Season 9 Episode 16: Get the Dodge Outta Hell

The series’ two hundredth episode, and it brings Steve Rhoades back. The Bundys stop at a car wash on the way to Wanker County, and while the Dodge is going through, Al and Peg browse the accessory shop, which produces a sustained run of Al finding things he wants and Peg explaining why the car does not need them. Then the Dodge disappears. Nobody at Traugott’s House of Scrubbin’ can account for it, and the search occupies the rest of the episode, including Al going through the washing machine himself. Running alongside it, Marcy has been trying to install Jefferson in a job at the car wash, and while she is there her ex-husband walks in. David Garrison’s entrance got an ovation from the studio audience long enough that he checks his watch waiting for it to subside, and the show leaves that in. Steve is doing well. Marcy’s greeting, which places him in the desert performing a musical with cacti, is a double in-joke: Garrison left the series in season 4 to do theatre, including a touring production of that musical, and Steve’s last appearance had him working as a wildlife ranger. When the Dodge finally turns up it is clean for the first time in the show’s history and it is red, which Al confirms was always the colour.

Steve Rhoades turning up is the half-hour’s real event. David Garrison had left the series during the fourth season and the studio audience had not been told he was coming, which is why his entrance is buried under applause long enough that Garrison checks his watch waiting it out. The disappearing Dodge gives the episode its plot, Michael Faustino plays the car wash manager opposite his brother, and the whole thing closes on a card reading “For Your Emmy Consideration, Thank You Very Much”, a show that never won one, two hundred episodes in.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 5, 1995
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 16
• Overall episode number: 200
• Written by: Larry Jacobson
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: January 20, 1995
• Production note: Officially the 200th episode, counting the clip special and the banned episode. It aired the same night as “The Best of Bundy” to mark the milestone.
• Production note: David Garrison’s second guest return as Steve Rhoades. The audience ovation on his entrance ran long enough that he checks his watch, and the take was kept.
• Production note: The episode ends with Al holding a 1987 cast photograph and the caption “For Your Emmy Consideration, Thank You Very Much.” The series never won one.
• Title note: A variation on the season 8 episode “Get Outta Dodge.”

Guest Cast

• David Garrison as Steve Rhoades
• Michael Faustino as Mikey
• Ian Gomez as Employee #1
• Rick Batalla as Employee #2
• Pierre Gonneau as Mr. D’Player

For Your Emmy Consideration

The closing gag is the best thing about this episode and the most pointed thing the series ever did about its own standing. Al reaches into the Dodge’s trunk, pulls out a magazine, extracts a photograph of the family from 1987, and the screen asks the Academy to consider it. Married with Children ran eleven seasons, was one of the defining shows of its network, and never won a single Emmy. The show knew, and said so, on episode two hundred.

Marcy’s greeting to Steve is the densest in-joke in the episode. Garrison had left in season 4 to return to the theatre, including a touring production of Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit; the season 2 episode of this series called “Guys and Dolls” was a Steve and Al story; and Steve’s previous return had established him as a wildlife ranger in the desert. All three are in one sentence.

Michael Faustino, David’s brother, plays the car wash manager, and he visibly breaks character while insulting Jefferson in one scene. The show kept that too.

The accessory shop scene is Al and Peg at their most comfortable. He finds a racing stripe, she points out what the Dodge can and cannot do, he finds a car bra, and the use he proposes for it is aimed at her mother.

The Dodge being revealed as red is a genuine piece of series lore, and it does not reconcile with anything: the car was blue through season 3, bronze from season 4’s “Oh, What a Feeling” onward, and the prop is actually a Plymouth Duster, which Kelly accidentally points out in the lost and found scene.

Famous Quotes

• Al, in the shop: “See, Peg, your trouble is you spend money on frivolous… Oh look, a racing stripe!” Peg: “The Dodge does not need a racing stripe. It couldn’t hit 60 if it dropped out of a plane.”
• Al: “No, but you could, Peg!”
• Peg, as Al is towelled off by the car wash staff: “Very nice, Al! You are over here dilly-dallying with Jefferson and we’re out here looking for the car.” Al: “Peg, what is it with you? You can change six D batteries in the dark, but you can’t find a two-ton automobile in broad daylight.”
• Al, presenting the clean Dodge: “Look at her, family, isn’t she a beaut?” Peg: “Look at him, family, isn’t he a shoe salesman? Let’s go.”
• Marcy, greeting her ex-husband: “I thought you were out in the desert protecting the wildlife and performing ‘Guys and Dolls’ with your little cactus friends.”

Notes

• The car wash is called Traugott’s House of Scrubbin’, borrowing the name of the man hunting Jefferson in season 8’s “The D’Arcy Files.”
• Ian Gomez, the employee who breaks the news about the missing car, later appeared in The Drew Carey Show, Felicity and Cougar Town.
• An Intellivision II console is visible in the shop as Al goes through the wash.
• Goofs: the original bronze paint is clearly visible at the trunk when Al opens it, and Al emerges from the wash with a soaked jacket and head but completely dry shirt and trousers.