Season 6 Episode 21: Teacher Pets

Bud has convinced himself that his substitute teacher is interested in him, and the problem is that nobody will believe it. He tries to get the family and the Darcys to acknowledge the achievement, even attempting to lead them in a cheer about it, and is ignored. The Darcys’ response to his situation is to invite him out to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese, which they are doing out of pity, and Bud’s objection to being pitied gives him one of his better lines of the season. It turns out he is right about the teacher. Miss McGowen is interested, and the rest of the episode is Bud discovering that having two women at once is not the unmixed triumph he had assumed, since he is also seeing a girl his own age named Darlene. He takes the problem to his father, who claims extensive experience in the field and offers advice that is both practical and entirely bleak. Running alongside it, Peg has the flu and is getting no sympathy whatsoever. Al and Kelly pull a plastic tarp over themselves when she sneezes and take turns pretending not to know whether she can find the kitchen. Al’s own project for the week is a free food operation: he has discovered that if you turn up at Chuck E. Cheese with a wrapped gift you can sit down at any child’s birthday party and eat, and he has been working the room for days.It is one of the better Bud episodes of the season, partly because the show lets him be right for once, and partly because being right turns out to be more trouble than the alternative.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: April 5, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 21
• Overall episode number: 126
• Written by: Katherine Green
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: March 6, 1992
• Production note: Taped three days after David Faustino’s eighteenth birthday, which was almost certainly deliberate given the storyline.
• Title note: A play on “teacher’s pet.” The replacement teacher’s name, Mrs. A. Mariner, is a play on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Guest Cast

• Linda Gibboney as Miss McGowen
• Charlotte Ross as Darlene
• Lillian Adams as Mrs. A. Mariner
• Bert L. Cook as Ernie
• Ric Coy as the kid
• Tim Hill as the man

Two Women at Once

Al’s advice scene is the heart of the episode and one of the better father-son exchanges in the run. Bud asks whether Al ever had the problem of juggling two women, and Al immediately invokes his jersey number as evidence, offering an explanation of what the 33 stood for that has nothing to do with football. Then Peg sneezes loudly offstage, Al’s expression changes, and the bravado turns into the most honest thing he says all season: that whoever Bud picks will be the wrong one, not because he is a Bundy but because he is a man.

Charlotte Ross, who plays Darlene, has a near-miss connection to this show. She auditioned for Kelly Bundy and was the producers’ second choice behind Christina Applegate. She had also already played Katey Sagal’s daughter in the 1991 television film She Says She’s Innocent.

Al’s Chuck E. Cheese scheme is a small masterpiece of Bundy economics. The investment is a wrapped box. The return is unlimited pizza at other people’s children’s parties, and Al has clearly been refining the method for some time before the episode opens.

Bert L. Cook, a member of the show’s production staff, appears again as Ernie, one of Bud’s classmates. He had made his acting debut earlier in the same season in “Cheese, Cues and Blood.”

Famous Quotes

• Al, to his flu-stricken wife, asked for a glass of water: “You know where the kitchen is… or maybe you don’t.”
• Peg, playing her only card: “The longer I stay sick, the longer it’ll be before I do any housework around here!” Al: “Oh, gee, Peg! But we can still have sex, can’t we?!”
• Bud, asking for guidance: “I don’t know how to juggle two women. Did you ever have this problem?” Al: “You’re talking to old ‘Number 33’ here! Do you know how I got that number?” Bud: “‘Cause the most money you’ve ever had was 33 cents?”
• Al, after a long pause: “No matter who you pick, it’ll be the wrong one! And not just because you’re a Bundy either! Because you’re a man!”
• Bud, on the Darcys’ charity dinner invitation: “What does it look like I am, the kid in ‘Mask’?”

Notes

• The teacher Dottie McGowen may be named for the show’s hair stylist Dottie McQuown.
• Al and Kelly are watching Psycho Dad at the top of the episode.
• Bud attempts a Whoa Bundy cheer of his own and gets no participation.
• Kelly telephones Reverend Fletcher, a name the series had used before.
• Peg sings a reworked version of Eddie Fisher’s “Oh! My Pa-Pa” as “Oh! My Mama.”
• Bud’s closing voiceover, consoling himself that the great thing about being at the bottom is that you cannot fall any lower, is about as close as the character ever gets to peace.