Season 11 Episode 10: The Stepford Peg

January 6, 1997

Published 01/06/97

Peggy slips, hits her head and wakes up with no memory of who she is, which hands Al an opportunity he takes without a moment’s hesitation: he reprograms her. The result is a wife who cooks, cleans, keeps a schedule and raises no objection when he fills the living room with NO MA’AM for a wrestling broadcast, and who mixes the drinks. The title points at The Stepford Wives, and the premise owes something to Overboard as well, but the show is not interested in the ethics of it. It is interested in what Al would actually ask for if he could have anything, and the answer turns out to be frothy margaritas and a clean house.

The margarita scene is the episode’s best. Bob Rooney compliments the drinks, asks how she got them so frothy, and Peggy explains about the battery-operated cocktail stirrer she found in her nightstand. Rooney works it out a beat before the audience does and spits; Ike keeps drinking. The wrestling party also produces the series’ clearest statement of NO MA’AM doctrine, delivered as a collective oath when Bob Rooney asks Al whether he has slept with his own wife.

The episode is a production curiosity. Although it aired in January 1997 as the tenth episode of season eleven, it was shot in August 1996 and was the first episode of the season filmed, which is why its epilogue, Bud reacting to the sight of Kelly standing beside her own double, ended up in the season’s opening titles as David Faustino’s introductory clip. Eagle-eyed viewers get the D’Arcys’ house number, 9524, and Marcy’s licence plate as well.

Episode Facts

Original air date: Monday, January 6, 1997 on FOX
Season 11, Episode 10
Overall episode 248 of the series
Taped August 16, 1996; production code 11.01, the first episode of season eleven filmed, despite airing tenth
Written by Valerie Ahern and Christian McLaughlin
Directed by Amanda Bearse
The title plays on the 1974 film The Stepford Wives, with a debt to 1987’s Overboard