Season 1 Episode 12: Where’s the Boss

Al hears that Gary, the owner of the shoe store, has died in a plane crash, and the only thing that troubles him about it is that he never received a word of recognition from a man he has never laid eyes on. Then Gary turns out to be alive, which does not solve the problem, so Al pays someone to impersonate his own boss simply to hear the words said out loud. His resignation speech, delivered once he has heard them, is the first of the great Al Bundy set pieces.

The episode is one of the best illustrations of what the series understood about the job. Al does not want more money and does not want a different position. He wants to be told, once, by someone with the authority to say it, that twenty years of selling shoes amounted to something, and the show’s answer is that there is nobody to say it, so he hires a stranger. The hired boss is the joke, and the reason he hired one is not.

There is a long piece of continuity buried in the casting. Everyone in this episode refers to Gary as he, and the impersonator is a man. Eight years later, season nine’s “Business Still Sucks” revealed that Gary is a woman, and the series never explained the discrepancy. Steve, meanwhile, gets one of the show’s earliest callbacks, needling Al mid-argument about what he did to his dog, Bella, shot nine episodes earlier in “But I Didn’t Shoot the Deputy.”

Episode Facts

• Original air date: June 21, 1987
• Season 1, Episode 12, and the 12th episode of the series
• Written by Marcy Vosburgh and Sandy Sprung
• Directed by Linda Day

Guest Cast

• Geoffrey Scott as Gary, under the name Nick
• Diana Bellamy as Nancy
• J.J. Johnston as Happy
• Lewis Arquette as Ed
• Billy Beck as the guard
• Rick Waln as Bart
• Mandy Sherman as Donna
• Giovanni Ribisi as Teddy, credited as Vonni Ribisi

Al Quits Over a Boss He Has Never Met

The joke has a very long fuse. Everyone in this episode calls Gary “he.” Eight seasons later, in Business Still Sucks, Gary turns out to be a woman.

Watch the kid playing Teddy. That is Giovanni Ribisi, credited here as Vonni Ribisi, several years before anyone knew the name. Diana Bellamy, who plays Nancy, also turns up in the pilot and later in Top of the Heap.

Famous Quotes

• Peggy: “Come on now kids, we’re Bundys. How often do we get to be happy?” Peg, managing expectations.
• Al: “Not only is Gary not dead, he still doesn’t know I’m alive!” The grievance, stated plainly.
• Nancy: “You must be the wife.” Peggy: “And you must be why they’re starving in China.” The shoe store’s customer relations.
• Al: “Wherever a fat woman shoves her smelly foot…” The Grapes of Wrath, rewritten for retail.

Notes

• The title references the ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss?, which taped on the soundstage next door at the same studio.
• Steve mocks Al by bringing up the dog, a callback to But I Didn’t Shoot the Deputy.
• The production code shows this was produced eleventh for the season but aired twelfth.