Season 9 Episode 17: 25 Years and What Do You Get?

Al and Peg’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and the episode runs the same play as season 1’s “Sixteen Years and What Do You Get?”: both of them genuinely try to get the other a decent present, and neither manages it. Al has bought Peg a diamond necklace, which he hides in the couch cushions, where Buck finds it while looking for a bone and buries it in the backyard. The rest of the episode is Al, Bud and Kelly excavating the garden. Peg, meanwhile, has been given a day at a spa by Marcy, and spends every dollar Al gave her on treatments with names that are the funniest writing in the episode. By the time both of them get home, each has nothing to give, and the solution they independently arrive at is to pretend they both forgot what day it is. The best scene is not about the gift. It is Al explaining the aging process to his daughter, which he structures as a two-act tragedy: a young man who scored four touchdowns in a single game, and then the arrival of what he calls the Wife Age. Buck’s interjection is the punchline, and Al’s eventual collapse while doing the arithmetic on twenty-five years is one of Ed O’Neill’s better breakdowns.

The gift that never arrives is the structural joke, and Buck is the reason: the necklace Al hid in the couch ends up buried in the back yard, which commits Al, Bud and Kelly to an afternoon of digging. Marcy’s present for Peg is a full day at a spa, which clears the house and lets Al and Jefferson sneak back in, a sequence that gives the series its first look at the side door off the laundry area. The episode runs the same play as season one’s “Sixteen Years and What Do You Get?” and arrives at the same place.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 12, 1995
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 17
• Overall episode number: 201
• Written by: Donald Beck
• Directed by: Sam W. Orender
• Taped: January 27, 1995
• Production note: Al wears a jacket reading “Farquhar’s Formals,” a nod to Ralph R. Farquhar, a writer and story editor on the series.
• Title note: From the lyric of “Sixteen Tons,” following the same formula as the season 1 episode.

Guest Cast

• Marty Rackham as Dave
• John LeFleur as Sven (credited as John Robert LeFleur)
• David Drummond as Chance

The Wife Age

Al’s lecture on aging is the standout and it is structured like a creation myth. There was a young man capable of four touchdowns in a single game, and then darkness cast her giant red shadow over the land, and the name he gives that period is the joke. Buck’s two-line reaction, observing that this is the man who thinks the dog is getting old, lands it.

The second half of the monologue is better and much sadder. Al explains what he actually wanted from his life, which was to work on car engines and make kissing sounds at passing women, and notes that his wife never shared the dream. The arithmetic that follows breaks him completely, and his protest about not having done anything wrong is the closest the character gets to a genuine complaint.

Al’s threat to his children over the missing necklace is one of the better-constructed pieces of Bundy logic: if he cannot give Peg the necklace, he will have to give her something else, and if it comes to that, he will be giving something to Bud and Kelly.

The spa invoice is the funniest set piece. Peg is talked through three treatments with increasingly elaborate names, the total is three hundred dollars, a fifteen percent discount is applied, fifteen percent gratuity is added, and the figure is rounded back to three hundred dollars. Her question about how the business survives is the right one.

The anniversary maths does not work and never has. Twenty-five years in 1995 means a 1970 wedding, where season 1 implied 1971 and season 6 implied 1972. The series never reconciled it.

Famous Quotes

• Al, beginning his explanation: “Pumpkin, sweetheart, let me explain the aging process to you. I, too, was a young man.” Bud, quietly: “Ah, no.”
• Al: “Young enough to score four touchdowns in a single game. Then darkness cast her giant red shadow over the land. It was… ‘The Wife Age’.” Buck: “And he thinks I’m getting old.”
• Al: “I never wanted children. I wanted to just work on car engines and make kissing sounds when women walked by me. The wife never shared my dream.”
• Al, doing the sums: “Twenty-five years?! How can that be?! I was just in high school! WHY?! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!”
• Al, to his children: “If I don’t get that necklace, then I can’t give it to your mother. If I can’t give it to your mother, then I have to ‘give it’ to your mother. And if I have to give it to your mother… I’m going to give it to you.”
• Peg, presented with the spa bill: “How do you people make any money?”

Notes

• Marcy’s chosen restaurant is Antoine’s Under the El, which tells you roughly where it is.
• This is the first episode to use the side door into the laundry area rather than the sliding glass door.
• A goof: Katey Sagal’s own hair is visible under the Peggy wig during the spa scenes.