Season 10 Episode 21: Al Goes to the Dogs

Lucky has been getting Al out of bed at three in the morning for several days running, the children have twice failed to take over the duty, and Al’s solution is to move the dog outdoors, which, since it is the middle of a Chicago winter, requires building a doghouse. Bud objects on humanitarian grounds and Al’s rebuttal is the best line in the episode: inhumane would be making the dog work at a shoe store for minimum wage and then come home to a redheaded Shih Tzu. The children offer to help as a family project, Al compares the prospect to the family on Party of Five, and Kelly’s correction about how those parents died is the only thing that cheers him up.

Marcy’s contribution is to summon a building inspector to ensure the doghouse meets code, which turns a weekend carpentry job into a bureaucratic siege. Al retaliates by walking the fence line with a running chainsaw outside her window while she is trying to work, enquiring loudly about her bank report, and gets hit in the backside with a length of timber for it, because Marcy and the inspector have come into the yard behind him.

Kelly’s half of the episode has her trying to hold on to Carlos by remaking herself into what she imagines he wants, spending seven hundred dollars on the look of the women of his village. His response, that he spent ten times that much to get away from the women of his village, ends the relationship, and he credits Al for the clarity. It is the second and final appearance of Mark Espinoza as Carlos, and the first episode made after Katey Sagal’s second child was born, with Peggy absent on maternity leave.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, March 24, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 21
• Overall episode 233 of the series
• Taped March 1, 1996; production code 10.22
• Written by Laurie Lee-Goss and Garry Bowren
• Directed by Sam W. Orender
• The title plays on the phrase “going to the dogs”
• Katey Sagal does not appear; she was on maternity leave following the birth of her second child

Guest Cast

• Mark D. Espinoza as Carlos
• Ian Patrick Williams as Inspector Fitzpatrick
• Angela Strader as Turquoise
• Don Dowe as the Foreman

Up to Code

The inspector is a good antagonist for Al because he cannot be shouted down, bribed or out-argued. Marcy’s genius here is procedural: she does not try to stop the doghouse, she simply makes it subject to the same scrutiny as a real building, and Al, a man who has never completed a home improvement project successfully, now has to do it to specification. Ian Patrick Williams plays Fitzpatrick with the right flat indifference, and the episode gets more out of the paperwork than it would have from a confrontation.

The chainsaw sequence is the episode’s set piece and it is constructed as a reversal. Al is enjoying himself enormously, taunting Marcy through her own window, entirely confident that she is on the other side of the fence, and the camera lets the audience watch her and the inspector walk in behind him. The timber across the backside lands at exactly the right moment, and Marcy’s list of grievances when he demands to know what he ever did to her, ending with an unexplained accusation about her bird bath, is the best thing she says all season.

Kelly’s make-under is the episode’s sharpest idea even if it gets less screen time. The joke is not that she gets it wrong, it is that she gets it wrong in the specific way a person does when they are taking advice from Al Bundy, and Carlos’s exit speech makes clear exactly whose fingerprints are on the disaster. His assessment of Al as a very wise man who reeks of wisdom and something else he cannot identify is the kindest thing a departing boyfriend ever said about him.

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “Dad, you can’t put a dog outside in the middle of winter. It’s inhumane.” / Al: “No, Bud. Inhumane would be to force him to work at a shoe store for minimum wage and then have him come home to a redheaded Shih Tzu.”
• Al: “You mean like that perfect family on Party of Five?” / Kelly: “Dad, their parents were killed in a fiery car crash.” / Al: “Exactly.”
• Al: “Hey Marcy, how’s that bank report coming along?!” Through her window, over a running chainsaw, moments before she comes up behind him.
• Al: “WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU?!” / Marcy: “You were born! And you live here! And… I don’t know what you did to my bird-bath, but the little birdies won’t go there anymore!”
• Kelly: “I spent $700 to achieve the look of the women of your village.” / Carlos: “I spent $7000 to come to America to get away from the women of my village!”
• Carlos: “I never spent the day with your father before. He is a very wise man. He reeks of wisdom… and something else I cannot identify.”

Notes

• This is Mark D. Espinoza’s second and final appearance as Carlos, making him one of only three men Kelly dated across more than one episode, the others being Vinnie Verducci and Genghis.
• Ian Patrick Williams had appeared on the series before, as Beany the cook in season two’s two-part “Poppy’s by the Tree.”
• Al sings the opening of The Troggs’ “Wild Thing” over the chainsaw; Carlos sings it again on seeing Kelly’s new look.
• Goof: the ground is deep in snow when Al decides to put Lucky out, and the next day’s construction scene has green grass and flowers in bloom.
• Goof: Al’s Spanish instruction to Carlos uses “este” (this) where “ese” (that) is meant, and “Pumpkito” is both already a diminutive and the wrong gender.
• Continuity: season nine’s “User Friendly” established that Buck had a doghouse wired to the mystery switch under the counter, though Al had proposed chopping it up for firewood after Buck’s death.