Season 9 Episode 5: Business Sucks (1)

A woman comes into Gary’s Shoes and begins nursing her baby, and Al and Griff throw her out, which is the inciting incident for a two-part story about public breastfeeding that the series handles exactly as you would expect. Marcy arrives the following day with the woman in tow to demand an explanation, delivering a speech about natural biological functions that Al answers with a comparison that is crude, fast, and the funniest line in the episode. From there it escalates into a protest outside the store, Marcy’s group singing “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and NO MA’AM mobilizing a counter-protest, all of it covered by a television news reporter named Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal, who makes her debut here and would go on to cover Al’s activities nine times across the show’s final seasons. Meanwhile Peg is trying to get home from Wanker County on a railway called Amtrain, whose motto is borrowed from The Little Engine That Could and whose service is interrupted by repeated derailments, which is how the show keeps Katey Sagal to a handful of brief scenes. Kelly has new work as the wink-wink girl in a commercial. It is one of the more pointed stories the series attempted in its later years, and like most of its topical episodes it is considerably less interested in the issue than in what the issue lets Al say about himself. Peg’s railway ordeal is a transparent device for keeping Katey Sagal off set, and the show commits to it so thoroughly that it becomes funny on its own.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: October 2, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 5
• Overall episode number: 188
• Written by: Richard Gurman
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: September 23, 1994
• Production note: Part one of two. The debut of news reporter Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal, who returns in nine episodes across the last three seasons.
• Production note: Katey Sagal appears only briefly. Peg’s absence is covered by a railway journey beset by derailments.
• Title note: A double meaning on a business doing badly and on what a nursing baby does.

Guest Cast

• Teresa Parente as Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal
• Jack Riley as Wendell
• Jean Speegle Howard as Sylvia
• Terri J. Vaughn as Connie
• Cynthia Steele as Rebecca
• Gretchen Palmer as Lucille
• Annie O’Donnell as Eartha

We Shall Not Be Moved

The scene that makes the episode has nothing to do with the protest. Having ejected the customer, Al and Griff sit down and agree at length about how disgusting the whole business was, then each reach under their chair for a magazine, settle into the centrefolds, glance at each other’s publication and swap. It is a complete argument about hypocrisy delivered without a word of commentary, and it is the best thing Harold Sylvester got to do in his first weeks on the show.

The size-measuring contest that opens the episode is the other standout, mostly for how fast it collapses. Al’s claim that men do not lie about size is undercut by Griff’s reaction, then by Al’s own hesitation, then by both men immediately agreeing to settle it, and finally by a customer walking in on the arrangements. Her one line ends the scene.

Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal is one of the better recurring inventions of the late seasons, and the joke is simply that her name is longer than the story she is reporting. Teresa Parente plays her completely straight throughout.

Jean Speegle Howard, Ron Howard’s mother, makes her second appearance of the year, having been the old lady in the supermarket queue in season 8’s “Assault and Batteries.”

Jack Riley, here as Wendell, was Mr. Carlin on The Bob Newhart Show and later the voice of Stu Pickles on Rugrats.

Famous Quotes

• Al, after a difficult fitting: “Size 5. Why can’t women ever admit to being anything over a size 5? It’s the great thing about men. We don’t lie about size. Of course, I don’t have to.” Griff: “Neither do I.” Al, after a pause: “Well… neither do I.”
• Griff: “Contest?” Al: “Let’s rock!” Then, as a customer walks in: “May I show you something?” Connie: “It better be shoes!”
• Griff, after the ejection: “So much for milk doing a body good.”
• Al: “What is happening to this country, when a woman of the opposite sex can just waddle into your place of business, your holy sanctuary and bare her breasts? That’s disgusting!” Griff: “It’s repulsive!” Both men then produce magazines.
• Marcy: “Breastfeeding is a natural biological function!” Al: “So is peeing, but you don’t see me doing that in public!”

Notes

• Marcy’s group sings “We Shall Not Be Moved.” NO MA’AM’s counter-protest is scored to “Maniac.”
• The railway Peg is travelling on is called Amtrain and its motto is lifted from The Little Engine That Could.
• A goof the episode never recovers from: the customer walks in with a real, visibly moving baby, turns away, and turns back holding an extremely obvious doll, which stays a doll for the rest of the episode.
• Another: Katey Sagal can be seen deliberately lowering her own face into the pie just before the lights go out on the second derailment.