Season 10 Episode 19: Spring Break (2)

The conclusion splits into a road movie and a fixed contest. Marcy’s Mercedes breaks down in Tennessee after an encounter with a possum, which strands her and Bud’s friends at a gas station run by Parley Wayne Rockefeller, a mechanic with no tow truck and a few opinions about being called ZZ Top. The detour is the funniest material in the two-parter, mostly because Mickey Jones plays Parley Wayne as entirely unbothered by the fury of a woman in a German luxury sedan, and because Marcy has no leverage whatsoever and keeps trying to use some anyway.

In Fort Lauderdale the premise has escalated. Al learns the bikini contest Jefferson is judging carries a hundred-thousand-dollar prize, enters Kelly, and gets himself and Griff appointed to the panel so the result can be arranged. It is a plan with one weak link, and the show identifies it immediately: Griff can be bought for considerably less than a hundred thousand dollars. Miss Beverly Hills gets to him with an offer of marriage delivered at close range, Griff announces his vote and dares Al to stop him, and the next shot is Griff unconscious on the sand with Al kneeling over him holding a broken tennis racket and shouting that he did not want to do it.

Marcy and the boys arrive in time to sabotage the stage during the competition, scored to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and the two-parter resolves with nobody getting the money and everybody getting back to Chicago worse off. It is the last appearance of Kelly’s friends Ashley, Fawn and Mindy, and the last episode until the season finale to feature Katey Sagal at all.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, February 25, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 19, part two of two
• Overall episode 231 of the series
• Production code 10.20
• Written by Calvin Brown, Jr.
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• From this episode on, Katey Sagal is absent until the season finale, “The Joke’s on Al“
• Final appearances of Heidi Mark, Lisa Boyle and Lisa Picotte as Ashley, Fawn and Mindy

Guest Cast

• Mickey Jones as Parley Wayne Rockefeller
• Chris Hardwick as Dan Inwood
• Shawn Michael Howard as Barney
• Dave Ruby as Hummer
• S. Kyle Parker as Achmed
• Renee Tenison as Marla Strong, Miss Detroit
• Meadow Williams as Angela Cohen, Miss Beverly Hills
• Marie Caldare as Claudia Harrison, Miss New York
• Tonya Watts as Scarlett Turner, Miss Atlanta
• Todd Glass as the Policeman
• Denise Hulsey as the Waitress

Spring Break (2)

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