Season 2 Episode 14: Guys and Dolls

Al and Steve decide to start a baseball card collection and raise the capital by selling Marcy’s childhood Barbie doll, which she has kept in its original box for twenty years. The problem announces itself immediately: she notices, and the two of them have to retrieve it. The shop they sold it to has since been robbed, which turns the back half of the episode into a search through downtown Chicago, asking everybody they meet about a doll.

The structure is a small-scale caper and it suits the Al-and-Steve pairing better than almost anything else the series gave them. Neither man is competent, both are motivated entirely by fear of their wives, and the task is absurd. Marcy’s attachment to the doll is played as genuine rather than silly, and the series came back to it nine seasons later in “Sleepless in Chicago,” where another Barbie causes considerably more trouble.

There is a good piece of studio archaeology in the street scenes. As Al and Steve comb downtown Chicago, they walk through the exterior set built for 227, another Embassy Television production shooting on the same lot, a series co-created by this show’s own Michael G. Moye under the pseudonym C.J. Banks, and which employed a number of the same writers, directors and guest actors. Peggy, meanwhile, is seen playing with a piece of the 1978 A-Frame Barbie Dream House, and Steve’s naval uniform carries the rank of Seaman.

The episode also marks an early high point for the two husbands as a double act. Al and Steve spend eleven seasons being opposites, and the handful of episodes that put them on the same side of a problem, the Mustang, the poker game, this, are consistently among the first four seasons’ best. Neither of them considers simply telling Marcy the truth at any point, which is the only thing that would have worked.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: January 10, 1988
• Season 2, Episode 14, and the 27th episode of the series
• Written by Sandy Sprung and Marcy Vosburgh
• Directed by Linda Day

Guest Cast

• Nick DeMauro as the cop
• Chuck E. Weiss as the dealer, uncredited
• Bullet Valmont as the car stereo thief, uncredited

The Hunt for Marcy’s Barbie

The running Bundy-house plot underneath it is better than the errand: Bud’s social studies project on Brazil, which is a poster with a photograph of Kelly in a bikini on it and the explanation that it illustrates the easy sex in Brazil.

For set-spotting: when Al and Steve search the streets they are walking through the standing exterior set used by the sitcom 227, which was made by the same studio and shared a lot of this show’s writers, directors and guest actors.

Famous Quotes

• Bud: “Well, it illustrates the easy sex in Brazil… So, how did I do?” Peg: “Like your father in life, you failed!” The project, graded.
• Peg: “Kelly is not the problem, Bud. She has moved up to a good, solid D.” Parent-teacher night.
• Police Officer: “Do you know these people?” Al: “Mmm, no!” Al, with Steve dressed as a sailor and Marcy dressed considerably worse, on his doorstep.

Notes

• The title is Damon Runyon, by way of the musical.
• Marcy’s thing for Barbie dolls came back in season 9’s “Sleepless in Chicago.”
• Bud pulls the same trick on Kelly’s homework again in season 3’s “The Computer Show.”
• The doll house Peg plays with is a real 1978 Barbie A-Frame Dream House.