Season 7 Episode 16: Mr. Empty Pants

February 14, 1993

Published 02/14/93

Peg draws a cartoon. The subject is her husband, the title is Mr. Empty Pants, and against every expectation it gets published and becomes a hit, which means that Al Bundy is now a nationally recognized figure for the one thing about himself he would least like publicized. People point at him in the street. Strangers use the name. Tour groups photograph him. Al’s attempts to establish what the phrase is even supposed to mean produce one of the better Al-and-Peg exchanges of the season, built on his theory that it might be modern slang working in reverse. Then the situation inverts. Al is approached to appear as a Playgirl centerfold, and the prospect of her husband being wanted by a national readership is more than Peg is prepared to tolerate, so the woman who built her career on humiliating him in print spends the second half of the episode trying to stop anybody else looking at him. Jefferson’s contribution is a trip to a salon for a treatment he describes as The Bogie, and a conversation with Al about the Bulls in which the two men turn out to be discussing entirely different subjects. The show scores Al’s preparation for the photo shoot to “Tuff Enuff,” the same cue it used when he took the bartending job, which is probably not an accident. It is one of the few episodes where Peg is unambiguously the one driving the plot, and the series gives her a win and then makes her uncomfortable with it, which is more than it usually bothered to do.

Episode Facts

Original air date: February 14, 1993
Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 16
Overall episode number: 147
Written by: George Tricker
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Production note: From this episode the enlarged credit treatment introduced two weeks earlier extends to the producer credits in the opening sequence.
Title note: Named for the cartoon Peggy creates.