Season 10 Episode 3: Requiem for a Dead Briard

October 1, 1995

Published 10/01/95

This is the episode where the Bundys bury Buck, and the show handles it exactly the way it had handled everything else for nine years: by refusing to get sentimental about it on the surface while letting real feeling leak through underneath. The family and the D’Arcys come home from the funeral, which cost twelve hundred dollars, a figure that reduces Al to tears for reasons that have nothing to do with grief. Peggy warns him to go easy on Kelly, who was closest to the dog, and Al promptly suggests they get rid of Buck’s old things, which sets Kelly off and establishes the half-hour’s shape: everyone processing a loss badly and in their own direction.

The replacement-pet plot runs from there. Jefferson offers a connection, a friend who smuggles in exotic animals alongside less reputable merchandise, and Al’s only requirement is that whatever they end up with be cheap. What arrives is a bird the group oversells as a Venezuelan emerald-crested cockatoo with a hundred and fifty-word vocabulary and a gift for celebrity impressions. Kelly is unmoved, pointing out the obvious, it is not Buck, and the bird’s tenure in the house turns out to be measured in minutes, because Peg’s mother is upstairs and hungry.

Around the animal business, the episode stages a séance, brings in Don Novello’s Father Guido Sarducci to run it, and gives Buck one last turn as the voice of the household’s conscience before handing the collar to a new dog named Lucky. Twelve-year-old Buck the briard was retired at his trainer’s request; he had reached the upper end of his breed’s life expectancy and was having trouble reading hand signals from across a soundstage. He died the following May, about nine months after this episode was taped, which lends the whole half-hour a weight nobody involved could have intended.

Episode Facts

Original air date: Sunday, October 1, 1995 on FOX
Season 10, Episode 3
Overall episode 214 of the series
Taped September 1, 1995; production code 10.03
Written by series co-creator Michael G. Moye, his only script for season ten and his last for the series
Directed by Gerry Cohen
The final appearance of Buck Bundy and the first appearance of Lucky Bundy
The title is one of several the show built on the Requiem construction, following “Requiem for a Dead Barber” and preceding “Requiem for a Chevyweight”