Season 11 Episode 12: Grime and Punishment

Al starts charging Bud rent for the basement, which transforms the arrangement in a way he has not thought through: Bud is now a tenant, and tenants have rights. The demands start reasonably and escalate, Al refuses all of them, and Bud’s response is to call the city. A health inspector arrives, declares Al a slumlord, and the episode’s premise locks into place when she fits him with a restraint collar and confines him to the basement until the repairs are made, which means Al is now living in the conditions he refused to fix.

The arrangement produces the episode’s best and most alarming scene. Peggy comes downstairs to announce that it is time for his conjugal visit, Al attempts to flee, the collar electrocutes him, and she takes him to the floor informing him whose property he now is. It is a reversal the series had been building toward for eleven years and it plays as genuine horror on Al’s part, which is exactly why it works.

Kelly’s subplot is the funnier half and one of her best showcases. She has enrolled in an improvisation class, she calls it “improve”, and needs situations to work with, so she asks her father for one. His first offer is that he is watching baseball. Her performance of that, slumped on the couch with one hand down her trousers, is accurate enough that Al upgrades her to mowing the lawn, and she leaves the scene muttering about the lawn, the kid and the wife before informing Peggy there will be no sex tonight. Al rates it the best money he ever spent.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, January 20, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 12
• Overall episode 250 of the series
• Taped September 13, 1996; production code 11.04
• Written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher
• Directed by Sam W. Orender
• The title plays on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
• This episode has no epilogue

Guest Cast

• Marianne Muellereile as the Health Inspector

Kelly Takes an Improv Class

The improv scenes are the episode’s highlight and they work on a single principle: Kelly is a terrible actress with perfect observational recall. Asked to play her own father watching baseball, she produces something so exact that Al does not object to the content, only moves her on to the next scenario. Christina Applegate plays the slouch, the hand and the muttering with no visible effort, and the series gets to pay off a decade of Al’s couch behaviour by having his daughter perform it back at him while he nods approvingly.

The main plot is built on a legal premise the episode does not pretend to take seriously: a city inspector has no authority to lock a man in his own basement, let alone with a shock collar, but the point is the inversion. For eleven seasons Al’s house has been the one place he could nominally claim as his own, and the episode strips that by turning the property into evidence against him. Bud, having been the household’s permanent dependent, becomes a complainant with the city behind him.

The conjugal visit scene is the series at its most comfortable with its own darkness. Peggy’s pursuit of her husband has been a running joke since 1987, and giving her a version of Al that is physically unable to leave the room turns the joke into something closer to a hostage situation, played for laughs and with a punchline that leaves no doubt about who won.

Famous Quotes

• Kelly: “I need to do some homework for my ‘improve’ class, so give me a situation.” / Al: “Daddy’s watching the baseball game.” / Kelly: “Got it.”
• Al: “Now daddy’s mowing the lawn.” / Kelly: “Damn lawn. Damn kid. Damn wife.” Then, passing Peggy on the stairs: “Forget it, Peg, no sex tonight.”
• Peg: “Okay, honey. Just as well.” / Al: “Improv class? Yes, best money I ever spent.”
• Peg: “Oh, Al, it’s time for your conjugal visit.” / Al: “Pumpkin! Bud! Help me!”
• Peg: “Shut up, Al! You’re my bitch now!” After the collar does its work.

Notes

• Al reveals that he enlisted his own father in the U.S. Army and got him sent to fight in Korea.
• Bud’s Baby Book gives his first words as “Bud need food. Bud want food. Ouch!” Which contradicts season seven’s “Christmas,” where Peggy recalled them as something considerably less wholesome.
• Al lists the traits of a Wanker as a sloping forehead, laziness and the ability to catch flies with the tongue.
• Marianne Muellereile, the inspector, had appeared on the spin-off Top of the Heap as Mrs. O’Malley.
• Goof: the inspector describes standing in raw sewage, though the wide shot that opens the scene shows the basement floor clean and dry.
• Goof: Kelly’s thrown tomahawk hits Al despite his sitting well outside its path.
• Goof: the power drill Al cleans his ear with is audible but visibly not rotating.
• Goof: Amanda Bearse can be seen giggling after throwing the hammer during one of the repair scenes.