Season 10 Episode 26: The Joke’s on Al

The tenth-season finale is built on a practical joke contest between Al and Jefferson, and its real subject is what happens when you can no longer tell a prank from reality. Some time after the contest begins, a woman named June Morgan turns up at the house claiming to be a friend of Peggy’s, moves in, and starts flirting with Al. He cannot work out whether she is genuine or the next move in Jefferson’s campaign, and the episode milks that uncertainty for the whole half-hour: every piece of evidence he gathers can be read either way, and committing to either reading loses him something.

Griff’s subplot is the darker one and it is the better of the two. He is spending his first anniversary as a NO MA’AM member in jail, having been mistaken for a serial killer the news is calling the Chicago Cannibal, and the running joke is that nobody in the Bundy house will take his calls seriously. Kelly erases his frantic message from the answering machine mid-sentence. When his face appears on television, Al’s response is that unless the man in prison is Pauly Shore he does not care. Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” plays over Griff insisting he has not eaten anyone.

The episode is also Katey Sagal’s return. Peggy had been written out since “Calendar Girl” and absent entirely since “Spring Break (Part 2)” while Sagal was on maternity leave, and she comes back in time to knock June Morgan out and impose a penalty: Al renews their vows, repeatedly, with Gary Coleman officiating and Ephraim Wanker standing behind him holding a flask and a loaded shotgun. Amanda Bearse wrote it and directed it without appearing in it.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, May 26, 1996 on FOX
• Season 10, Episode 26, the tenth-season finale
• Overall episode 238 of the series
• Taped April 5, 1996; production code 10.27
• Written by Amanda Bearse
• Directed by Calvin Brown Jr.
• The title plays on “the joke’s on you”
• Katey Sagal returns as Peggy after maternity leave; Amanda Bearse wrote the episode but does not appear in it

Guest Cast

• Gary Coleman as himself
• Deborah Harmon as June Morgan
• Mark Sellers as the Male Detective
• G. Jordan Moore as the Female Detective
• Bert L. Cook as the Executioner