Season 5 Episode 9: Do Ya Think I’m Sexy

November 18, 1990

Published 11/18/90

Brenda moves in across the street, Al moves her couch, and Brenda tells him he is cute. That is all it takes. Word travels, the women of the neighborhood begin finding reasons to need something lifted, and Al, who has spent four and a half seasons being told what he is worth, decides he has been undervalued and starts attending to his physique.

Peg’s response is the line the episode is built around. She tells him, explicitly as both his wife and his friend, that nobody likes him. It is delivered with real warmth, which is what makes it funny and also what makes it land.

The B plot is Bud and Kelly attempting to repair the doorbell, and it produces the best physical gag of the season. Bud asks twice whether the power is off, is assured that it is, goes outside with a screwdriver, and the house lights flicker while he screams. He walks back in smouldering, soot-faced, perfectly calm, and asks his sister to spell the word off.

This is also the end of a running joke. Jade, the customer who had been turning up at Gary’s Shoes since season 2 to tell Al she wanted him, appears here for the fourth and final time. The episode belongs to a small group in which Al is briefly, accidentally desirable, and the show is always careful about how it ends them. He never cheats, nothing happens, and the attention evaporates. What he actually wanted was never the women across the street. It was for somebody to say he was worth looking at, and the only person who could have said it is the one who tells him nobody likes him.