Season 9 Episode 18: Ship Happens (1)

February 19, 1995

Published 02/19/95

Peg has entered a magazine contest and won a cruise, which Al refuses to believe is possible right up until Wolfman Jack knocks on the front door. The prize is one first-class ticket, so Peg pays Wolfman Jack fifty dollars to exchange it for two economy ones, and the Bundys and the Darcys go to sea on a ship the lifeboats identify as the Sea Dodge. The cruise has a format nobody explained in advance: it caters to one clientele during the day and a very different one at night, which means Al spends his days avoiding the passengers and his evenings being prevented by his wife from enjoying them. Peg also acquires a disastrous haircut on board. Back in Chicago, Wolfman Jack has stayed behind at the Bundy house with Bud and Kelly, and the three of them produce the episode’s best exchange, built around Bud getting his name deliberately wrong and Kelly spelling the family name incorrectly. This was Wolfman Jack’s last acting role. He died of a heart attack on July 1, 1995, about five months after the episode aired, which gives his scenes here a weight they were not written to carry.

The cruise itself is the gag. The ship caters to one clientele by day and another by night, which gives Al a glimpse of something he wants and Peg a reason to make sure he does not get near it, and her new shipboard hairstyle does the rest of the work. Wolfman Jack appears as himself delivering the prize, and it turned out to be his last acting role; he died of a heart attack that July, about five months after the episode aired.

Episode Facts

Original air date: February 19, 1995
Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 18
Overall episode number: 202
Written by: Michele L. Wolff
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: February 10, 1995
Production note: Wolfman Jack’s final acting role. The legendary radio DJ died of a heart attack on July 1, 1995.
Production note: The lifeboats name the ship as the Sea Dodge.
Title note: A play on a considerably cruder idiom.