Season 5 Episode 14: Look Who’s Barking

February 10, 1991

Published 02/10/91

“Look Who’s Barking” is the rare Married with Children episode that hands the emotional heavy lifting to the dog. Buck has had enough of the Bundy house, so he walks out and takes himself off down the street to find something better. What he finds instead is a white female dog, and he brings her home with him. She turns out to be considerably shrewder than Buck is, and she quickly works out that there is only room on that couch for one family pet. The campaign she runs to displace him is conducted entirely in dog, which is to say in voiceover, and it leaves Buck watching his own household quietly turn against him. Al, meanwhile, is pursuing something he considers far more urgent. He wants one specific dessert, a cherry cheesecake from a place called Chuck’s Cheese Bowl, and he has sent Marcy and Jefferson on a mission to bring one back from Tinuse, Wisconsin while they were honeymooning in the general vicinity. When the cheesecake they return with turns out to be an imitation, Al launches a hunt for Hans, the chef who originally made the real thing, which takes him through a string of restaurants and a great deal of indignation. Peggy does not appear in this episode at all. She is written out by being sent along on the Darcys’ honeymoon as a navigator, on the grounds that Wanker County is not somewhere outsiders should attempt without a guide. What is left is Al and the kids and a dog with a problem, which is more than enough.

Episode Facts

Original air date: February 10, 1991
Season and episode: Season 5, Episode 14
Overall episode number: 94
Written by: Katherine Green
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Production note: Filmed thirteenth in the season but aired fourteenth, which explains why Marcy and Jefferson arrive home from their honeymoon here after already living together as a settled couple in the previous week’s episode.
Title note: A play on the 1989 film Look Who’s Talking.