Season 8 Episode 25: Al Goes Deep

Jefferson has spent Marcy’s tax refund on clothes and needs the money back before she notices, so he comes to Al, and Al’s solution is to bet it on a college football game. The plan depends on the form of a star player named Chad Dowling, and the plan immediately develops a problem: Chad starts dating Kelly, which ends his training regime. Al’s attempts to manage the situation take him into territory the show rarely allowed him, because Chad is everything Al used to be and treats Al with the deference that implies, and Al openly enjoys it. Kelly is then enlisted to help with Chad’s conditioning, which results in his injury, and the game arrives with Al’s money on the line and the player unavailable, which leaves exactly one option. The other half of the episode belongs to Peg, who has decided to make her own bonbons rather than buy a machine, and who conducts a blind taste test on her husband. The second sample is the size of a melon and takes him an hour to chew, as the show indicates with a clock overlay. Its distinguishing ingredient is an entire jar of Tang. Marcy’s reaction to her own sugar intake, which has her chopping wood in the backyard, is the episode’s best running gag. It is a well-balanced episode with three plots that all land, and the football material gives Al one of his better late-period moments of self-awareness. Peg’s bonbons, meanwhile, are the sort of running gag the show could get four separate laughs out of without ever leaving the kitchen table.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 15, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 25
• Overall episode number: 182
• Written by: Gerry Bowren and Laurie Lee-Goss
• Directed by: Amanda Bearse
• Production note: Al’s own tax refund is given as $17.34.
• Title note: From the football call to go deep.

Guest Cast

• Curnal Achilles Aulisio as Chad Dowling (credited as Curnal Aulisio)
• Ron Pitts as the TV sports announcer
• Edward Blanchard as “Stab Wound”
• Marcia del Mar as Maria

The Son Al Wanted

Chad Dowling is explicitly positioned as the son Al would have chosen, and the episode gets a lot of mileage out of Bud noticing. Bud’s conversation with his father about why life is unfair is the heart of the episode: he has the grades, he has, by his own assessment, the looks, and an athlete with no discernible intelligence is getting everything. Al’s answer, that he was once that athlete, is as close to sympathy as he manages, and Buck’s contribution from the staircase undercuts it entirely.

Al’s account of why he never played college football adds another version to the pile. Here it is because Peggy used to shout at him during games and once did so at the exact moment a three hundred pound linebacker arrived. The series gave at least three different explanations across its run and never reconciled them.

The bonbon material is Katey Sagal at her best. The blind taste test is a trap, the second sample is physically unmanageable, and Al’s eventual verdict after an hour of chewing identifies the one ingredient he can taste. Peg’s confirmation of the quantity is delivered with total pride.

Jefferson’s plea for help opens with him admitting he has done something terrible, and Al’s reply references the wedding from season 5’s “Married… with Who?”, which Al was in charge of organizing.

Famous Quotes

• Peg, suggesting a use for the refund: “I saw this nice bonbon maker on the Home Shopping Network. It would make my life a lot easier.” Al: “Peg, if your life was any easier, you’d be in an urn in the garage.”
• Al, after an hour of chewing: “Well, it’s… got a lot of Tang.” Peg: “Well, it should. I used a whole jar of it!”
• Al, on her culinary future: “Don’t quit your day couch, Peg.”
• Bud: “Dad, I gotta ask you a question.” Al: “Because we get horny and don’t have the sense to say ‘no’.” Bud: “Not that question, Dad.” Al: “Well, that’s the only one I have an answer to, Son.”
• Buck, in voiceover, while Bud laments his romantic prospects: “The secret of attracting the opposite sex is in the mutual sniffing of butt.”

Notes

• It is revealed that Jefferson has his own housemaid.
• The Gone with the Wind theme plays every time Kelly and Chad meet.
• Al claims Jefferson has not worked in three years, which ignores the bartending job he held in season 7.
• A timing problem the episode ignores: it is set in May, and the college football season runs from September to January.
• A goof: the front door is left wide open when Marcy speeds past Al on her sugar rush, and is fully shut two shots later without anyone touching it.

Watching It

Amazon’s Prime Video catalog for season 8 does not carry an entry for this episode, so there is no direct link to offer here. It is included on the complete series DVD and Blu-ray releases and appears in syndication packages. If Prime adds it to the season 8 listing, a link will go up here.