Season 9 Episode 6: Business Still Sucks (2)

The conclusion, and the episode that finally puts Gary on screen. Al loses the breastfeeding argument on the law, which Officer Dan arrives to explain in person, and the explanation is the best scene in the episode: Dan lists where being a police officer ranks among his priorities, declines to attend a mugging in the food court, and then issues seven indecent exposure citations to the six shirtless members of NO MA’AM’s heavyweight division. Beaten, Al’s workaround is to stop selling women’s shoes altogether and convert Gary’s into a men’s store, which solves the problem by removing the customers. Then word arrives that Gary is coming to inspect, and Al’s emergency measure is to paint the men’s stock and pass it off as women’s. Gary turns out to be a woman. This is the first time the character appears at all, after eight years in which everyone on the show referred to Gary as he, including the season 1 episode in which Al hired a man to impersonate him. Her response to the situation is not what Al expects, and it involves converting the store into a combined shoe shop, nursing room and nursery. Al’s attempt to save his job by begging, and her reply about what she owns, is the exchange people remember. It is a satisfying resolution to a two-parter and the episode that finally answered a question the show had been dodging since 1987. It is also the episode that quietly retires one of the show’s oldest running jokes, which is that nobody at Gary’s Shoes had ever met Gary.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: October 9, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 6
• Overall episode number: 189
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: September 30, 1994
• Production note: The first on-screen appearance of Gary, the owner of the shoe store, after eight seasons in which the character was referred to as a man.
• Production note: Al confirms he has worked at Gary’s Shoes for over twenty years.
• Title note: A sequel to the previous week’s title, with the same double meaning.

Guest Cast

• Teresa Parente as Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal
• Mary-Pat Green as Marge
• David John Poindexter as Poindexter
• Cynthia Steele as Rebecca
• Marla Cotovsky as Helga

Gary Is a Woman

Officer Dan’s scene is the highlight and it is built on one long digression. Asked to take Al’s side as a fellow man, he explains that he is a police officer roughly eleventh among his priorities, behind being a lover, a bowler, a lover again, and occasionally pretending to be a character from Mission: Impossible. He then refuses to deal with an active mugging because he is busy enforcing a different law. The citation count for the six shirtless men, and his explanation of the discrepancy, closes it out.

Revealing Gary as a woman is a genuine payoff eight years in the making, even if it contradicts a fair amount of earlier material. Season 1’s “Where’s the Boss?” had Al paying a man named Nick to impersonate Gary, and season 7’s cabin episode had Al borrowing his boss’s mountain property, both of which imply a degree of acquaintance Al denies here.

Al’s begging scene is the funniest thing in the episode. He drops to his knees, explains how close he is to a comfortable retirement, and then misreads her list of holdings in a way that leads him to volunteer himself for sale.

Bud’s contribution is a piece of invented case law, delivered deadpan while reading a statute book, about an infant tried as an adult for being born naked. The closing line about where Al will be seeing it is the best joke in the episode about the network broadcasting it.

Famous Quotes

• Al, as Marcy leaves in triumph: “I don’t care what the law says! I do what I want, Marcy! I laugh at the law!” Then, as Officer Dan appears: “Hello, officer. What brings you here?” Dan: “The law. You know, that thing you were just laughing at.”
• Al: “Come on, Dan, you’re a guy.” Dan: “I’m a cop first, Al. Well, actually I’m a cop about 11th. I’m a lover first, and then a bowler, then a lover again.”
• A passerby: “Officer! Someone’s being mugged in the food court!” Dan: “Tell someone who cares!”
• Poindexter, on the citations: “But there’s only six of us.” Dan: “I know. I gave you two.”
• Al, on his knees: “Please, don’t fire me! I’m just a major stroke away from a comfortable retirement.” Gary: “I own airlines, I own oil wells, I own men.” Al: “Oh, I’m… I’m for sale!” Gary: “I said MEN!”

Notes

• Al’s history lesson for Peg and Marcy conflates the cherry tree myth with the lyrics of “Yankee Doodle,” and then has George Hamilton and Raymond Burr fighting the famous duel.
• Mary-Pat Green is back as Marge, continuing the “I need shoes!” running gag.
• Goofs: Peg says Al has been at the protest for a week when it has been two days and she arrived home at four that morning. Al also announces he is getting his lunch box when he has been carrying a paper bag.