Season 11 Episode 11: Bud on the Side

January 13, 1997

Published 01/13/97

The episode begins with a father-son conversation in which both men try to trade problems, and Al’s advice to his son is the single most brutal assessment he ever delivers. Bud cannot get a date; Al works through his assets out loud, looks, then personality, discards both, concludes that Bud has nothing to offer a woman, and advises him to aim low. Bud’s reply is that he never wants to have sex again, and Al welcomes him to the club. Then Al moves on to his own problem, which is that his boss has been riding him like a cheap carnival pony.

Bud takes the advice. The woman he finds is Gary, Al’s boss, the owner of Gary’s Shoes and Accessories for Today’s Woman, and the relationship is consummated off screen and reported to Al, who faints on the couch. The revival sequence is the best physical comedy in the episode: Kelly’s attempts fail, Peggy takes over by grabbing him by the pyjama lapels and slapping him awake, and Al’s first words on regaining consciousness are not a sentence so much as a sound of horror.

What keeps the half-hour from being a one-joke episode is that the family immediately starts working out how to profit from it. Al has spent a decade under Gary’s thumb, and his son is now in a position to intercede, which makes Bud briefly the most powerful person in the house. The episode gets its title from the arrangement and its running gag from Al’s inability to be in the same room as the thought of it, particularly once he learns the pair of them are downstairs in the basement.