Season 11 Episode 23: How to Marry a Moron (2)

Lonnie gets out of prison and keeps his promise, returning to propose to Kelly properly. Al objects on the reasonable grounds that the man is a convicted criminal, and withdraws the objection the moment he learns Lonnie is heir to the Tot family fortune, Earl and Pearl Tot, of Weenie Tots, played by Gordon Jump and Edie McClurg. A wedding is arranged in the back yard. Then Al sees Lonnie at the Jiggly Room and has to decide whether to tell his daughter, a dilemma Bud attempts to resolve by bribing him with a John Wayne picture on a ten-foot projector.

The wedding collapses when the Tots’ domestic arrangements come out: Lonnie has several wives, Pearl keeps a boyfriend, and Earl is on his fifth marriage. Al’s response is a speech defending what he calls the torturous sanctity of marriage, which the assembled guests endorse loudly, and which amounts to the series’ only sincere statement of principle, that a Bundy marriage lasts forever no matter how pitiful or disgusting it is to wake up to the same person. The wedding is cancelled. Kelly keeps the ring, Al keeps the ten-thousand-dollar debt, and her offer of consolation goes to a row of former boyfriends rather than her brother.

The ending plays like a finale, and it very nearly was, but it was not meant to be. FOX cancelled the series while the cast were on break, citing production costs and falling ratings, and the news reached them from outside: Ed O’Neill heard it from a newlywed couple who offered condolences while he was home in Youngstown, Christina Applegate heard from someone who had caught it on a Los Angeles radio show, and Katey Sagal learned of it at the gym. The studio had not called any of them. Another season with a proper send-off had been expected.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Monday, May 5, 1997 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 23, part two of two
• Overall episode 261 of the series
• Taped March 28, 1997; production code 11.24
• Story by Vince Cheung and Ben Montanio; teleplay by Pamela Eells and Russell Marcus
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• The title plays on the 1953 comedy How to Marry a Millionaire
• Aired exactly one month after the tenth anniversary of the pilot; it was the second-to-last episode broadcast, with one more airing out of order weeks later

Guest Cast

• Gordon Jump as Earl Tot
• Edie McClurg as Pearl Tot
• Rance Howard as the Reverend

How to Marry a Moron (2)

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