Season 8 Episode 23: The Legend of Ironhead Haynes

Al has reached the end of his tolerance, and his response is to go looking for the last real man he knows of. That man is Ironhead Haynes, who according to Officer Dan lives alone on the tallest mountain in Illinois, and who is played by Waylon Jennings. So Al climbs it, with the NO MA’AM membership waiting at the bottom for the plan of action he is going to bring back down. What he gets instead is the best scene of the episode and one of the more unexpectedly thoughtful things the series ever did. Ironhead listens to the question, reaches behind him for an acoustic guitar, offers to put the answer in a song, and delivers the song in one word. Al’s reaction, and Ironhead’s follow-up about men like them being dinosaurs, is the closest the show came to admitting out loud what it had been arguing for eight seasons. The advice he eventually gives, about what a tyrannosaurus does and why it matters, is genuinely good advice, and Al writes it down. The episode is also a quiet milestone: it is the last appearance of Hill Harper’s Aaron Mitchell, the last of Steve Susskind’s Barney, Al’s friend since season 1, and the last of Roger from NO MA’AM. It is one of the strangest and most sincere episodes of the late run, and the only one in which somebody tells Al the truth about his situation and then tries to make him feel better about it. Waylon Jennings only appears in the one scene, and it is the scene the whole episode exists to reach.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 1, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 23
• Overall episode number: 180
• Written by: Katherine Green
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: March 4, 1994
• Production note: The final appearance of Hill Harper as Aaron Mitchell, who like Seven simply stopped appearing without explanation.
• Production note: Also the last appearance of Steve Susskind as Barney, a character going back to season 1, and of Chris Latta’s Roger from NO MA’AM. Latta died about a month after this aired.
• Title note: A play on Johnny Cash’s “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

Guest Cast

• Waylon Jennings as Ironhead Haynes
• Hill Harper as Aaron Mitchell
• Steve Susskind as Barney
• Chris Latta as Roger (credited as Christopher Collins)
• Paul Eisenhauer as Alderman Johnson
• Shiela Grenham as Woman #2

Leave Deep Prints

Waylon Jennings is perfectly cast and the scene is written with real affection for him. The guitar bit is a great joke, because the setup promises a song and the song is a single word, and Al’s disbelief is the correct reaction. But the scene does not stop there, and what follows is unusual for this show: Ironhead tells Al plainly that men like them are finished, that the only problem with being a dinosaur is that there is no future in it, and that there is nevertheless one hell of a past.

The advice itself, that Al should behave like a tyrannosaurus and leave deep footprints so people know he was there, is the most genuinely encouraging thing anybody says to Al Bundy in eleven seasons, and he writes it down.

The NO MA’AM material is good value, particularly Jefferson reading the minutes of the previous meeting, which record a debate topic and then a correction to the name in it. Officer Dan, who arrested the entire group when NO MA’AM was introduced, has somehow become a member.

The mountain does not exist. Illinois is a prairie state and its highest natural point, Charles Mound, is a rolling farmland hill about 1,235 feet high, which is shorter than the Sears Tower. The episode puts a snowy peak there anyway.

On the original broadcast the credits revealed that Al keeps a private refrigerator in the garage, hidden behind the red tool chest. Later prints freeze the moment he opens it.

Famous Quotes

• Peg, on Al’s complaint about a customer review: “Honey, I complain about your performance all the time, and you don’t care. Sometimes you don’t even wake up.” Al: “Peg, unlike having sex with you, this is important to me.”
• Al, at the summit: “But tell us, what can we do to fight back?” Ironhead, reaching for his guitar: “Maybe this song will say it the best.” Then, on the final chord: “….Nothing!”
• Al: “That’s it? That’s the message?!” Ironhead: “That’s it. You know, men like us are dinosaurs… real, live, dead dinosaurs.”
• Ironhead: “The only problem with being a dinosaur is there ain’t no future in it. But there is one hell of a past. Now what you need to do is act like the mighty tyrannosaurus and leave deep footprints.”
• Al, writing it down: “Leave… deep… prints.” Ironhead: “That’s it. Let them know that you’ve been there.”

Notes

• Bud throws a paper aeroplane into the NO MA’AM meeting claiming it is Miss January. The image used is actually Neriah Davis, Playmate for March 1994, retouched to add a bikini. Davis later appeared on the show in season 10’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
• Steve Susskind is credited as Stan in this episode despite wearing Barney’s outfit from “NO MA’AM.”
• A goof: Peg lures Al out of the garage by asking him to move the clothes dryer, and Al shouts back that they do not have one. The Bundys have both a washer and a dryer, visible at the back of the kitchen in this very episode.