Season 8 Episode 17: Valentine’s Day Massacre

Kelly has been sitting on a Valentine’s card for six years. It was addressed to Bud, it came from a classmate named Crystal Brooks, and Kelly simply never passed it along. Crystal is now a famous pop singer, which transforms the card from an old embarrassment into the single greatest missed opportunity of Bud’s life, and he sets out to find her and explain. She is staying at a hotel with a bodyguard, and Bud’s attempts to get past him make up the funniest stretch of the episode. He steals a bellhop uniform. He is thrown into an elevator full of people. He is dragged around the building by a dog named Winkie, a sequence the show scores to the William Tell Overture. And on his first approach he is intercepted by a hotel guest named Rita, who mistakes him for a service she has ordered and pulls him into her room, which is the loudest thing that happens to Bud all season. Meanwhile Al is attempting to buy Peg a Valentine’s gift, and the Valentine’s store is the episode’s best invention: a service counter now calling number 2009, a bouquet referred to in-house as the Wallet-Breakers, armed guards to carry it, and a blood donation station on site for customers who cannot pay. It is a strong holiday episode and one of the better showcases for Bud in the eighth season, since almost everything that happens to him is physical and almost all of it is somebody else’s doing. The Valentine’s store, meanwhile, is the sort of satirical set piece the series could build in a single scene and then never use again.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 13, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 17
• Overall episode number: 174
• Written by: Cindy Begel
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: February 4, 1994
• Production note: The card dates to 1988, which places it in season 2. That season’s Valentine episode, “Peggy Loves Al, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” had Bud out with his first valentine, April May June.
• Title note: After the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which happened in Chicago, and the 1967 film about it.

Guest Cast

• Julie Condra as Crystal Brooks (credited as Julie Condra-Douglas)
• Jane Lynch as Greta
• Paddi Edwards as Betty
• Lorna Scott as Rita
• Avner Garby as Omar
• Charles Bouvier as Mac
• Dan Doherty as the bodyguard
• Jeff Bennett as Mayhem
• David Carrera as Pinworm
• Frank Lloyd as a customer (uncredited)
• “Judo” Gene LeBell as an elevator rider (uncredited)

Now Serving Number 2009

Jane Lynch is in this episode, fifteen years before Glee, and she and Ed O’Neill would later work together again as the voices of Sergeant Calhoun and Mr. Litwak in Wreck-It Ralph and its sequel.

The Valentine’s store is the sharpest satire in the episode and it holds up perfectly. The clerk takes a drag on her cigarette between customers, calls the roses by their internal nickname, requires armed escort for the bouquet, and asks whether Al intends to pay by cash, cheque or the deed to his house. When he asks whether they take blood, she points out the man already on the gurney with two bags beside him and a nurse handing him orange juice.

Bud’s progress through the hotel is one of the best physical comedy runs the character ever got, and the Rossini cue over the dog sequence is exactly the right choice. The Rita encounter is played almost entirely off-screen, which makes it funnier and also the only way the scene could have been shot.

Julie Condra had appeared on the show before, back in season 3’s “My Mom, the Mom,” as Kelly’s classmate Becky. “My Funny Valentine,” which scores the brawl over the last card in the shop, had been sung by Marcy in the season 2 Valentine episode.

Two familiar uncredited faces turn up: Frank Lloyd as the customer thrown over a display during the fight, and Judo Gene LeBell among the people Bud lands on in the elevator.

Famous Quotes

• Rita, opening her hotel room door: “Oh good, they sent a cute one this time.” Bud, a moment later: “Oh, for the love of God, no! Noooo!” And from inside: “MOM-MMMYY!”
• Betty, at the Valentine’s counter: “Now serving number 2009.” Al: “I’d like one dozen red roses.” Betty, calling through the hatch: “One bouquet of ‘Wallet-Breakers’!”
• Betty: “Okay, sir, now how do you intend to pay? Cash, check, or deed to your house?” Al: “Do you take blood?”
• Al, after Peg storms upstairs: “Don’t tell me what’s romantic! I know what’s romantic!” Then, turning to his daughter: “Kelly, what’s romantic?”

Notes

• Marcy blames the commercialization of the holiday on Merlin Olsen and the Hershey candy mob. Olsen, then the spokesman for a flower delivery company, had also been name-checked in season 6’s “Just Shoe It.”
• Stefanie Ridel is not in this one, but another future pop star connection is: Fergie turns up a few episodes later in “Nooner or Later.”
• A goof: the Valentine’s card Kelly withheld has nothing written on either side of the envelope, yet Peg identifies it as Bud’s without opening it.
• Another: Bud is beaten up, soaked and dishevelled for most of the episode and arrives for his actual meeting with Crystal in clean clothes and perfect condition.