Season 11 Episode 11: Bud on the Side

The episode begins with a father-son conversation in which both men try to trade problems, and Al’s advice to his son is the single most brutal assessment he ever delivers. Bud cannot get a date; Al works through his assets out loud, looks, then personality, discards both, concludes that Bud has nothing to offer a woman, and advises him to aim low. Bud’s reply is that he never wants to have sex again, and Al welcomes him to the club. Then Al moves on to his own problem, which is that his boss has been riding him like a cheap carnival pony.

Bud takes the advice. The woman he finds is Gary, Al’s boss, the owner of Gary’s Shoes and Accessories for Today’s Woman, and the relationship is consummated off screen and reported to Al, who faints on the couch. The revival sequence is the best physical comedy in the episode: Kelly’s attempts fail, Peggy takes over by grabbing him by the pyjama lapels and slapping him awake, and Al’s first words on regaining consciousness are not a sentence so much as a sound of horror.

What keeps the half-hour from being a one-joke episode is that the family immediately starts working out how to profit from it. Al has spent a decade under Gary’s thumb, and his son is now in a position to intercede, which makes Bud briefly the most powerful person in the house. The episode gets its title from the arrangement and its running gag from Al’s inability to be in the same room as the thought of it, particularly once he learns the pair of them are downstairs in the basement.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, January 13, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 11
• Overall episode 249 of the series
• Taped November 16, 1996; production code 11.10
• Written by Valerie Ahern and Christian McLaughlin
• Directed by Sam W. Orender
• The title plays on the 1995 film Boys on the Side
• Marcy does not appear, though Al mentions her; the episode has no epilogue

Guest Cast

• Mink Stole as Edna
• Chris Bonno as the Contractor
• Kevin Steinberg as the Delivery Guy
• David Alan Graf as Delivery Guy #1
• John Talamantez as Delivery Guy #2

Aim Low

The opening scene is a good example of why the father-son material on this show worked. Al is not being cruel for sport; he is answering the question honestly, as he understands honesty, and the advice he arrives at is practical. Aim low. The episode then takes that advice seriously enough to follow it to its conclusion, which is the part most sitcoms would not have done: Bud does exactly as instructed and the result is a disaster specifically for Al.

Gary had been a presence since season nine, almost always unseen or heard at a distance, functioning as the unreachable authority above the shoe store. Putting her in a relationship with Al’s son collapses that distance in one move, and the comedy comes from Al being unable to decide whether this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him or the best piece of leverage he has ever been handed. The family, characteristically, settles on leverage well before he does.

Mink Stole’s appearance as Edna is worth noting for anyone who came to the series from other corners of American comedy: Stole was a fixture of John Waters’s films from the 1960s onward, and her presence here is of a piece with the show’s habit of casting from well outside the sitcom world. The episode also quietly recycles a prop with history: the book Griff is reading on his break, A Ship Called Passion, is the one Peggy read to Seven in season seven’s “Peggy and the Pirates.”

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “I’ll listen to your problem if you help me with mine.” / Al: “Son, your problems are simple. Just avoid liquids past 9:00.”
• Al: “Look at you… But then again, looks aren’t everything. Personality is important, so we’ll skip that. So basically, you have nothing to offer a woman.”
• Bud: “Thanks, Dad, thanks. Now I never, ever, ever want to have sex again.” / Al: “Welcome to the club, son.”
• Al: “My boss, Gary, is crankier than ever. She’s been riding me like a cheap carnival pony. ‘Wait on the customers! Ring up the bills! Don’t steal.’ What a shrew.”
• Peg: “LET ME DO IT!” Taking over the resuscitation by the pyjama lapels.
• Kelly: “Bud is downstairs helping Gary into her corrective undergarments.” / Al: “It’s naked in the basement!” / Peg: “Al, would you relax? You told Bud to find someone desperate.”

Notes

• Mink Stole, who plays Edna, is best known for her long collaboration with the filmmaker John Waters.
• The book Griff is reading on his break, A Ship Called Passion, is the same one Peggy read to Seven in season seven’s “Peggy and the Pirates“, the source of that episode’s pirate sequences.
• Bud reveals he was wetting the bed until he was sixteen.
• Bud mixes “Bundy Mimosas” from a bottle of Tang and two bottles of beer.
• Goof: Gary says the last time she saw Bud she threw the whole family out of the company picnic and implies he was a child then, but Al and this version of Gary did not meet until season nine.
• Goof: the shoe store’s front door opens and closes between consecutive shots as Gary catches Bud at the mirror.