Season 11 Episode 22: The Desperate Half-Hour (1)

Bud has a pen pal in prison, and she escapes. Starla arrives at 9764 Jeopardy Lane with two accomplices and takes the Bundys and the D’Arcys hostage, which gives the series one of its rare bottle episodes: the entire half-hour plays out in the living room and kitchen, something the show had only attempted a handful of times since season one’s “Johnny Be Gone.” The confinement suits it. With nowhere to cut away to, the comedy has to come from six people reacting badly to the same gun.

Marcy reacts worst and funniest. Her instruction to Jefferson not to mention the Mercedes no matter what is immediately followed by Jefferson volunteering the Mercedes and the keys, and her attempt to hide those keys down her blouse fails on the only grounds the show ever ribbed her about. She then tries rehabilitation, arguing that shooting the Bundys is a minor matter but grand theft auto is beneath Starla, and when that fails she loses her composure entirely and has to be restrained mid-threat with a gun against her forehead.

Kelly’s thread is the one that carries into part two. She falls for Lonnie, Starla’s accomplice, on the strength of a shared intellectual wavelength, and when the police take the pair away he proposes on the spot from one knee. Her acceptance and his reply, a promise to remain her husband regardless of whose wife he becomes in prison, is the most romantic exchange the series ever wrote, and it is entirely sincere on both sides. Al, meanwhile, survives being shot thanks to his lucky shoehorn.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, May 5, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 22, part one of two
• Overall episode 260 of the series
• Taped March 21, 1997; production code 11.23
• Written by Valerie Ahern and Christian McLaughlin
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on the 1955 film The Desperate Hours, which also concerns escaped convicts holding a family hostage
• One of the very few episodes set entirely in the Bundy living room and kitchen

Guest Cast

• Tricia Cast as Starla

The Desperate Half-Hour (1)

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