the side under the word Missing. The show never mentions it, never follows up, and never refers to the character again.

The Dean’s List plot is a deliberate restaging of a joke from season 5’s “Weenie Tot Lovers & Other Strangers,” and it works just as well the second time. Bud’s achievement is genuinely significant. Nobody in the room is capable of processing it. Al’s non-reply about the old days having more hands is a complete non-sequitur and he delivers it as paternal wisdom.

Peg’s question about who the Dean is and whether he is a nice boy is the funniest line in the episode and the one that tells you most about how Bud grew up.

Marcy makes a direct callback to season 4’s “976-SHOE,” telling Al that he has cost her her job at the bank again and that she has been demoted to drive-up teller again. The series rarely bothered with that kind of bookkeeping, and it lands.

Famous Quotes

• Bud, arriving home: “Dad, I got straight As and made the Dean’s list!” Al, after a long unrelated reminiscence: “That’s what I liked about the old days, we… had more hands!”
• Bud, trying his mother: “Mom, I made the Dean’s list!” Peg: “Oh, and I’m very proud of you! Now, tell me, honey, who is this Dean? Is he a nice boy?”
• Al, reading his carpool assignment: “Alexis, Monique, and Paulina… Oh, my!” And then, from the back seat of the vehicle: “Alexis, Monique, and Paulina… Oh, my!”
• Marcy, to Al: “Do you realize that you have cost me my job at the bank again?! They have demoted me to drive-up teller again!”

Notes

• It is revealed that the Dodge’s engine continues running for some time after the ignition is switched off.
• Al mentions he does not need to be at work until 10 a.m.
• Al sings a reworked “We’re in the Money” on returning from the campaign shoot.
• The episode aired two days after Earth Day. The series had previously contributed a segment to ABC’s 1990 Earth Day Special.
• Goofs: the boom microphone’s shadow crosses the wall by the front door when Naomi comes in, and the blue screen used for the traffic outside the car leaks through the windows and into the actors’ hair.

Watching It

Amazon’s Prime Video catalog has this episode cross-filed with another entry, so a direct link here would open the wrong episode. To watch it, open the Married with Children season 8 page on Prime Video and choose episode 22 from the list, or use the complete series DVD release.