Season 4 Episode 4: Tooth or Consequences
October 1, 1989
Al has a toothache, which means a dentist, which turns out to be the real problem. The man is in the middle of a divorce, bitterly, and he has a patient in the chair who cannot object to anything, a situation the episode exploits for its full comic potential. Al arrives in pain and leaves having absorbed somebody else’s marital grievances at close range with his mouth open.
It is one of the series’ better variations on a recurring structure: put Al in the hands of a professional whose competence depends on a frame of mind he has no control over. The dentist is not incompetent, merely preoccupied, and the comedy comes from Al’s inability to steer a conversation he cannot participate in. The character’s own marriage, by comparison, comes out of the episode looking stable.
The half-hour contains one of the most quoted pieces of Bundy arithmetic. Peggy mentions that Al works ten hours a day at Gary’s Shoes, and since the previous episode established Sundays as his only day off, that puts him at a sixty-hour week, which, with the commission figures from season three, means the show has done the maths on exactly how badly he is paid.
Traci Lords appears as T.C., her first of two roles on the series; she returned two seasons later as Vanessa Van Pelt in “Al Bundy, Shoe Dick.” Kelly mentions wanting a nose ring and being refused, which is one of the handful of occasions the Bundys exercise any parental authority at all.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: October 1, 1989
- Season 4, Episode 4, and the 61st episode of the series
- Story by Will Rodgers, teleplay by Sheldon Krasner and David Sailing
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
Guest Cast
- Joe Flaherty as Dr. Plierson, the dentist
- Traci Lords as T.C., the dental assistant
- Scott Garrison as Bill
Al Bundy Has Never Been to a Dentist
A toothache finally forces Al into a dentist’s chair for the first time in his life, and the dentist is appalled at what he finds. Marcy, who loves going to the dentist and says so at length, sets Peg off, and Peg decides she wants an appointment too. Running alongside all of it is Al’s ongoing campaign to get one actual home-cooked meal.
Joe Flaherty plays the dentist as a freshly divorced man dividing his attention between Al’s mouth and his young assistant, who is named T.C. Traci Lords plays her. She came back to the show two seasons later as an entirely different character, Vanessa Van Pelt, in Al Bundy, Shoe Dick.
Famous Quotes
- Donnelly: “Hey, Bundy! I’m having steak tonight. What are you having?” Al: “If I was the mailman, I’d be having your wife!” The offscreen neighbor, and Al’s answer.
- Al: “Ah, home sweet hell.” Al, arriving.
- Marcy: “I am not a chicken! Why does he keep calling me a chicken?!” Marcy, losing that argument.
Notes
- Marcy’s speech about loving the dentist runs into a full fantasy sequence, ending on “Good girl, Marcy. You can spit now.”
- Marcy flubs the advice as “Everyone should see their dentist at least twice a month,” then corrects herself to year.
- Peggy says Al works ten hours a day at Gary’s Shoes, which is sixty hours a week if Sunday really is his only day off.
- Kelly mentions she wanted a nose ring and was refused.
- Mr. Donnelly, the offscreen neighbor, is referenced here and in “976-SHOE.”
- Goof: a crew member holding white paper is reflected in a window just before the cut to Al’s face.
