Kelly is eighteen and intends to use it. She comes through the front door with a boyfriend called Jake, announces her new legal status to her father, and heads for the stairs. Jake tells Al to hold his calls.
What follows is the definitive version of a joke the show told for eleven years. Al puts Jake in a chokehold, walks him back down the staircase, offers to introduce him to the rest of the house, and throws him out of the front door. He then estimates the distance, compares it to his personal record of twenty feet, and goes again. Bud assists by supplying the name of the brother Jake has not mentioned yet, which is how the audience learns that Kelly has worked through the family.
Underneath the farce the episode is doing something real: Kelly leaves. She gets an apartment, Al visits, and the series has to work out what it is without one of the children in the house. The title gives away how the family frames her departure.
Two production notes. The episode first aired on Christina Applegate’s nineteenth birthday. And the two men in the lift who comment on Al’s smell as he goes up to Kelly’s apartment are Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye, who created the series. Watched in sequence this is a bigger episode than it looks. Kelly moving out is the first real structural change to the household since the pilot, and the show handles it almost entirely through Al throwing a teenager out of a door. The emotional content is in what he does rather than anything he says, which is how the series nearly always handled him.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: November 25, 1990
- Season 5, Episode 10, and the 90th episode of the series
- Aired on Christina Applegate’s nineteenth birthday
- Written by Ralph R. Farquhar
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
Guest Cast
- Julie Gray as Brooke
- Charles Howerton as Brooke’s father
- Ric Roman Waugh as Jake
- Stewart J. Zully as Sam
- Emily Samuel as young Kelly
- Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye as the men in the elevator, uncredited
The Series Creators, in the Elevator
Leavitt and Moye put themselves in the episode as the two men who react to Al’s body odour in the lift. It is the only time either of them appears on camera in the series.
Charles Howerton, playing Brooke’s father, also appeared in Top of the Heap later the same season.
Al states that he has been selling shoes for twenty years.
Kelly establishes she is eighteen, and the episode confirms she has now dated Jake and three of his brothers.
Famous Quotes
- Kelly: “Hi, daddy! I’m eighteen and I can do whatever I want! This is Jake!” The announcement.
- Jake: “We’re going to Kelly’s room. Hold my calls.” The last thing Jake says standing up.
- Al: “Let me introduce you to the rest of the house. This is the end of the banister.” The tour.
- Al: “I’d say I’m about 8, 10 inches from my record toss of 20 feet!” Al, measuring.
Notes
- Goof: Al claims a new record on the second throw, though Jake visibly travels less far than the first time.
- Goof: Jake’s head does not make contact with the banister. Al’s arm does.
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