Season 4 Episode 5: He Ain’t Much, But He’s Mine

October 8, 1989

Published 10/08/89

Peggy becomes convinced that a new customer at the hair salon is having an affair with Al, and the jealousy takes a form nobody in the house recognises. She behaves oddly, watches him, and the episode runs on the gap between the suspicion and the reality, which is that Al has been covering a shift for a colleague and has no idea anything is happening.

The interesting thing about the episode is how the jealousy flatters him. Peggy’s distress is real, and it is predicated on the idea that her husband is capable of attracting someone, which the series had spent three years establishing he is not. Al, for his part, never works out what is going on and so never gets to enjoy it, which is the correct outcome.

The episode bookends itself neatly: it opens and closes with the two of them asleep in bed and Peggy throttling her husband from behind, which is as good a summary of the marriage as the series produced.

Several details get established on the record. Al mentions covering for a colleague named Jim Bower, which implies a third employee at Gary’s Shoes, and Steve, spying on Al, confirms a night shift around seven, while Al normally works mornings. Peggy states plainly that she knows Kelly is promiscuous and the sort of girl who takes other girls’ boyfriends, and that she has always been the other woman. Marcy’s threat to Steve, when she catches him lying, is to withhold melon balls, which season three established his mother left written instructions for. Someone in the studio audience can be heard calling “Yeah, Peggy!” as she prepares to cut the suspect’s hair.