Season 11 Episode 19: Birthday Boy Toy

Jefferson is turning forty, which is the first time the series ever put a number on him, and he is not handling it. Marcy’s remedy is employment, which for a man whose entire characterisation rests on never having worked is a more serious threat than the birthday. Al’s problem is Peggy’s shopping, conducted largely through cable channels, and his attempt to cure it produces the episode’s bluntest exchange, a wish that one of the bills is for a coffin, answered by a plea not to destroy her life, answered in turn by the observation that this would make them even.

The main event is a commercial. Bud and Kelly arrive at Gary’s Shoes to shoot a spot for the store, with Kelly as the customer, and the only remaining role is the salesman. The pay is four hundred dollars a day, which brings both Al and Griff forward immediately, Griff on the strength of having played Dorothy in his high school production of The Wiz, Al on the strength of the seizures he used to perform at IHOP for free pancakes. Kelly’s assessment of that credential is the funniest line in the episode.

Al gets the part and cannot say the line. He delivers all the right words in the wrong order, several times, each attempt a different scramble of pumps, purple, feet and treats, and then blames his director for being unable to edit them into sequence. Griff waits in the wings with his makeup on, singing “Ease on Down the Road.” Before all that, Al gets one moment of unintentional self-revelation: having mocked Griff for a man his age clinging to faded high school glory, he genuinely does not understand why the room has gone quiet.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, March 31, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 19
• Overall episode 257 of the series
• Taped February 14, 1997; production code 11.19
• Written by Terry Maloney and Mindy Morgenstern
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on “birthday boy” and “boy toy”
• Jefferson’s age is given here as forty, the only time the series fixes it

Take Forty-One

The commercial shoot is a good vehicle for a joke the series had made in passing for years: Al has sold shoes for a quarter of a century and is extremely bad at it. Asked to say one sentence about purple pumps, he cannot assemble it, and the variations get progressively further from the script while his confidence never wavers. His complaint that the words were all correct and the director should simply edit them into order is the purest expression of the character’s relationship with competence.

Griff’s audition is the better joke of the two. He arrives with press, a clipping from the Hoover High School Gazette calling his Dorothy captivating, charming and strangely intimidating, and Al’s response is to attack him for a man his age clinging to faded high school glory. The silence that follows, and Al’s complete failure to understand it, is the show acknowledging the joke it has been running since 1987 without ever letting him in on it.

The Jefferson subplot is thinner but it is the only time the series ever committed to his age. Forty, and worried about it, which puts him a decade or more behind Al in every direction that matters. A small irony attaches to the casting: the character was always written as noticeably younger than Marcy, while Ted McGinley and Amanda Bearse are in fact the same age and were both around thirty-eight when this was taped.

Famous Quotes

• Al: “I hope one of these bills is for a coffin, because your shopping is killing me.”
• Peg: “Al, don’t make me stop shopping. You’ll destroy my life!” / Al: “Good, then we’ll be even!”
• Bud: “All we need is a shoe salesman.” / Griff: “Well, how much does it pay?” / Bud: “Four hundred dollars a day.” / Al: “Earth days? Hey, I’m your man for the job.”
• Al: “You want to see great acting? How about those seizures I used to throw at IHOP?” / Kelly: “Alright, Dad, so you scammed us a few ‘Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity’ breakfasts. It doesn’t exactly make you Oscar material.”
• Griff: “Hoover High School Gazette says my Dorothy was ‘captivating, charming and strangely intimidating.’” / Al: “Ew, Griff! How pathetic are you?! A man your age, hanging on to faded high school glory!” Then, into the silence: “…What?”
• Al: “Certainly, we pump you purple at Gary’s Shoes! Where we treat your feet!” / Bud: “Cut!” / Al: “What?! Those were the right words!” / Bud: “Yeah, but they were in the wrong order!”

Notes

• Ted McGinley and Amanda Bearse are the same age in real life, both around thirty-eight when this was taped, despite Jefferson being written as considerably younger than Marcy.
• Marcy’s hair is noticeably longer here than two episodes earlier in “Live Nude Peg,” where Peggy had described it as a boyish cut.
• Griff sings “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz while putting on makeup to replace Al.
• Peggy distracts Kelly with a Don Knotts hologram that alternates between Mr. Furley and Barney Fife.
• Goof: Griff cites a high school production of The Wiz, which did not reach the stage publicly until 1974, well after he would have graduated, given a stated birth year of 1949.