Season 11 Episode 1: Twisted

Season eleven opens with a tornado bearing down on Chicago and the Bundys and D’Arcys locked in the basement together, which is the simplest premise the series ever built an episode on and one of the better ones. The threat does something unexpected to the women: Peggy and Marcy find the danger and the confinement genuinely exciting, and Al and Jefferson spend the half-hour working out how to get out of a sealed basement with two interested wives in it. Their escape attempt is scored to a soundalike of the Mission: Impossible theme, which tells you how seriously the show takes their predicament.

Before the storm, the episode settles Griff’s business from the season ten finale. He is not speaking to Al, having been arrested as the Chicago Cannibal and strapped into an electric chair as the punchline of a practical joke, and his account of what the experience cost him, including a nickname and an unwanted marriage, is the best written exchange in the episode. Al’s position is that Griff is whining, and that the rescue would have come sooner if his burger had arrived properly cooked.

This is also where several things change. The opening titles are shortened, dropping the couch gag in which Al hands out money; every season eleven episode now opens with a teaser before the credits and usually closes with an epilogue; the end credits move to a black screen. More consequentially, FOX moved the series to Saturdays at nine, and the ratings fell immediately. The show was shifted three more times before it was cancelled, and this time slot is where that decline begins.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Saturday, September 28, 1996 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 1, the eleventh-season premiere
• Overall episode 239 of the series
• Production code 11.03, third in production order, but written and intended as the premiere
• Written by Richard Gurman
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on the 1996 film Twister
• The series moves to Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. ET with this episode, a slot change that badly damaged its ratings

Guest Cast

• Jennifer Lyons as Ariel
• Donna Pieroni as Sandy
• Christine Moore as the Gorgeous Woman
• Steven Shenbaum as the Scarecrow

Twisted

👉 Watch on Amazon Prime