Season 2 Episode 19: Im-Po-Dent

Steve has a new Mercedes and a rule about who drives it. While he is away, Marcy drives it and puts a dent in the side, not a serious one, but to Steve the damage is total, and his reaction is not anger. He announces that the stress has rendered him impotent, and then commits to that position completely, informing his wife that what she did to the car has ruined him.

What makes the episode work is Marcy’s response. This is a character who normally operates as the smartest and most composed person in any room, and the accusation sends her into a spiral of guilt and increasingly desperate remedies. Amanda Bearse plays the panic without protecting the character, and David Garrison plays Steve’s grievance with the wounded dignity of a man who has found a way to win an argument permanently.

The series rarely gave the Rhoades a plot this unflattering to both of them, and it is a useful reminder of how the first four seasons were balanced. The Bundys are a disaster and know it; the Rhoades are a disaster and have persuaded themselves otherwise, and episodes like this one exist to take the second position apart.

Two small notes of record. This is the first episode to show the actual Tang bottle with its real label: the drink had been named in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and the first season had used a bottle relabelled Tri-C, and Al demonstrates to the children how to make a Tang Wipe. Peggy, asked what more she could possibly be expected to do, suggests sarcastically that she could stop smoking, which she in fact did from season five onward.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 28, 1988
• Season 2, Episode 19, and the 32nd episode of the series
• Written by Sandy Sprung and Marcy Vosburgh
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• No guest cast is credited.

One Dent, One Mercedes, One Crisis

Steve leaves town and tells Marcy not to drive the new Mercedes. Marcy drives the new Mercedes. Marcy hits a fire hydrant. Steve comes home, sees the dent, and stops being able to perform, which turns a fender bender into a marital emergency and gives the episode its title.

The Bundy half of the story is thinner and better than it sounds: there is no food in the house, so Al takes the kids out for breakfast, which is treated as a once-a-decade event. The two halves meet when Peg works out that Steve now has Al’s problem, and says so out loud.

Famous Quotes

• Marcy: “A fire hydrant! What am I going to do?!” Marcy’s confession, after Al asks what she hit twice.
• Peggy: “My God, Al, you are like Steve!” The line that collapses both storylines into one.
• Al: “That’s just God’s alternative to mommies.” Al, on waitresses, over breakfast with his children.

Notes

• The title folds “impotent” into “dent.”
• Steve says he faked his way through by trying to work out why Bruce Willis was a star. Die Hard came out about four months after this episode aired and answered the question.
• This is the first episode to show a Tang bottle with its real label. Season 1 used a parody label reading Tri-C.
• Peg mentions that she and Al have been married sixteen years.
• Peggy’s smoking is referenced here. She stops in season 5.