Season 10 Episode 23: Bud Hits the Books

April 28, 1996

Published 04/28/96

Bud is days from graduating Trumaine and cannot get any studying done, because Ariel is in the basement and finals are abstract. The episode opens the morning after, with Bud trying to smuggle her out and assuring her that nobody in the house will so much as blink, which is the setup for the banner reading “Bud’s First Sleep Over” hanging in the living room, and Al, Kelly, Jefferson, Griff and Ike standing under it with party horns and a camera. The ribbing that follows is the most sustained pile-on the character absorbs in the whole series, and Kelly’s inspection of the back of Ariel’s neck for an air nozzle is the line that ends him.

Driven out of the house, Bud relocates to the campus library to study, where a compromising discovery leads to a compromising situation and he is caught by the librarian, who turns out to be Miss Hardaway, last seen running the Virgin Hotline in season nine. The university puts him on probation and then convenes a hearing that threatens expulsion days before graduation, and the person who saves him is Marcy, who argues his case. Al’s reaction to the probation news is congratulations, since he assumes it was for something he would have been proud of.

The episode matters mostly because of what it ends. Bud graduates from Trumaine University, with “Pomp and Circumstance” and a ceremony, closing out a college storyline the series had been running since season seven. For a character whose defining trait was that nothing ever worked out, finishing a degree is a substantial piece of forward motion, and the show gets there by way of a hearing about library conduct, which is about the only route it would have accepted.

Episode Facts

Original air date: Sunday, April 28, 1996 on FOX
Season 10, Episode 23
Overall episode 235 of the series
Taped February 23, 1996; production code 10.24
Written by Stacie Lipp
Directed by Sam W. Orender
The title plays on the idiom “hit the books”
Bud graduates from Trumaine University, closing a storyline running since season seven
Katey Sagal does not appear; she was on maternity leave