Season 11 Episode 2: Children of the Corns

Gary announces a sales contest between her only two employees, with a raise for the winner, which is the sort of management decision that has driven the shoe store’s plot for a decade. Al and Griff talk their respective games: Al claims to be a natural-born salesman and then screams at a customer who interrupts the boast, and then Al finds a shortcut. An immigrant child turns up at the store, the child works in a sweatshop Gary is running illegally, and Al realises he does not need to sell a single pair of shoes to win the raise. Blackmail is faster.

The sweatshop material was topical to the week it aired. In 1996 a whistleblower revealed that clothing sold under Kathie Lee Gifford’s name at Wal-Mart was being produced by children in Honduras, and the story dominated American television for months. Dropping that into Gary’s Shoes gives the episode an unusually specific target, and the show plays Al’s reaction exactly right: he is not outraged by the sweatshop, he is delighted to have found leverage.

Peggy’s half of the episode is smaller and funnier. She wins a microwave as home shopper of the month, has never operated one, and sets about learning what it does, a process the show scores with “Also sprach Zarathustra” and which ends with Bud microwaving the family’s frozen pet turtle under the impression it is a meatball. The turtle, Kelly’s, had been in the freezer since it lost its head, and the episode is essentially a remake of a joke from season three involving Bud’s goldfish and an oncoming car.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Saturday, October 5, 1996 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 2
• Overall episode 240 of the series
• Taped August 23, 1996; production code 11.02
• Written by Matthew Berry and Eric Abrams
• Directed by Amanda Bearse
• The title combines Stephen King’s Children of the Corn with the foot condition

Guest Cast

• Patrick T. O’Brien as Bob Thompson
• Louisa Abernathy as Christy
• Lee Arnone-Briggs as the Woman Customer
• Christopher Elwood as the Delivery Guy
• Erick Vasques as Immigrant Child #1
• Cherisse Ligot as Immigrant Child #2
• Richard Ornelas as the Thug

Blackmail Beats Salesmanship

The sweatshop plot is one of the few times the series reached for a news story that was actively running. The Kathie Lee Gifford revelations broke in 1996, garments carrying her name, sold at Wal-Mart, made by children in Honduras, and the coverage was inescapable through that spring and summer. The episode does not editorialise about it; it simply assumes the audience knows the shape of the scandal and gives Gary her own version of it.

What makes it a Bundy episode rather than a message episode is Al’s response. He does not report Gary, free the children, or deliver a speech. He identifies an asset and monetises it, which is both in character and a sharper joke about the whole affair than outrage would have been: the one person who notices the sweatshop is the one person who sees it as an opportunity.

The microwave story is the better-constructed half. Peggy has spent eleven seasons on a couch with a television, and handing her a new appliance she does not understand is a premise with nowhere to go but downhill. The “Also sprach Zarathustra” cue as she and Kelly first examine it does the heavy lifting, and the turtle gag pays off a running family habit: the Bundys keep dead pets in the freezer, as season three had already established with Bud’s goldfish.

Famous Quotes

• Delivery Guy: “I have a free gift for Peg Bundy, home shopper of the month.” / Peg: “Kelly, give the man a tip.” / Kelly: “I get dressed with the curtains open every morning.” / Delivery Guy: “I know. Why do you think I picked this route?”
• Al: “You can’t compete with my charm. I’m a natural-born salesman.” / Customer: “Excuse me…” / Al: “Hey! Do I come to the hag shop, bother you when you’re working?!”
• Griff: “This contest is no contest. You’re going down, Bundy.” / Al: “Let’s rock, fat boy.” / Griff: “Your mama.” / Al: “My wife!” / Griff: “You win.” / Al: “No I don’t.”
• Peg: “Honey, why don’t you stay home and bowl me over?” / Al: “Because, Peg, I prefer a place where my balls are returned properly.”

Notes

• Patrick T. O’Brien, who plays the sweatshop manager, had appeared in season two’s “Build a Better Mousetrap” as Wally the exterminator.
• The episode establishes that Kelly once had a turtle named Timmy, kept in the freezer since losing its head, which Bud microwaves believing it to be a meatball.
• Season three’s “Married… with Queen (Part 1)” ran a near-identical gag, with Bud’s childhood goldfish Freddy found in the freezer and eventually thrown at an oncoming car for the insurance money.
• “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays as Peggy and Kelly first inspect the microwave.
• Goof: the microwave pings while Kelly is hiding with it in a closet that would have no power outlet.
• Goof: a red light, apparently an exit or recording sign, reflects off the glass of the Bundys’ front door as Marcy pushes Jefferson outside.