Season 7 Episode 2: T-R-A-Something-Something Spells Tramp

Christina Applegate has named this her favourite episode of the series, and it is easy to see why. Kelly goes out with a boy named Ralph, played by Corey Feldman, who drives her to a secluded spot, claims he has run out of gas, and makes his intentions clear in about four words. Kelly’s response is to match his economy of language, decline, punch him, and get out of the car, at which point he drives off and leaves her on a dark road miles from anywhere while calling her a tramp. The injustice of the label is Kelly’s main objection, since she is standing outside the car precisely because she said no. Walking home, she finds she is not alone. Other girls are out there, dumped on the same road by the same kind of boy for the same reason, and the episode turns into an unexpectedly solid piece of writing about who actually gets to use that word. Back at the house, Al and Peg have resolved to save their marriage by talking to each other, which neither of them has any practice at and which goes about as well as expected. Marcy arrives with more information about Jefferson’s bedroom difficulties than anybody asked for, including the phrase he uses to encourage himself. And Bud has secured a date with the most beautiful girl in his college, who agreed to go out with him because she has the measles. It is a better episode than its premise suggests and one of the few times the series let Kelly Bundy be the smartest person in the scene.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: September 20, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 2
• Overall episode number: 133
• Written by: Ron Leavitt and Ellen L. Fogle
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: August 28, 1992
• Production note: Christina Applegate has said this is her favourite episode of the series.
• Title note: Taken from Kelly’s attempt to spell the word she keeps being called, with a likely nod to the “V-A-M-P” sketch Cher used to perform on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.

Guest Cast

• Corey Feldman as Ralph
• Liz Vassey as Lorraine
• Lisa Rieffel as the DJ (credited as Dusty Street)

Tramp? But I Got Out

The car scene is the best thing in the episode and the reason Applegate picked it. Ralph’s entire approach is built on the assumption that Kelly is too stupid to notice what is happening, and the script gives her the sharpest line in the exchange, a direct mirror of his own complaint about not wanting to talk. Her exit, a punch followed by an entirely deadpan enquiry about whether it was good for him, is the moment the character stops being only a punchline.

What makes the episode more than a good scene is what follows. The road is populated with other girls in exactly the same position, and the show is clear-eyed about the mechanism: the word gets applied by the person who was turned down, to the person who did the turning down, and it sticks regardless. For a series with this reputation, it is a surprisingly direct piece of writing.

Liz Vassey, playing Lorraine, went on to a long television career including CSI. Corey Feldman was at the tail end of his run as one of the most recognizable teenagers in American film, and he plays Ralph with no attempt at making him likeable, which is the right call.

The marriage subplot has the two of them discovering that they have nothing to say to each other and then finding, eventually, that they do. Al’s reaction to being kissed without warning sets the tone, and Peg’s explanation of her motives is the sort of line this show could deliver and almost nothing else on television in 1992 could.

Famous Quotes

• Al, after an unannounced kiss: “Oh my God! Is it our anniversary again?” Peg: “No, Al!” Al: “Well, then what gives you the right to touch me?!” Peg: “‘Cause I’m tired of touching myself!” Al: “Well, who could blame ‘ya?”
• Ralph, on conversation: “If I wanted to talk, I’d be hanging out with the guys, and I wouldn’t have had to shave.” Kelly: “‘Come here’?! If I wanted to listen to one-word sentences, I would have been out with the girls, and… I wouldn’t have had to shave.”
• Kelly, climbing out of the car after hitting him: “It was good for me. Was it good for you?”
• Kelly, alone on the roadside: “Tramp? But I got out.”
• Bud, announcing his triumph: “I called every girl in college, and finally, when I got to the most beautiful girl in school, she’s the one who said: ‘Thank you, Bud. Please, please take me out’… So, where’s a good place to take a girl with the measles?”

Notes

• Bud argues with himself on the staircase and refers to himself as “we,” which season 8’s “Proud to Be Your Bud” later formalizes as his alternate personality, Cool Bud.
• Marcy reveals that Jefferson suffers from temporary impotence and encourages himself with “I think I can, I think I can.” Her first husband Steve Rhoades had made the same claim back in season 2’s “Impo-Dent,” and the phrase itself had already powered the plot of season 3’s “He Thought He Could.”
• Al tells Bud that F Troop is on. Larry Storch, one of that show’s stars, later appeared on this series as himself in season 9’s “Something Larry This Way Comes.”
• Peg sings Mary Wells’s “My Guy,” and Kelly attempts “99 Bottles of Beer” and loses count.
• A goof: the studio lights are clearly visible on the hood of Ralph’s car in the overhead shot, and a crew shadow crosses the couch during the Bundy and Darcy conversation.