Season 4 Episode 22: The Agony of De-Feet

May 6, 1990

Published 05/06/90

Marcy has fallen asleep in the Bundy living room, and Bud, who is fifteen and has no plan, says out loud how much he wants her. Kelly offers to help, and what she offers is a fabricated piece of biology: when a woman sleeps, she explains, her hormones accumulate, which is why no girl has ever been interested in Bud while standing up. Her recommendation is that he sleep on the couch beside Marcy so that he is the first thing she sees. He agrees, asks what he should wear, and is told his cowboy pyjamas.

Marcy wakes up next to a teenager in cowboy pyjamas and draws the obvious conclusion. The rest of the episode is the two of them negotiating what did or did not happen, which ends with them agreeing to be friends and going out for ice cream, while Kelly watches from the top of the stairs with the expression of someone whose plan worked perfectly.

Running alongside is Al’s professional hazard. He has been having nightmares about feet for over two weeks, which the show treats as an occupational injury, and he gets selected as a judge for a pageant that requires him to look at a great many of them. The two plots never meet, and the episode is better for not forcing them to. The Bud and Marcy pairing is one the show returned to repeatedly without ever quite committing to, and this is the first real attempt at it. What makes the episode work is that the engine is Kelly rather than Bud. He is a willing participant in a scheme he does not understand, and she gets everything she wanted out of it while never appearing in the room where it happens.