Season 4 Episode 10: At the Zoo

November 26, 1989

Published 11/26/89

This is the episode that deals with the wreckage of 976-SHOE, and it does not pretend the damage was temporary. Steve has lost his job and has not told anyone how little he is doing about it. He has been spending his days taking Peg, Bud and Kelly to the zoo, then coming home and manufacturing evidence of a day spent looking for work, including rummaging through a gym bag for something that will cover the smell of having enjoyed himself.

Marcy, meanwhile, is carrying the household on a job several rungs below the one she had. She spells out the terms: drive-up teller, fifty hours a week, a six minute lunch break, and customers who spit at her. When she finds out what Steve has actually been doing with his days, she knocks him out.

What makes this one worth going out of your way for is what happens next. Al takes Marcy to a bar and is kind to her. Not sarcastic, not scoring points, genuinely kind, telling her to ignore the people around her and hold her horns up high, which is still an insult but is offered as comfort. There are maybe three moments in the entire run where Al treats Marcy as a friend rather than a target, and this is the best of them. She also talks, soberly, about why she and Steve never had children, and the episode lets that sit. For anyone tracking the Rhoades arc, this is the floor. Steve never recovers his footing after it, and within two seasons David Garrison had left the regular cast. Watched in order, the run from the loan through to this bar scene is the show quietly writing its own neighbours out.