Season 2 Episode 19: Im-Po-Dent
February 28, 1988
Steve has a new Mercedes and a rule about who drives it. While he is away, Marcy drives it and puts a dent in the side, not a serious one, but to Steve the damage is total, and his reaction is not anger. He announces that the stress has rendered him impotent, and then commits to that position completely, informing his wife that what she did to the car has ruined him.
What makes the episode work is Marcy’s response. This is a character who normally operates as the smartest and most composed person in any room, and the accusation sends her into a spiral of guilt and increasingly desperate remedies. Amanda Bearse plays the panic without protecting the character, and David Garrison plays Steve’s grievance with the wounded dignity of a man who has found a way to win an argument permanently.
The series rarely gave the Rhoades a plot this unflattering to both of them, and it is a useful reminder of how the first four seasons were balanced. The Bundys are a disaster and know it; the Rhoades are a disaster and have persuaded themselves otherwise, and episodes like this one exist to take the second position apart.
Two small notes of record. This is the first episode to show the actual Tang bottle with its real label: the drink had been named in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and the first season had used a bottle relabelled Tri-C, and Al demonstrates to the children how to make a Tang Wipe. Peggy, asked what more she could possibly be expected to do, suggests sarcastically that she could stop smoking, which she in fact did from season five onward.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: February 28, 1988
- Season 2, Episode 19, and the 32nd episode of the series
- Written by Sandy Sprung and Marcy Vosburgh
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
- No guest cast is credited.
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