Season 10 Episode 17: The Agony and the Extra C

February 11, 1996

Published 02/11/96

The episode opens in a hospital room with Jefferson in a bed and Bud and Kelly asking how he got there, which means the half-hour is told as a flashback, an unusual structure for this series, and one that lets the story build toward a single visual punchline. It begins on the D’Arcys’ wedding anniversary, with NO MA’AM convened in the Bundy kitchen on what Al describes as the day a married man most needs his friends. Officer Dan is posted at the window conducting surveillance on Marcy, referred to throughout as Codename: KFC.

The rescue mission relocates to the Jiggly Room for Foreign Exchange Night, and it is there that Jefferson realises he has not bought his wife a present. The huddle that follows, NO MA’AM and several dancers gathered around Al, workshopping anniversary gift ideas, is the episode’s best scene, and Ike supplies its mission statement when asked what the group does for a brother in need: try to help him out and in so doing make things worse. Bob Rooney offers lingerie he is already carrying. Al runs through his own anniversary record, which is built around paper bags.

The idea they settle on is a tattoo of Marcy’s name, suggested by a dancer who had done the same for a boyfriend, and the execution is where the title comes in. One extra letter goes on, and the consequences are what put Jefferson in the hospital bed the episode opened in. Katey Sagal appears briefly in a pre-recorded insert, with Peg now in Paris and still nominally looking for her father, and Traci Bingham, then on Baywatch, turns up as the lap dancer.