Season 10 Episode 14: The Hood, the Bud and the Kelly (1)

Two plots run on separate levels of the house and the episode gets most of its comedy from refusing to let them meet. On the roof, Al and Jefferson have decided to install a satellite dish themselves rather than pay someone who knows how, and they spend the half-hour falling off. Below them, Bud has been fired as Kelly’s agent: she found out the lingerie commercial he booked was for adult incontinence products, and he needs her back or he will have to find real employment.

Jefferson’s advice, delivered in the back yard while Al dangles from the gutter screaming for help a few feet away, is that a modern agent has to create his own project. What he suggests is a workout video full of attractive women jumping up and down, which Bud immediately adopts, and the scene is the best thing in the episode: Al’s cries for help escalate from his legs to his chin while two men calmly discuss the fitness video market, and neither of them so much as glances over. He hits the patio as Bud leaves to arrange financing.

The financing is where the two-parter gets its title. Every bank turns Bud down: Marcy, it emerges, made certain of that personally, so he borrows from the mob instead, which puts a deadline and a threat on a project he has no idea how to execute. The episode also introduces Ariel, Bud’s girlfriend and the first of three appearances for Jennifer Lyons, and finds time for Lucky to announce that he has left Bud’s representation for the William Morris Agency.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, January 7, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 14, part one of two
• Overall episode 226 of the series
• Production code 10.15
• Written by Dvora Inwood
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on Sergio Leone’s 1966 western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• First of three appearances by Jennifer Lyons as Bud’s girlfriend Ariel

Guest Cast

• Jennifer Lyons as Ariel
• Ossie Mair as the Loan Officer

Nobody Looks Up

The roof material is built on a single sustained joke: Al is in genuine danger and nobody in his family or on his street can be bothered to notice. It is the show’s whole thesis about the character staged as physical comedy, and the episode commits to it for the full half-hour rather than resolving it. Peggy and Marcy watch from the ground and treat it as entertainment. Jefferson, who is on the roof with him, keeps leaving to do something else.

The back-yard conversation is the pivot, and the staging is what makes it. Bud asks for career advice, Jefferson gives it in full, and the entire exchange happens over Al’s escalating screams, from “my legs” to “I can’t feel your hands” to “I’m hanging by my chin here” With Jefferson signing off on his own reliability as a friend just before Al drops. Ted McGinley plays it without a flicker of awareness, which is the only way it works.

Bud’s loan tour is where the plot machinery gets laid in, scored to a parody of the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money.” The reveal that Marcy sabotaged him at every bank is a nice piece of continuity: she works in banking, she has hated the Bundys for a decade, and the show finally puts those two facts together. Having exhausted the legitimate options, Bud takes money from Vito Capone, which hands part two its ticking clock.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly: “Bud, you are the worst agent in the entire world and the state of Chicago.”
• Kelly: “How could you send me out on a Depends commercial? You told me that it was for lingerie.” / Bud: “It is. It’s lingerie that absorbs accidents.”
• Bud: “Kelly fired me as her agent. If I don’t get her back, I’ll have to go and get a real job.” / Jefferson: “This is an emergency.”
• Al: “I’m slipping, Jefferson! Help me, buddy!” / Jefferson: “Look, Bud, today’s agent succeeds by ripping off what’s hot.” The two conversations, running simultaneously.
• Al: “Jefferson! I’m hanging by my chin here!” / Jefferson: “Hey, if I’m one thing, I’m always there for my friends.” Immediately before Al hits the patio.

Notes

• Marcy admits she personally made sure Bud could not get a loan from any of the banks he visited.
• Lucky informs Bud that he has left for the William Morris Agency, then a major Hollywood talent agency, which merged with Endeavor in 2009 to form WME.
• Ossie Mair, the loan officer who turns Bud down, worked with David Faustino again on his 2009 sitcom project Starving.
• A parody of the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money” plays over Bud’s round of bank visits.
• Goof: a dummy stands in for Al on the first fall, and a visibly different stunt double takes over for the staggering and for the tape-measure business with Jefferson.
• Goof: the tape measure and Al’s position on the patio change between consecutive shots.
• Goof: Bud sees Al being electrocuted on the television, which would require a receiver that has not been connected yet.