Season 11 Episode 15: Breaking Up is Easy to Do (2)
February 24, 1997
Al has moved out, and the apartment he finds is next to the airport. The episode’s first job is to establish how each of them is coping, and neither is coping. Peggy sits on the couch in tears watching the home shopping channel, which pauses its programming to send her a personal hello and then tries to sell her a Martin Lawrence cuckoo clock, a gag the episode escalates past the point of reason. Al, meanwhile, sorts out custody of the televisions while holding a detached toilet seat.
The singles bar is where the two halves collide. Peggy goes out and draws the attention of Bruce, a wealthy man whose opening line is that he never expected to meet somebody as beautiful as himself and who accounts for his ego by reference to his wallet and his car. Al, watching from a table, attempts the same manoeuvre Peggy used and unbuttons his shirt. The young woman who notices concludes he is having a heart attack, begins chest compressions on a man who is breathing normally, and then comments on the state of his undergarments.
Alan Thicke plays Bruce, his second role on the series after appearing in season ten’s “Enemies” as Henry, the rich man who ended up dating Kelly and watching Friends through binoculars with Al. Ed O’Neill is noticeably hoarse throughout this episode, as he had been in season seven’s “‘Tis Time to Smell the Roses” when the script acknowledged a cold; here nothing is said about it. Marcy marks Al’s departure with a song of her own composition.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: Monday, February 24, 1997 on FOX
- Season 11, Episode 15, part two of three
- Overall episode 253 of the series
- Taped January 24, 1997; production code 11.17
- Written by Russell Marcus
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
- The title plays on Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
- Broadcast as the second half of an hour-long block with part one; no epilogue
Guest Cast
- Alan Thicke as Bruce
- Lisa Melilli as Sandy
- Rosa Blasi as Woman #1
- Mandy Levin as Woman #2
- Irene Roseen as Woman #3
- Christopher Shobe as the Guy in Bar
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