Season 10 Episode 23: Bud Hits the Books

Bud is days from graduating Trumaine and cannot get any studying done, because Ariel is in the basement and finals are abstract. The episode opens the morning after, with Bud trying to smuggle her out and assuring her that nobody in the house will so much as blink, which is the setup for the banner reading “Bud’s First Sleep Over” hanging in the living room, and Al, Kelly, Jefferson, Griff and Ike standing under it with party horns and a camera. The ribbing that follows is the most sustained pile-on the character absorbs in the whole series, and Kelly’s inspection of the back of Ariel’s neck for an air nozzle is the line that ends him.

Driven out of the house, Bud relocates to the campus library to study, where a compromising discovery leads to a compromising situation and he is caught by the librarian, who turns out to be Miss Hardaway, last seen running the Virgin Hotline in season nine. The university puts him on probation and then convenes a hearing that threatens expulsion days before graduation, and the person who saves him is Marcy, who argues his case. Al’s reaction to the probation news is congratulations, since he assumes it was for something he would have been proud of.

The episode matters mostly because of what it ends. Bud graduates from Trumaine University, with “Pomp and Circumstance” and a ceremony, closing out a college storyline the series had been running since season seven. For a character whose defining trait was that nothing ever worked out, finishing a degree is a substantial piece of forward motion, and the show gets there by way of a hearing about library conduct, which is about the only route it would have accepted.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, April 28, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 23
• Overall episode 235 of the series
• Taped February 23, 1996; production code 10.24
• Written by Stacie Lipp
• Directed by Sam W. Orender
• The title plays on the idiom “hit the books”
• Bud graduates from Trumaine University, closing a storyline running since season seven
• Katey Sagal does not appear; she was on maternity leave

Guest Cast

• Jennifer Lyons as Ariel
• Beverly Archer as Miss Hardaway
• William Utay as Dean Marquand
• Ed Gilbert as the voice of Bob Packwood

Graduating Trumaine

The college thread had been one of the series’ longest. Bud enrolled at Trumaine in season seven, the campus generated whole episodes and even an attempted spin-off in “Radio Free Trumaine,” and the running position was always that he would never actually finish. Having him graduate, and staging it properly, with the processional music and a ceremony, is one of the few genuine advances the show granted any of its characters, and it is notable that it arrives in season ten rather than being saved for the end of the series.

The living room ambush is the best-constructed scene in the half-hour. Bud’s confident assurance that nobody will react is delivered at the bottom of the basement stairs, which means the audience gets to anticipate the banner before seeing it, and the show then lets five people take turns. Kelly’s air-nozzle check is the kill shot, but Ariel’s own contribution, correcting Bud’s claim about the best sex of her life to say only that he did his best, is the sharper line, because it comes from the one person in the room he thought was on his side.

Beverly Archer’s return as Miss Hardaway is the episode’s neatest piece of continuity, and it retroactively explains something. She had run the Virgin Hotline that Bud staffed in season nine’s “Dial ‘B’ for Virgin”; here she is revealed to be the campus librarian as well, which puts her in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong moment. It is her second and final appearance on the series.

Famous Quotes

• Ariel: “Won’t it be awkward when your family sees me coming out of your room?” / Bud: “No, I have girls over here all the time. They won’t even bat an eye.”
• Al: “That’s my boy! Congratulations, son. Your first sleep-over date.” / Griff: “And with a girl too.” / Ike: “Unless it’s one of those Crying Game kind of things.”
• Bud: “How did you guys know Ariel was here?” / Kelly: “Well, for once the cries of ‘Oh, Bud. Oh, Bud’ wasn’t just you throwing your voice.”
• Kelly: “So you spent the night with my brother, Bud. Could you bend your head forward, please?… Nope, no air nozzle.”
• Bud: “Will you leave her alone?! The girl just had the best sex of her life!” / Ariel: “I didn’t say it was the best. I said you did your best.”
• Bud: “The university just put me on probation.” / Al: “Way to go, son!” Before asking which of two more respectable offences it was for.

Notes

• Miss Hardaway is established here as the Trumaine librarian as well as the Virgin Hotline operator from season nine’s “Dial ‘B’ for Virgin.” It is Beverly Archer’s second and final appearance.
• This is Jennifer Lyons’s second appearance as Ariel, who punched Bud in “The Hood, the Bud and the Kelly (Part 1)” and is now attending the same college and dating him.
• William Utay, as Dean Marquand, had appeared in the very first season, in “The Poker Game,” as the man Steve Rhoades gives money to.
• Al’s guesses about what Bud was put on probation for include a panty raid, which the two of them had taken part in together in season seven’s “The Old College Try.”
• “Pomp and Circumstance” plays over the Trumaine graduation ceremony.
• The “Crazy Achmed” satellite dish box from “The Hood, the Bud and the Kelly” can still be seen in the basement.
• Goof: Bud claims at the hearing that Miss Hardaway has had a crush on him for years, though “Dial ‘B’ for Virgin” a year earlier implied they were meeting for the first time.