Season 11 Episode 1: Twisted

Season eleven opens with a tornado bearing down on Chicago and the Bundys and D’Arcys locked in the basement together, which is the simplest premise the series ever built an episode on and one of the better ones. The threat does something unexpected to the women: Peggy and Marcy find the danger and the confinement genuinely exciting, and Al and Jefferson spend the half-hour working out how to get out of a sealed basement with two interested wives in it. Their escape attempt is scored to a soundalike of the Mission: Impossible theme, which tells you how seriously the show takes their predicament.

Before the storm, the episode settles Griff’s business from the season ten finale. He is not speaking to Al, having been arrested as the Chicago Cannibal and strapped into an electric chair as the punchline of a practical joke, and his account of what the experience cost him, including a nickname and an unwanted marriage, is the best written exchange in the episode. Al’s position is that Griff is whining, and that the rescue would have come sooner if his burger had arrived properly cooked.

This is also where several things change. The opening titles are shortened, dropping the couch gag in which Al hands out money; every season eleven episode now opens with a teaser before the credits and usually closes with an epilogue; the end credits move to a black screen. More consequentially, FOX moved the series to Saturdays at nine, and the ratings fell immediately. The show was shifted three more times before it was cancelled, and this time slot is where that decline begins.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Saturday, September 28, 1996 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 1, the eleventh-season premiere
• Overall episode 239 of the series
• Production code 11.03, third in production order, but written and intended as the premiere
• Written by Richard Gurman
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on the 1996 film Twister
• The series moves to Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. ET with this episode, a slot change that badly damaged its ratings

Guest Cast

• Jennifer Lyons as Ariel
• Donna Pieroni as Sandy
• Christine Moore as the Gorgeous Woman
• Steven Shenbaum as the Scarecrow

What Changed in Season Eleven

The format is overhauled here. The main titles are trimmed, losing the couch gag in which Al distributes money to the family. Each episode now begins with a teaser before the credits and most end with an epilogue after the final act. The end credits move from a still frame of Al and Peg over scrolling text to a black screen with quick frame transitions. The introductory clips for the cast are carried over from season ten with one exception: David Faustino’s is replaced with a shot of Bud reacting to Kelly’s double, footage from “The Stepford Peg,” which means that episode was shot before this one.

The scheduling move matters more than any of that. FOX put the series on Saturdays at nine, following COPS, and the audience did not follow. The show would be moved three more times before cancellation, and in hindsight this premiere is the start of the end rather than the beginning of a season.

The basement itself is a good piece of economy. One set, six characters, no way out, and a premise that turns the usual dynamic inside out: the men are the ones avoiding sex and the women are the ones pursuing it, which the series had played before but never with a natural disaster forcing the issue. Ariel gets the episode’s running gag, repeatedly supplying exactly the answer Al wants during Marcy’s attempts to organise a parlour game, and earning his approval twice.

Famous Quotes

• Al: “Griff, you got any aspirin? Or a harpoon?” / Griff: “I’m not talking to you.” / Al: “I can’t believe you’re still whining about that little practical joke.” / Griff: “You sent me to death row!”
• Al: “You made a few close friends. And they gave you a cool nickname, ‘Black Beauty.’” / Griff: “‘Mrs. Black Beauty’?” / Al: “You said you wanted to remarry.”
• Griff: “Al, they strapped me in the electric chair.” / Al: “Well, we’d have rescued you sooner. But when you order a burger well-done, it ought to come well-done.”
• Kelly: “I’m not going anywhere until I get Lucky.” / Jefferson: “Well, that should take about thirty seconds.”
• Marcy: “Somebody give me a verb.” / Al: “…Cluck?” / Marcy: “Now, somebody give me a command.” / Ariel: “Cluck you?” / Al: “I like you.”
• Marcy: “Let’s just play ‘Twenty Questions.’ Who wants to start?” / Al: “Go to hell.” / Marcy: “That’s not a question.” / Ariel: “Why don’t you go to hell?” / Al: “I really like you.”

Notes

• Bud’s reply to Ariel’s “I don’t know what you see in me!” was cut from the FOX repeats and the original syndication prints; it survives on the DVD and in later syndication and streaming versions.
• The second half of the instrumental “Cyclone” from The Wizard of Oz plays as Kelly goes looking for Lucky with the tornado behind her, and a Mission: Impossible soundalike scores the escape through the secret door.
• Christine Moore, the woman who loses her dress outside the shoe store, later played Laurie Forman on That ’70s Show, replacing Lisa Robin Kelly, who turns up on this series a few episodes later as Kelly’s acting rival in “Breaking Up Is Easy to Do (Part 1).”
• Jennifer Lyons also appeared on That ’70s Show, as did Katey Sagal.
• Goof: Al’s punch at Jefferson visibly misses, in the tradition of James Caan’s famous whiff in The Godfather.
• Goof: the boom microphone is visible retracting above Kelly during her deliberation over which possessions to save.
• Goof: stunt doubles and a plush dummy are all plainly visible during the falls into the back yard.