Season 10 Episode 15: The Hood, the Bud and the Kelly (2)

The conclusion, and the pressure is now entirely on Bud. The exercise video is behind schedule because his two stars cannot stand each other: Kelly and Raphael spend more time in their dressing rooms than in front of the camera, and Vito Capone’s man Gino is on set with a deadline and a clear explanation of what happens if it is missed. Richard Moll plays Gino as a patient professional rather than a shouting heavy, which is why the character works: he is not angry with Bud, he simply has a schedule and a laptop full of people who need organs.

That laptop supplies the episode’s best sequence. Gino opens his case, Bud dives behind the camera screaming for his mother, and what comes out is a PowerBook. Gino is checking his email. He then walks Bud through the family’s recycling programme, a spleen for a man in New Jersey, a brain for a boy in New Haven, in the tone of someone describing a filing system, and Bud’s response is to call his cast back to the set immediately. It is the most efficient motivation scene the show ever staged.

On the roof, the satellite dish project continues, and the wives have moved from spectating to running a book on which husband falls next. Bob Rooney is carried off by a bird that Officer Dan describes as a B-52 with a beak, Officer Dan lands on Ike, and the NO MA’AM half of the two-parter ends roughly where it began, with nothing installed and several men injured. Bud gets his video finished by lying to his talent about profit participation, which is the most professional thing he does all season.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, January 14, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 15, part two of two
• Overall episode 227 of the series
• Production code 10.16
• Written by Daniel O’Keefe
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on Sergio Leone’s 1966 western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Bud’s middle name is revealed here as Franklin

Guest Cast

• Richard Moll as Gino
• Perry Anzilotti as Vito Capone
• John Carlos Frey as Raphael
• J.J. Johnston as Bebe
• Lisa Arturo as Farrah
• Veronica De La Cruz as Kate
• Melissa De Sousa as Jaclyn
• Kym Whitley as Danielle

Gino’s PowerBook

Richard Moll’s Gino is the reason this half works. The threat is stated once, plainly, at the top, “you don’t pay us, we kill you, it don’t get no easier than that”, and after that he never raises his voice. He plays video games with the dancers, checks his messages, and explains the organ business as a matter of corporate policy. The comedy comes from the gap between the content of what he is saying and the register he says it in, and Moll had the frame and the delivery to hold both at once.

The PowerBook gag is also a small time capsule. In early 1996 a laptop was still a statement, and the joke depends on it being surprising that a mob enforcer owns one, Bud’s own assumption, which Gino finishes for him, is that computers are not for big dumb thugs. The follow-up, that the family uses them because it is very much into recycling, is the best turn in the episode.

Bud’s resolution is characteristically grubby. He does not mediate between his stars or win them over; he lies to both of them and offers points in a film that will never show a profit, then describes this as what any respectable director would do. Gino’s one-word response, “Net?”, is the show acknowledging that its most cynical character has just been out-cynicked by Hollywood accounting.

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “What happens if I don’t finish the video on time? Vito said there was some kind of easy payment plan.” / Gino: “It is easy: you don’t pay us, we kill you. It don’t get no easier than that.”
• Bud: “NOOO! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” / Gino: “Take it easy, Spiel-bug. I’m just checking my e-mail.” On opening the case.
• Bud: “I never thought computers were for, you know…” / Gino: “Big, dumb thugs? See, we use computers now because the family is very much into recycling.” / Bud: “Oh, you mean, like glass, papers, cans?” / Gino: “No. Body parts.”
• Gino: “So I look up in my PowerBook and see that Jim in Jersey needs a spleen.” / Bud: “Can I live without a spleen?” / Gino: “Perhaps, but little Joey in New Haven needs a brain.”
• Bud: “Gino, good news.” / Gino: “I can kill you now?” / Bud: “No, I meant good news for me… I did what any respectable director would do. I lied to them and offered them points in the film.” / Gino: “Net?”

Notes

• The syndicated print shown on ViacomCBS networks cuts the “Screw U” exchange between Jefferson and Officer Dan.
• Officer Dan calls the bird that carries off Bob Rooney a “B-52 with a beak”: it lifts him some seventy feet, which no living bird could manage.
• J.J. Johnston, who plays Bebe, had appeared twice before: as Louie in season eight’s “Luck of the Bundys” and as the studio security guard in season nine’s “No Pot to Pease In.”
• Bud’s “El Boy-o Loco” jab at Raphael references El Pollo Loco, a chain with no Illinois locations at the time.
• Goof: the star on Raphael’s dressing room door falls off and is back in place later.
• Goof: the VCR and monitor Bud and Kelly watch the incriminating tape on have no cables connected.
• Goof: the Officer Dan who lands on Ike is an obvious, hairless dummy.