Season 4 Episode 3: Buck Saves the Day
September 24, 1989
Bud needs concert money and his solution is to rent out his father. Al is advertised to the neighbourhood as a professional woodsman, Al “Danno” Bundy, and sent into the woods with a party of local children, plus Steve and Bud, for a camping trip that none of them enjoy. The qualifications are entirely invented and the trip goes exactly as badly as that implies.
The episode is one of the better uses of Al as a reluctant authority figure. He is not malicious with the children and not especially bad with them; he simply knows nothing about camping and is committed to the fiction, which means every problem has to be solved by bluff. His campfire ghost story is the centrepiece, and the syndicated prints cut its ending, the lines about some of them still being out there, along with several other beats.
Back at the house, Peggy hosts a poker game with Marcy, Kelly and friends, which pairs neatly with season one’s “The Poker Game” and gives the women the same material the men had three years earlier. Kelly is caught cheating, with cards hidden behind her neck in a shot the syndicated version also trims, and implies she has played strip poker before. Marcy, meanwhile, delivers the fullest account the series ever gave of why she hates her mother, which is a specific and unpleasant list.
Michael Faustino, David’s younger brother, appears again as one of the campers, his third role on the series. The end credits run over a still of Al and the children sitting in the dark at the campsite rather than the usual couch frame. One of the children notes that Steve hands out potatoes at Halloween.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: September 24, 1989
- Season 4, Episode 3, and the 60th episode of the series
- Written by Marcy Vosburgh and Sandy Sprung
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
Guest Cast
- Michael Faustino as Joey
- Charlotte Crossley as Louise
- Lana Schwab as Fern
- Aeryk Egan as Victor
Peg’s Poker Night
Bud needs concert money, so he hires his father out as a professional camping guide to the neighborhood kids. Al and Steve take the boys into the woods, the trip collapses, and the two of them end up genuinely lost. Buck is the one who finds them.
The better half of the episode is back at the house, where Peg hosts a poker night and the game turns into an airing of grievances. Marcy explains where her hatred of her mother comes from, in a monologue that is funnier and bleaker than anything in the forest. It is a deliberate mirror of The Poker Game from season 1, with the genders swapped and the stakes turned emotional.
Michael Faustino, David Faustino’s brother, plays Joey, one of the kids on the trip. The end credits run over a still of Al and the campers sitting in the dark rather than the usual couch shot.
Famous Quotes
- Bud: “Come on, Kel, just do like I do: use your wits.” / Kelly: “I do!” / Bud: “I said ‘wits’… with a ‘w’.” / Kelly: “Mommy, he’s spelling at me again!”
- Al: “I’d rather slam my nose in a car door. I’d rather have a proctologist named Dr. Hook. I would rather watch Roseanne Barr do a striptease than take these little booger machines camping.”
- Peg: “Well, good, honey. Then we can spend the whole day together snuggling.” / Al: “Well, campers! Let’s go get us some gear! Chip in for gas and get me the hell outta here!”
- Bud: “Have a good time, Dad.” / Al: “Not so fast, Dan’l Junior. If I’m a-going, you’re a-going. The only difference is… I’m a-coming back.”
- Al: “Once upon a time there was a young boy. A boy full of hope. He was single, thus he was happy. Then one night, much like tonight, something rose from the swamp.” / Victor: “And did he marry it, Dan’l?” / Al: “Yes, I’m afraid he did.”
Notes
- Al’s line about Roseanne Barr doing a striptease is a nod to the fact that she was originally offered the part of Peggy.
- Steve’s delirium in the woods includes “Thus dies the house of Agamemnon” and “Tie him to the yardarm, Mr. Christian,” plus renditions of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and “Greensleeves.” The Lassie theme plays as Buck runs through the forest.
- One of the kids notes that Steve hands out potatoes instead of candy on Halloween.
- Goof: Al says he has two days off, though other episodes establish Sunday as his only day off, and this episode is set on a Sunday.
- Goof: the van is unexplained, since neither Al nor Steve owns one, and Buck turns up at the campsite with no explanation at all.
- Goof: poison oak does not grow in Illinois, and the leaf shown is not poison oak.
- Several scenes are cut from the syndicated version and the DVD release.
