Season 8 Episode 15: Honey, I Blew Up Myself

It is Al’s birthday, and Peg’s present is a boudoir photograph of herself. Al’s reaction to it is the sequence the episode is remembered for: asked what he really thinks, he consults an internal readout the show calls the Wife-O-Meter, which displays his available answers alongside the physical consequences of each. Old carries a groin pull and possible head trauma. Good after ten beers carries definite head trauma. Beautiful fails on the grounds that he could not keep a straight face. The one that clears is Nice, logged as a meaningless compliment accepted and a meaningless marriage continuing. The photograph then gets blown up to billboard scale and installed next to the shoe store, which means Al spends his days watching other men look at his wife, and discovers he minds. His solution, eventually, is to go to Marcy’s women’s group for advice, which is not a sentence that applies to any other episode. Meanwhile Bud and Kelly are shopping for a present and keep buying him things he already owns and actively dislikes, a joke the episode runs past the end of the credits. And Al’s shoe store customer this week is a woman named Enid who insists she takes a size four, which Al eventually resolves with a can of WD-40. It is one of the better birthday episodes the series made and the one that produced its most famous visual gag. The Wife-O-Meter has outlived the episode around it, and deservedly so, because it manages to be a cartoon device and an accurate description of a twenty-year marriage at the same time. The billboard plot, meanwhile, gives Katey Sagal a rare chance to be the one holding all the cards.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: January 23, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 15
• Overall episode number: 172
• Written by: Wayne Kline
• Directed by: Sam W. Orender
• Production note: This is one of the very few post-season-3 episodes whose original closing credits survive intact on DVD, complete with the real “Love and Marriage” and a full extra scene.
• Title note: A play on Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, and on the photo being blown up to billboard size.

Guest Cast

• Hill Harper as Aaron Mitchell
• Winifred Freedman as Enid
• Tom Silardi as Dabbs
• Michael Lowry as Sloan
• Michael Anthony Vaccaro as Patrick

The Wife-O-Meter

The Wife-O-Meter is one of the best single gags of the eighth season, partly because it is shot from Al’s point of view as a piece of on-screen machinery with options and consequences, and partly because the winning answer is so bleak. The device concedes that the marriage is meaningless and recommends continuing it, and Al takes the advice without hesitation.

The billboard plot gives the episode its actual subject, which is jealousy, and the show is unusually honest about it. Al has spent eight seasons being uninterested in his wife, and the moment several hundred strangers a day become interested, it bothers him enough that he goes looking for help from the one group of people guaranteed to enjoy his discomfort.

Al’s exchange with Enid at the shoe store is one of the series’ better customer scenes and the WD-40 is a nice escalation. His offer to help her evaluate the colour of the shoe by strangling her until she reaches a satisfactory shade is the kind of line the show could only give to Al.

The closing credits carry an extra scene in which Bud and Kelly arrive with one more present and Al correctly guesses, before opening it, that they have bought him the same trousers he is already wearing. They have.

Famous Quotes

• Enid, after a prolonged struggle: “See? I told you I was a four.” Al: “No, ma’am. ‘Fore.’ is what you’ll have to yell when the shoe pops off your foot.”
• Al, on the colour: “We’ll stand you in front of the mirror. I’ll begin strangling you. When you reach the shade of blue that is satisfactory to you, you yell, ‘Moo,’ and I’ll stop.”
• Aaron, on the gift certificate Jefferson has brought: “But I don’t understand: both of you guys are married. Can’t you just look at your wives topless?” Al and Jefferson, pointing at each other: “Have you seen his wife?!”
• Al, explaining: “When you’ve been married as long as I have, you do not want to see your wife topless. Speechless, maybe. Headless, naturally. But never ever topless.”
• Kelly, on why candles are banned this year: “Hey, I just thought that Roman candles meant that they were imported. You know, from Romany.”

Notes

• Al reveals that he dislikes being sung to on his birthday. If the episode is set in November 1993, he is turning forty-five.
• Kelly reveals that her driver’s licence photograph is a boudoir shot, and that it has kept her from being ticketed.
• Aaron rents Al a copy of Hot Dog… The Movie, which features Shannon Tweed, a later MWC guest star.
• Goofs: Al’s tie shifts position repeatedly after Jefferson hands over the car wash certificate, and a camera flash is briefly visible during one of Buck’s lines.