Season 2 Episode 4: Buck Can Do It

October 11, 1987

Published 10/11/87

Buck’s nocturnal activities have produced a run of complaints from the neighbours, whose own dogs keep delivering litters that nobody wants, and the lawsuits are accumulating. The pressure is on Al to have him neutered, and Al will not do it, not out of sentiment for the dog so much as a flat refusal to be the man who signs that paperwork. The episode is the first in the series built around Buck, who had spent the first season as a scene-stealer rather than a subject.

It is a telling choice for an early Buck episode. The show could have made it about affection, and instead makes it about Al identifying with the dog, which is both funnier and more revealing. Buck is getting something Al is not, and the household’s willingness to put a stop to it on the neighbours’ behalf lands on Al as a personal matter. He also states plainly here that Buck is Bud’s dog, a point of ownership the series contradicted regularly thereafter.

The episode contains one of the earliest and most reused scenes in the show’s history: Peggy announces she has made ribs for dinner and that Al will owe her something in return, and Al immediately develops a headache. The exchange was later lifted for an appearance by Ed O’Neill and Katey Sagal on The New Hollywood Squares. Kelly does not appear, though Mr. Pittman mentions her in connection with his son. By production code this was the first episode made for the season, despite airing fourth.