Season 11 Episode 19: Birthday Boy Toy

March 31, 1997

Published 03/31/97

Jefferson is turning forty, which is the first time the series ever put a number on him, and he is not handling it. Marcy’s remedy is employment, which for a man whose entire characterisation rests on never having worked is a more serious threat than the birthday. Al’s problem is Peggy’s shopping, conducted largely through cable channels, and his attempt to cure it produces the episode’s bluntest exchange, a wish that one of the bills is for a coffin, answered by a plea not to destroy her life, answered in turn by the observation that this would make them even.

The main event is a commercial. Bud and Kelly arrive at Gary’s Shoes to shoot a spot for the store, with Kelly as the customer, and the only remaining role is the salesman. The pay is four hundred dollars a day, which brings both Al and Griff forward immediately, Griff on the strength of having played Dorothy in his high school production of The Wiz, Al on the strength of the seizures he used to perform at IHOP for free pancakes. Kelly’s assessment of that credential is the funniest line in the episode.

Al gets the part and cannot say the line. He delivers all the right words in the wrong order, several times, each attempt a different scramble of pumps, purple, feet and treats, and then blames his director for being unable to edit them into sequence. Griff waits in the wings with his makeup on, singing “Ease on Down the Road.” Before all that, Al gets one moment of unintentional self-revelation: having mocked Griff for a man his age clinging to faded high school glory, he genuinely does not understand why the room has gone quiet.