Season 10 Episode 11: Bearly Men

December 3, 1995

Published 12/03/95

Peg’s mother is still living upstairs, and Al wants her gone, which means getting Ephraim Wanker to take her back. Ephraim’s position is that he is not man enough to go through with it, so Al proposes a demonstration of manhood: a bear hunt. He and Bud drive out to the woods to prove they are as formidable as a seventy-year-old hillbilly, which is not a comparison either of them should be eager to invite, and they spend a night by a campfire with Al’s socks hung from a branch as a deterrent.

They come back with a bear. They believe it is dead. It is hibernating, and the drive into Chicago with a sleeping bear in the back is the setup for the second half, in which the animal wakes up inside the Bundy house and then gets loose in the city. The chase that follows is scored to “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and involves a hot dog vendor ending up upside down in his own cart, and the episode’s biggest laugh goes to Marcy and Jefferson, who were parked in the Mercedes at the wrong moment and have very different accounts of the experience.

The campfire scene is the half-hour’s other register entirely. Bud, genuinely frightened, tries to tell his father he loves him, and Al hears the sentiment coming and heads it off with one line about his beer. It is a small exchange and it is doing real work: ten seasons in, the show had established that this family cannot say anything sincere to each other out loud, and it gets more comedy out of Al’s deflection than any amount of bear chasing.

Episode Facts

Original air date: Sunday, December 3, 1995 on FOX
Season 10, Episode 11
Overall episode 223 of the series
Taped November 3, 1995; production code 10.12
Written by Gerry Cohen
Directed by Russell Marcus, a straight swap of the usual roles, with the series’ regular director writing and a regular writer directing
The title plays on “barely men”