Season 1 Episode 8: The Poker Game

May 24, 1987

Published 05/24/87

Al invites Steve to a poker game with his friends and Steve loses his entire paycheck across the table, which leaves him to explain the situation to Marcy. Al’s position is that the game was fair and the money is his. Marcy wants it back, Peggy joins the campaign, and the episode becomes a two-day standoff over whether a debt honestly won from a neighbour is a debt that ought to be collected.

The episode is a landmark for an unusual reason: it is the only one in the entire run without Bud, and the first without Kelly. Neither David Faustino nor Christina Applegate appears, which leaves the half-hour entirely to the four adults and Al’s friends, and it works, which is an early sign of how much weight the two couples could carry on their own. The timeline is unusually precise for this series, too: Al confirms the first half is a Friday, and the second half is clearly the Saturday, with Steve turning up at the shoe store to report on how his evening went after the game.

It is also the episode that introduces Al’s friends. E.J., Russ and Barney appear here for the first time; E.J. never returns, Russ comes back once more in season three’s “Requiem for a Dead Barber,” and Barney is the only one of the three who survives into the NO MA’AM era. Garrett Morris, who plays Russ, had worked with David Garrison on It’s Your Move, the sitcom created by this show’s own creators. Will Utay, the man Al and Steve give money to, returns in season ten as Dean Marquand.