Season 5 Episode 2: Al … with Kelly

September 30, 1990

Published 09/30/90

A trip to Peg’s mother is scheduled, and Al and Kelly independently arrive at the same solution, which is to be too unwell to travel. It works. Peg and Bud leave, and father and daughter have the house to themselves for a week, an arrangement Al sets out ground rules for immediately and which involves the two of them barely interacting.

Then Kelly genuinely falls ill, and the episode becomes something the show rarely attempted: Al looking after one of his children. He is bad at it and she exploits it relentlessly, chiefly with a small bell that Peg bought as an April Fool’s joke, which she had rung to make Al think dinner was ready. Kelly rings it. Al’s face when he explains that he had been starving is the best thing in the episode and Kelly cannot keep a straight face through it.

Two pieces of series furniture arrive here. Psycho Dad, Al’s favourite television programme, is mentioned for the first time, and this is the first episode in which he specifies four touchdowns in a single game. Before this he had talked about the big game and the winning touchdown without ever putting a number on it. From here the four touchdowns became the single most repeated fact about him.

Pamela Anderson plays one of two women in Al’s fantasy, early in her career and some time before Baywatch. It is also one of the few episodes that gives Al and Kelly a two-hander. The show usually paired her with Bud or with Peg, and putting her alone with her father for a week produces something closer to affection than either of them would admit to. She tortures him with a bell and he takes it, which from Al is practically a declaration.