Season 10 Episode 26: The Joke’s on Al

The tenth-season finale is built on a practical joke contest between Al and Jefferson, and its real subject is what happens when you can no longer tell a prank from reality. Some time after the contest begins, a woman named June Morgan turns up at the house claiming to be a friend of Peggy’s, moves in, and starts flirting with Al. He cannot work out whether she is genuine or the next move in Jefferson’s campaign, and the episode milks that uncertainty for the whole half-hour: every piece of evidence he gathers can be read either way, and committing to either reading loses him something.

Griff’s subplot is the darker one and it is the better of the two. He is spending his first anniversary as a NO MA’AM member in jail, having been mistaken for a serial killer the news is calling the Chicago Cannibal, and the running joke is that nobody in the Bundy house will take his calls seriously. Kelly erases his frantic message from the answering machine mid-sentence. When his face appears on television, Al’s response is that unless the man in prison is Pauly Shore he does not care. Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” plays over Griff insisting he has not eaten anyone.

The episode is also Katey Sagal’s return. Peggy had been written out since “Calendar Girl” and absent entirely since “Spring Break (Part 2)” while Sagal was on maternity leave, and she comes back in time to knock June Morgan out and impose a penalty: Al renews their vows, repeatedly, with Gary Coleman officiating and Ephraim Wanker standing behind him holding a flask and a loaded shotgun. Amanda Bearse wrote it and directed it without appearing in it.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, May 26, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 26, the tenth-season finale
• Overall episode 238 of the series
• Taped April 5, 1996; production code 10.27
• Written by Amanda Bearse
• Directed by Calvin Brown Jr.
• The title plays on “the joke’s on you”
• Katey Sagal returns as Peggy after maternity leave; Amanda Bearse wrote the episode but does not appear in it

Guest Cast

• Gary Coleman as himself
• Deborah Harmon as June Morgan
• Mark Sellers as the Male Detective
• G. Jordan Moore as the Female Detective
• Bert L. Cook as the Executioner

Griff and the Chicago Cannibal

The prank-war premise gives the episode a clean engine: once Al has accepted that Jefferson is capable of anything, he has no way to evaluate any new information, and June Morgan is unfalsifiable. Deborah Harmon plays her straight enough that the audience is not certain either, which is the right choice: if the performance tipped one way the suspense would collapse. Harmon had been on the show once before, in season two’s “Alley of the Dolls,” as Peggy’s high school rival Mimi Stoatz.

Griff’s thread is where the finale’s comic cruelty lives. The series had spent a decade establishing that nobody listens to anyone in this house, and the episode cashes that in by making it nearly fatal for the one character who did not deserve it. Kelly erasing the message is the pivot: she does it while defending her diligence about listening to messages, which is the joke twice over, and from there the machinery just keeps running without anyone noticing a man is in a cell.

The closing scene has a complicated history. As originally broadcast, the credits rolled over Griff being strapped into an electric chair, still convinced it is a NO MA’AM prank and waiting for someone to pull off the hood and say “Gotcha,” with the executioner cheerfully agreeing that he is about to. The DVD release replaces it with a still frame, but the full scene was restored in later syndication and streaming prints. Bert L. Cook, a production staffer who had appeared on camera a few times before, plays the executioner.

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “Will you please stop erasing the messages before I hear them, you human futon!” / Kelly: “Bud, you didn’t get any messages. Believe me. With my eagle ears, I listen very carefully to each and every message before I erase them.”
• Griff (on the machine): “Al, it’s Griff! You gotta help me! I’m in…” Erased mid-sentence.
• Kelly: “Dad, guess who’s in prison?!” / Al: “Unless it’s Pauly Shore, I do not care.”
• Gary Coleman: “For the 37th time, Bundy, do you take this woman to be your wife?” / Al: “For the 37th, 8th, and 9th times: No, no, no.”
• Peg: “It’s not like we’re really getting married. We’re just renewing our vows. Besides, Dad’s got you covered.” / Al: “Just like old times, eh, Ephraim?” / Ephraim: “Only this time the gun is loaded. And so am I!”
• Griff (under the original credits): “This is a practical joke because I’ve been in NO MA’AM one whole year. Any minute now, you’re going to rip that hood off and say ‘Gotcha!’” / Executioner: “You bet I am!”

Notes

• Peggy had been reduced to brief appearances from “Calendar Girl” onward and absent entirely after “Spring Break (Part 2)”; this is her first full episode back.
• Buck the dog, who played Buck Bundy from the pilot until his departure in “Requiem for a Dead Briard” earlier this season, died two days after this episode aired, on May 28, 1996, at the age of thirteen.
• Deborah Harmon had played Peggy’s high school rival Mimi Stoatz in season two’s “Alley of the Dolls.”
• Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” plays over Griff in his cell; NO MA’AM perform “The Wedding March” on a kazoo.
• When Kelly asks Bud to guess who went to jail for eating people, his answer is “Tommy Lasorda?” Lasorda retired as Dodgers manager about two months after this aired.
• Goof: the Chicago Cannibal is sentenced to death by electrocution. Illinois carried out executions by lethal injection.

Watching It

Amazon’s Prime Video catalogue for season ten stops at episode 24, which leaves the season finale without a streaming link and no card above. It is included in syndication packages and on the complete-series DVD set, worth seeking out for the original closing scene, which the DVD replaces with a still frame but which later syndication and streaming prints restore.