Season 10 Episode 16: Calendar Girl

Bud needs a project for his marketing class and lands on a calendar featuring the girls of Trumaine, an idea he gets from Kelly after she turns up with a men’s calendar of her own. The shoot is staged at Gary’s Shoes, scored to Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl,” and Al invests ten dollars in it, which in his accounting represents hundreds of thousands in projected returns. The problem is the cover girl. Crystal Clark will not commit, and her reason is one she cannot bring herself to say out loud: she is worried about what her parents will think if the calendar goes national.

Bud’s solution is to be sincere with her, a tactic he finds almost physically difficult: he describes complete honesty as going against everything he stands for, and about as unnatural as talking to a man. It works. Crystal agrees, telling him the calendar might be a way to let her parents know she has finally become a woman, and the episode drops several more hints of the same shape before the reveal arrives during her television interview. The final image is Bud kneeling in front of a television showing nothing but static, and the show lets it run under the closing credits in place of the usual freeze frame.

This is also where Peggy leaves. Katey Sagal was pregnant with her second child during production, and rather than write around her on the set the series sent Peg off in search of her runaway father, keeping her in the show by telephone from increasingly expensive locations. She stays away for the rest of season ten and returns in the finale. It was the second time the series had solved a Sagal pregnancy by getting Peggy out of Chicago.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, February 4, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 16
• Overall episode 228 of the series
• Production code 10.17
• Written by Amanda Bearse
• Directed by Fran E. Kaufer
• The title refers both to Bud’s project and to the Neil Sedaka song, which scores the photo shoot
• Peggy departs the household here and does not return until the season finale

Guest Cast

• Krista Allen as Crystal Clark
• Victor Raider-Wexler as Floyd Babcock
• John Patrick White as Little Floyd Babcock
• Tina New as Woman #1
• Robin Krieger as the TV Host
• Patty Breton as the Pilgrim Girl

Writing Peggy Out

Katey Sagal was pregnant with her second child while season ten was in production, and the show’s answer was to invent an errand that would keep Peggy out of the house without removing her from the series. Ephraim Wanker’s departure in “Love Conquers Al” set it up: Peg goes looking for her father, calls home periodically from wherever she has got to, and the gag becomes that she is plainly on holiday, Tiffany’s, Paris, New Orleans at Mardi Gras, rather than conducting a search.

This was the second time the series had done this. During season six, Sagal’s miscarriage led the show to reverse the pregnancy storyline it had already begun by revealing it as Al’s dream; after her first child was born the show brought her back. Handling it this time by sending the character travelling was the gentler option, and it also gave Al something to play against on the telephone, which produced some of the better two-line exchanges of the back half.

Crystal’s storyline is the more interesting half of the episode, and it is constructed carefully. The script plants the information at least four times, her refusal to explain, the line about letting her parents know she has become a woman, the remark during the interview about having nothing to be ashamed of any more, so the reveal plays as a payoff rather than a swerve. Bud’s reaction, kneeling in front of a dead channel while the credits roll, is the most committed closing image the series attempted.

Famous Quotes

• Al: “Peg?” / Peg: “Yeah, it’s me. I’m just on my way out to find Dad.” / Al: “Well, when did you leave?” / Peg: “Yesterday.” / Al: “Well, no wonder the sex was good last night.”
• Peg: “I just left Tiffany’s. You wouldn’t believe how big some of their stones are.” / Al: “You should see some of mine. I just felt a big one leave my kidneys and head for my urinary tract.”
• Al: “Don’t you know how much money I’ve got riding on this calendar?!” / Bud: “Oh, yeah, I know. You had $10, Dad.” / Al: “That’s beside the point.”
• Al: “Or I’m cutting you out of the will! … Wait a minute, that’s no punishment. I’m putting you IN the will! You’ll owe millions!”
• Bud: “Completely honest? That goes against everything I stand for. That’d almost be like talking to a guy.” Working out how to approach Crystal.
• Al: “Damn you, Kelly! You ate my last Hershey’s Kiss! You’re in the will!” / Kelly: “No, Dad, nooo!” From upstairs, mid-scene.

Notes

• Rather than the usual freeze frame and instrumental “Love and Marriage,” the end credits run over a continuing scene of Bud in front of a television showing static. The DVD release substitutes a still of the same shot, though the white noise remains.
• Al reveals that Babcock’s Shoes has been in the New Market Mall for over twenty years.
• Bud claims Al is the reason he never played Little League; Al’s version is that Bud threw like a girl.
• Tina New, the woman in the black dress asking about pumps, had appeared in “Blonde and Blonder” as Debbie, who slapped Bud at the reunion.
• Goof: when Kelly flips her “Buns of USC” calendar, the first page shows it is actually a Chippendales calendar.
• Goof: the footage of Peg’s limo pulling onto the main road is clearly from the early-to-mid 1980s, and the limo carries a California plate of a design discontinued before 1996.
• Goof: Kelly can be seen wearing a wedding band on her left hand in several shots.
• Goof: Al tells a customer the store has never carried black pumps, though earlier episodes show otherwise.