Season 11 Episode 14: Breaking Up is Easy to Do (1)

The first of three parts, and the series’ last big story. It starts with a game night: the Bundys, the D’Arcys, and Griff with a date named Nancy, playing a board game called Passion that works on the principle of The Newlywed Game: ask the couples how well they know each other. Al does not know Peggy’s favourite film, her birthday or the colour of her eyes. The evening also produces a tidy inventory of everyone’s inner lives, including Marcy’s childhood ambition to be a princess, Nancy’s to be Mrs. J.J. Walker, and Peggy’s to be a ballerina.

Peggy’s response is to propose a marriage counsellor, and Al’s refusal is one of his great set speeches: a list of the things he does not do, delivered as a statement of identity, ending with the claim that no threat or torture could change his mind. Peggy walks to the telephone and dials her mother. He is on his knees before she finishes the sentence. The session itself goes so badly that the two of them leave the counsellor’s office separately, which is where the three-parter actually begins.

Kelly’s subplot has her boxing a rival named Heather for a part in a fight picture, with Bud holding the mitts and a cover of “Eye of the Tiger” over the training montage. There is a piece of production history behind the main story worth knowing: taping was delayed because an earlier draft was judged too serious to use. In that version Al instigated the split, after Peggy admitted she had faked a pregnancy to get him to marry her.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, February 24, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 14, part one of three
• Overall episode 252 of the series
• Taped January 17, 1997; production code 11.16
• Written by Eric Abrams and Matthew Berry
• Directed by Mark K. Samuels
• The title plays on Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
• Parts one and two were broadcast together as a single hour; this episode has no epilogue

Guest Cast

• Lisa Robin Kelly as Heather Talrico
• Jake Johannsen as Dr. H. Longo
• Kellie Beals as Nancy
• Gerry del Sol as the Referee

The Draft That Didn’t Air

The version of this story that reached the screen is the second attempt. Taping was pushed back after an earlier script was judged unsuitable, and the difference between the drafts is substantial: in the original, Al instigated the separation after Peggy confessed that she had lied about being pregnant in order to get him to marry her. That is a far heavier premise, and it would have recast the entire eleven-year marriage retroactively. What was made instead puts the break on a failure of attention rather than a deception, which keeps the comedy available.

The Passion game is an efficient way to establish that failure. It is also the second time the series built an episode around a Newlywed Game format, season two’s “Just Married… with Children” had Al and Peggy stealing the Rhoades’ identities to get onto a show called How Do I Love Thee?, and the comparison is unflattering for Al, who was better informed about his wife nine seasons earlier.

His refusal speech is the episode’s comic high point and it works because the list is so specific. He does not floss, does not eat vegetables, does not like French pastry, does not like the French, does not cry at movies, and then immediately qualifies the last one. The speech ends on an absolute declaration about threats and torture, and Peggy defeats it by picking up a telephone. Eleven seasons established exactly one thing Al fears more than anything else, and the episode spends the speech setting up the chance to use it.

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “Come on, Bundy! That’s all you got?! You hit like a girl!” / Kelly: “Yeah, well you pee like one!” / Bud: “That was a temporary medical condition.”
• Peg: “Honey, I wanna go to a marriage counsellor.” / Al: “So go.” / Peg: “AAAAALLLLLLL!”
• Al: “If you knew me, Peg, you’d know that there are certain things I do not do. I do not floss. I do not eat vegetables. I do not like French pastry. I do not like the French. I do not cry at movies. Except, of course…”
• Al: “YOU GO, PEG! There is no threat vicious enough, no torture terrible enough to ever make me change my mind.”
• Peg: “Hello, Mom? Al’s being mean to me again. Could you come stay for a few months?” / Al: “No, Peg. Peg, no, Peg. I’ll go. I’ll go.”

Notes

• The game establishes Peggy’s birthday as April 12, Marcy’s favourite song as “You Light Up My Life,” Marcy’s childhood dream as being a princess, Nancy’s as being Mrs. J.J. Walker, and Peggy’s as being a ballerina.
• Peggy also reveals that she and Al first made love on a crate behind a Tastee-Freez.
• Lisa Robin Kelly had appeared on the series before, as Carol in season seven’s “Kelly Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” A year later she joined That ’70s Show, where she was eventually replaced by Christine Moore, who had appeared on this series a few episodes earlier in “Twisted.”
• A cover of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” scores Kelly’s training montage; Peggy quotes “I Will Survive.”
• A framed season-one cast promotional photo is visible behind Peggy during the telephone scene.
• Goof: Heather arranges the fight at Gary’s Aerobics Studio, but it takes place somewhere called Jim’s Gym.
• Goof: Kelly’s front teeth are missing after the fight despite having taken only a light jab, and they were intact seconds earlier.