Season 11 Episode 21: Damn Bundys

Al sells his soul for a football career, and the series builds its only visual-effects showcase around it. Lucifer, played by Robert Englund in one of his rare straight comic turns, offers him a place with the Chicago Bears and a run to the Super Bowl in exchange for the usual consideration, and Al accepts without hesitation or negotiation. Curtis Conway, Erik Kramer and Raymont Harris appear as themselves, which means the fantasy is staged with the actual 1996 Bears, and James Brown turns up to interview Al on the field before kickoff.

That interview is the best scene in the episode. Asked how he achieved a miraculous Cinderella season, Al answers honestly: he sold his soul, and Brown, without missing a beat, translates it as dedication for the viewers at home and signs off with an exhortation about putting your soul into things. Al is killed during the game, having refused to quit once the deal’s terms were satisfied, and Lucifer takes delivery.

Hell turns out to be a problem for Lucifer rather than for Al. The itinerary of eternal torments is presented game-show style: a millennium of eating the most hideous food known to man, which is Weenie Tots, which Al loves; then the news that he will never see his family again, which reduces him to grateful tears and an embrace. His entire family is already down there, and after three hundred years the arrangement is indistinguishable from the one he left. The D’Arcys, by Al’s count, have visited 7,916,042 times.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, April 28, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 21
• Overall episode 259 of the series
• Taped February 21, 1997; production code 11.20
• Written by Ben Montanio and Vince Cheung
• Directed by Richard Correll
• The title plays on the 1955 musical Damn Yankees
• The only episode of the series to use CGI, and the only one taped without a live audience

Guest Cast

• Robert Englund as Lucifer
• James Brown as himself
• Erik Kramer as himself
• Curtis Conway as himself
• Raymont Harris as himself
• John Cirigliano as Napoleon Bonaparte
• John Welsh as the Clerk
• Alex Ardenti as the Hunky Guy

The Only CGI Episode

The effects work exists because of a network promotion. FOX was airing The Mask the following night, April 29, 1997, and several of its series produced episodes incorporating computer-generated imagery as a tie-in. This is Married… with Children‘s contribution, and the volume of effects shots meant it could not be taped in front of a live audience, the only episode in the run recorded without one, using a pre-recorded laugh track instead.

Robert Englund’s casting is the episode’s best joke before anyone says a word. He had been Freddy Krueger since 1984, the series had named a first-season episode after that franchise, and season three had Miss DeGroot call Al the Freddy Krueger of the library system. Putting him in the role of a devil who cannot find anything to threaten Al with is a use of Englund almost nobody else attempted: he plays the whole thing as a frustrated middle manager.

The Hell sequence is the strongest argument the series ever made for its own premise. Lucifer’s torments fail one after another because Al’s life was already the punishment: terrible food he enjoys, separation from his family he would welcome, and an eternity in a house identical to the one he lived in, with the neighbours dropping in roughly seventy-two times a day. Nothing in the afterlife can be done to him that has not already been done.

Famous Quotes

• James Brown: “You’ve had a miraculous Cinderella season. The whole world is wondering: How did you do it?” / Al: “I sold my soul.” / James Brown: “Dedication.”
• James Brown: “To you young people watching out there, and to you old people too, anything is possible if you put your… ‘soul’ into it.” / Al: “Thanks, J.B.!”
• Lucifer: “For the next millennium, you’ll be exclusively dining on the most hideous food ever known to man: Weenie Tots.” / Al: “Oooh, I love those!”
• Lucifer: “What you don’t know is that a steady diet of Weenie Tots would cause you to spend an eternity in the bathroom!” / Al: “Why do you think I love them?”
• Lucifer: “Since you find Hell such a picnic, how about this? For the rest of eternity, you’ll never see your family again!” / Al: “This is HEAVEN! Thank you!”

Notes

• Englund had played Freddy Krueger since 1984; season one’s “Nightmare on Al’s Street” took its title from that franchise, and season three’s “He Thought He Could” had a character call Al the Freddy Krueger of the library system.
• James Brown’s second and final appearance on the series, after “A Bundy Thanksgiving” earlier in the same season.
• Martial arts figure “Judo” Gene LeBell appears uncredited as Brutus.
• By Al’s accounting the Bundys and D’Arcys have been in Hell three hundred years and the D’Arcys have visited 7,916,042 times, roughly seventy-two visits a day.
• Goof: Peggy blinks twice while supposedly frozen, and the broom in her hand moves between shots.
• Goof: a mattress is visible on the floor during the scenes where Al is tackled by the Devil’s team.
• Goof: Lucifer offers Al “Red Hots,” but the box in his hand reads “Real Hots.”