Season 10 Episode 21: Al Goes to the Dogs

Lucky has been getting Al out of bed at three in the morning for several days running, the children have twice failed to take over the duty, and Al’s solution is to move the dog outdoors, which, since it is the middle of a Chicago winter, requires building a doghouse. Bud objects on humanitarian grounds and Al’s rebuttal is the best line in the episode: inhumane would be making the dog work at a shoe store for minimum wage and then come home to a redheaded Shih Tzu. The children offer to help as a family project, Al compares the prospect to the family on Party of Five, and Kelly’s correction about how those parents died is the only thing that cheers him up.

Marcy’s contribution is to summon a building inspector to ensure the doghouse meets code, which turns a weekend carpentry job into a bureaucratic siege. Al retaliates by walking the fence line with a running chainsaw outside her window while she is trying to work, enquiring loudly about her bank report, and gets hit in the backside with a length of timber for it, because Marcy and the inspector have come into the yard behind him.

Kelly’s half of the episode has her trying to hold on to Carlos by remaking herself into what she imagines he wants, spending seven hundred dollars on the look of the women of his village. His response, that he spent ten times that much to get away from the women of his village, ends the relationship, and he credits Al for the clarity. It is the second and final appearance of Mark Espinoza as Carlos, and the first episode made after Katey Sagal’s second child was born, with Peggy absent on maternity leave.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, March 24, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 21
• Overall episode 233 of the series
• Taped March 1, 1996; production code 10.22
• Written by Laurie Lee-Goss and Garry Bowren
• Directed by Sam W. Orender
• The title plays on the phrase “going to the dogs”
• Katey Sagal does not appear; she was on maternity leave following the birth of her second child

Guest Cast

• Mark D. Espinoza as Carlos
• Ian Patrick Williams as Inspector Fitzpatrick
• Angela Strader as Turquoise
• Don Dowe as the Foreman

Al Goes to the Dogs

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