Season 6 Episode 8: God’s Shoes

Al Bundy receives a religious calling in this one, and it concerns footwear. The episode begins with Peg having commissioned a painting of herself at a cost of twenty-five hundred dollars. Al walks into the bedroom, sees it, sees the price, and the show cues up the actual Bernard Herrmann score from the shower scene in Psycho while he reacts. He then falls out of the bedroom window. When he regains consciousness he informs his children that during the period he was out he was shown something: God’s shoes. Perfect shoes. Shoes with the toes stitched in and the socks already attached. He has been chosen to bring them to the unwashed masses, and he dictates the specifications to Bud and Kelly in biblical cadence from the foot of the stairs. Nobody in the family believes him except Kelly, who mounts a defense of the idea by listing other products people doubted, including the pet rock, the mood ring and NBC’s Sunday night lineup. Jefferson signs on as the business end of the operation and Marcy’s money gets involved, which is never a combination that ends well for Marcy. The venture proceeds as far as a television appearance on a program whose actual purpose Al has not thought carefully enough about, and by the end Al has moved on to his next concept, a combined shoe store and hamburger restaurant he intends to call Shoehorn-o-Plenty. The episode is one of the better showcases for the show’s willingness to let Al have a genuine, sincere delusion rather than a scheme, and the difference matters: he is not trying to con anyone here, he actually believes it, which makes the collapse funnier and slightly sadder than usual.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 3, 1991
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 8
• Overall episode number: 113
• Written by: Ellen L. Fogle
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: October 18, 1991
• Production note: Katey Sagal does not appear. Peggy’s absence is covered by a line about her having left for Mardi Gras after Al’s accident.
• Production note: The actual Psycho shower cue, “The Murder,” is used when Al sees the painting.

Guest Cast

• Tim Kazurinsky as Sidney Rimhollow
• Larry Jacobson as the TV host
• Brad Blumenthal as Bob (credited as Brad Parker)
• Megan O’Hara as Lola
• June Foray as the voice of Scary Mary

Shoehorn-o-Plenty

Using Herrmann’s “The Murder” rather than a soundalike is a small flex, and it works because the thing Al is reacting to is a painting of his own wife. The episode gets two window falls out of him, and in both cases the stunt dummy is plainly visible, landing in a position Ed O’Neill is then shown not to be in.

Al’s dictation of the shoe specifications is the centerpiece, delivered in mock scripture and taken down by two children who are not writing anything. The design brief, as far as it goes, is shoes with the toes stitched in and socks attached, followed by a lot of other stuff that will come forthwith. Kelly’s reaction is that she has never been prouder of him. Bud’s reaction is to point out that God made both of them, so imagine the pride He must be feeling.

The voice of Scary Mary belongs to June Foray, which is a genuinely remarkable credit to find on this show. Foray was Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Granny in the Looney Tunes shorts, and Cindy Lou Who, among several hundred other parts. Larry Jacobson, playing the television host, was a staff writer and story editor on the series, and he wrote the next episode.

Tim Kazurinsky, a Saturday Night Live alumnus and Officer Sweetchuck from the Police Academy films, plays Sidney Rimhollow. Megan O’Hara, here as Lola, turns up again in “Kelly Does Hollywood (Part 2)” as the woman in the purple dress who flirts with Bud.

Famous Quotes

• Al, on the day he has had at the shoe store: “A fat woman came into the shoe store today and said that she was a size five. I shoved her hoof into a shoe, my thumb got stuck in the back of the shoe. She panicked, reared up, and galloped around the store, dragging me on the floor behind her.”
• Al, dictating the revelation to his children: “Thou shalt have shoes with toes stitched in, thou shall have socks attached to yon shoes and thou shall have a lot of other stuff that will come forthwith.”
• Kelly, watching her father ascend the stairs mid-sermon: “I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of him.” Bud: “Well God created both of you, think of the pride he’s feelin’.”

Notes

• Al’s next business idea, a combination shoe store and hamburger restaurant called Shoehorn-o-Plenty, pays off nine years later: in season 10’s “I Can’t Believe It’s Butter,” Griff uses “Shoehorn-o-Plenty” as a nickname on the phone.
• Bud reports that while Al was unconscious, Kelly tried to open a bottle of Coors with his teeth.
• Kelly suggests Al ask God who actually buys Dockers.
• A continuity problem the episode ignores: Al got glasses in the previous episode and could barely see without them, yet he reads the price tag on the painting from across the bedroom here.
• Kelly refers to Al’s failed attempt to walk across Lake Michigan to Canada to sell shoes, which would not get him to Canada even if the walking part worked.