Season 11 Episode 15: Breaking Up is Easy to Do (2)

Al has moved out, and the apartment he finds is next to the airport. The episode’s first job is to establish how each of them is coping, and neither is coping. Peggy sits on the couch in tears watching the home shopping channel, which pauses its programming to send her a personal hello and then tries to sell her a Martin Lawrence cuckoo clock, a gag the episode escalates past the point of reason. Al, meanwhile, sorts out custody of the televisions while holding a detached toilet seat.

The singles bar is where the two halves collide. Peggy goes out and draws the attention of Bruce, a wealthy man whose opening line is that he never expected to meet somebody as beautiful as himself and who accounts for his ego by reference to his wallet and his car. Al, watching from a table, attempts the same manoeuvre Peggy used and unbuttons his shirt. The young woman who notices concludes he is having a heart attack, begins chest compressions on a man who is breathing normally, and then comments on the state of his undergarments.

Alan Thicke plays Bruce, his second role on the series after appearing in season ten’s “Enemies” as Henry, the rich man who ended up dating Kelly and watching Friends through binoculars with Al. Ed O’Neill is noticeably hoarse throughout this episode, as he had been in season seven’s “‘Tis Time to Smell the Roses” when the script acknowledged a cold; here nothing is said about it. Marcy marks Al’s departure with a song of her own composition.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, February 24, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 15, part two of three
• Overall episode 253 of the series
• Taped January 24, 1997; production code 11.17
• Written by Russell Marcus
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
• Broadcast as the second half of an hour-long block with part one; no epilogue

Guest Cast

• Alan Thicke as Bruce
• Lisa Melilli as Sandy
• Rosa Blasi as Woman #1
• Mandy Levin as Woman #2
• Irene Roseen as Woman #3
• Christopher Shobe as the Guy in Bar

The Single Gene

The structural idea here is simple and effective: give both halves of the marriage the same opportunity and show the different results. Peggy, out of practice but undeterred, attracts a rich man within minutes. Al attracts medical attention. The series had spent eleven years establishing that Peggy was the one with options and Al was the one who could not give himself away, and the separation lets it demonstrate that rather than assert it.

Alan Thicke’s Bruce is pitched exactly right for the role the three-parter needs him to play. He is not a villain and he is not stupid; he is simply wealthy, pleased with himself, and entirely serious about Peggy, which makes him a credible threat in a way a buffoon would not have been. Thicke had been on the show once before, in the previous season’s “Enemies,” as a different rich man with a similar function.

The home shopping material is the episode’s best running joke and it operates on an escalation the show rarely bothered with. The channel knows Peggy by name. It greets her. It remembers how long it has been. Then it offers her a novelty clock bearing the likeness of a then-current FOX sitcom star, and the clock turns out to be armed. It is a complete three-stage gag delivered entirely by an off-screen announcer.

Famous Quotes

• Announcer: “We wanna send a special home-shopping hello to Peggy Bundy. It’s been a long time, Peggy. And speaking of time… look at this lovely Martin Lawrence Coo Coo Clock.” / Peg: “Isn’t that cute? The second hand has a gun.”
• Bruce: “I never thought this could happen. I’ve actually met somebody as beautiful as me.” / Peg: “You have a big ego.” / Bruce: “It matches my wallet and my car.”
• Woman #2: “Quick, call the paramedics! This old guy’s having a heart attack!” Beginning chest compressions on a conscious Al.
• Al: “Married men, whether separated or divorced, can never go back to being single. See, there’s this gene, it’s called the ‘single gene.’ It’s in us when we’re born. But as soon as we marry, it mysteriously disappears.”
• Griff: “If they don’t like us being single, why do they keep kicking us out of the house?” / Al: “That’s part of their cruel tricks. Without the ‘single gene,’ we’re helpless. We just wander around, smelling of Rogaine and gin, until finally… we fall off our toilets and die.”

Notes

• Peggy reveals that after her divorce from Steve Rhoades in season four, Marcy picked up men at the airport and destroyed his belongings, consistent with Marcy’s own stated plan in “You Gotta Know When to Hold’em.”
• Alan Thicke had appeared in season ten’s “Enemies” as Henry.
• Ed O’Neill’s voice is markedly hoarse in this episode, as it was in season seven’s “‘Tis Time to Smell the Roses,” where the script wrote in a cold. Here there is no explanation.
• Marcy sings her own composition, “Al Bundy Away,” on learning he has moved out.
• Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock n’ Roll” plays as Al slides across his room and again heading out to the club; the season eleven DVD and later prints substitute a soundalike.
• Goof: Al’s detached toilet seat appears and disappears during the television custody negotiation.
• Goof: Al’s hairpiece sits at a different angle between consecutive shots after Griff puts it back on his head.