Season 5 Episode 22: You Better Shop Around (2)

The second half of the supermarket story, and the half with the Cart of Death in it. Having been declared winners of a shopping spree at the end of part one, Al and Peg now have to actually run it, and the store has decided to make a contest of it by putting a second team in the aisles against them. That team is Marcy and Jefferson. What follows is a parody of Supermarket Sweep conducted with no regard for any of the rules that show operated under, because the Bundy tradition on winning anything, as Al explains, is to cheat. To that end Al has built a shopping cart out of salvage. It incorporates parts of Peg’s car, pieces of the side of the house, and components taken off the lawnmower, and it is armed. Al calls it the Cart of Death and he uses it as a weapon. Oil gets squirted on the floor. A turkey gets rolled down an aisle like a bowling ball. Jefferson is forced to push a regulation store cart with uncooperative wheels. Marcy physically plants herself in front of the checkout to stop Al from reaching it, which works about as well as any plan Marcy has ever had involving Al Bundy’s momentum. Running alongside the carnage, Bud and Kelly spend the episode tormenting Jerry Mathers, appearing as himself and working the store on a promotional appearance, mostly by refusing to accept that he is not Opie. It is one of the most physically destructive episodes the show ever shot, and the fact that it was filmed inside a working grocery store makes the chaos land harder than any soundstage version could have.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: April 21, 1991
• Season and episode: Season 5, Episode 22
• Overall episode number: 102
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Linda Day
• Taped: March 15, 1991
• Production note: Conclusion of the two part story begun in “You Better Shop Around (Part 1).” Both halves appear on volume one of the Most Outrageous Episodes DVD set.
• Production note: The contest is a direct send-up of Supermarket Sweep, which Lifetime had revived the year before.
• Title note: From the Miracles’ 1960 single “Shop Around.”

Guest Cast

• Jerry Mathers as himself
• Alan Oppenheimer as Mr. Foodie
• Bruce Jarchow as the store manager
• Bobbie Brown as Nibbles
• Jodie Mann as the cashier
• Brent Corman as the boy

The Cart of Death

Al’s cart is the best prop of the season. He explains its construction himself, and the inventory is pure Bundy: bodywork from Peg’s car, siding off the house, and whatever came loose from the lawnmower. Mounted on it are a punching glove and a set of blades, and Al deploys all of it. The episode’s climactic stretch has him knocking Jefferson down with the glove, kicking Marcy over, rolling a turkey into the pair of them, and finally being impaled by his own creation, which is roughly the arc anyone familiar with this show would have predicted.

The Jerry Mathers subplot works because Mathers is entirely game. He spends the episode seated beside a promotional sign, being mistaken for Opie from The Andy Griffith Show by everyone who walks past, and eventually has to explain that Opie was Ron Howard. The chair he is sitting in has Gary Coleman’s name crossed out on it, which tells you exactly how much the supermarket was willing to pay for a celebrity appearance. Coleman himself later guest starred on the series twice, in season 8 and again in season 10.

Because this was shot in a real store, the shelves are a small time capsule. Barbie cereal, lemon-lime Slice and Switzer licorice are all visible in the background, none of which you can buy now.

Marcy claims in this episode to have been the Bundys’ neighbor for five years. The arithmetic does not quite work, since the series premiered in April 1987 and this aired in April 1991, which makes four. She also reveals that she wears contact lenses, and she sings the Foodie’s jingle, which is its own small reward.

Famous Quotes

• Al, on the family’s approach to competition: the Bundy tradition at winning something is to cheat.
• Al, cataloguing the construction of his shopping cart: it contains parts of Peg’s car, parts from the side of the house, and parts off the lawnmower.
• Al, explaining to Peg what people do with a prize made of groceries: “Well Peg, I saw on 60 Minutes last week where some people found with food cook it up and eat it. I’ve never seen Morley so shaken.”

Notes

• On the original broadcast, a short scene between Al and Peg played over the end credits to promote that night’s episode of the spinoff Top of the Heap, in which Kelly made a cameo. The tag ended with an announcer noting that Kelly Bundy would be there and would need a ride home.
• Kelly refers to the Darcys by their first names here rather than Mr. and Mrs. D’Arcy, something she had also done in season 3’s “The House That Peg Lost” and does again in the next episode.
• David Ruprecht, the host of the real Supermarket Sweep, had already appeared on this series back in season 2’s “You Better Watch Out,” playing the owner of the Lakeside Mall.
• Several of the stunts would have been disqualifying penalties on the actual game show, including Marcy body-blocking the checkout lane and Al oiling the floor.
• Visible goofs abound in the big sequence: Jefferson’s wire harness shows when the turkey hits him, Ted McGinley can be seen moving his foot clear of the cart wheel, Marcy’s armload of egg cartons is plainly empty, and Ed O’Neill is simply hunching over during the impalement.