Season 8 Episode 10: Dances with Weezie

Peg and Marcy have tickets to a touring stage reunion of The Jeffersons, third row centre, and they expect their husbands to come. Al and Jefferson have no intention of sitting through it, so they arrange substitutes: Bud and Kelly are paid to impersonate them in the seats while the two men slip away to the Bullpen, a newly opened sports bar. The bar is everything Al has ever wanted. There are televisions on every wall showing things no network would broadcast, there is memorabilia, and the man working behind the counter is Joe Namath. Also present are Johnny Bench and Ernie Banks, all three playing themselves, and Officer Dan, who is extremely drunk. The dispute that consumes Al and Jefferson for most of the episode is which former athlete appeared in the first Lite beer commercial, a question they take to Namath directly and which eventually escalates into a brawl involving most of the room. Back at the theatre, Kelly is having a considerably worse evening, because Marcy has mistaken her for Jefferson in the dark and has made a proposal about what the two of them might do during the next scene change. The series had earned this one: the show’s creators and several of its producers had all worked on The Jeffersons a decade earlier. It is one of the better late-period Al and Jefferson episodes, and the sports bar is the rare setting where the show lets Al be happy for a sustained stretch before taking it away. The affection for The Jeffersons is real rather than ironic, which is unusual for this series and entirely explained by who was in the writers’ room.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 14, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 10
• Overall episode number: 167
• Written by: Richard Gurman
• Directed by: Tony Singletary
• Taped: November 5, 1993
• Production note: Series creators Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye, and producers John Maxwell Anderson, Kim Weiskopf, Sandy Sprung and Marcy Vosburgh, had all worked on The Jeffersons in the early 1980s.
• Production note: The Bullpen set was later reused on the WB sitcom Unhappily Ever After, redressed as a Planet Hollywood-style restaurant.
• Title note: Dances with Wolves crossed with Louise “Weezie” Jefferson.

Guest Cast

• Joe Namath as himself
• Johnny Bench as himself
• Ernie Banks as himself
• Jillian Johns as the waitress
• Sherman Hemsley and Marla Gibbs as George Jefferson and Florence Johnston (uncredited, archival audio)
• Frank Lloyd as a bar patron (uncredited)

Dances with Weezie

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