Season 6 Episode 21: Teacher Pets

April 5, 1992

Published 04/05/92

Bud has convinced himself that his substitute teacher is interested in him, and the problem is that nobody will believe it. He tries to get the family and the Darcys to acknowledge the achievement, even attempting to lead them in a cheer about it, and is ignored. The Darcys’ response to his situation is to invite him out to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese, which they are doing out of pity, and Bud’s objection to being pitied gives him one of his better lines of the season. It turns out he is right about the teacher. Miss McGowen is interested, and the rest of the episode is Bud discovering that having two women at once is not the unmixed triumph he had assumed, since he is also seeing a girl his own age named Darlene. He takes the problem to his father, who claims extensive experience in the field and offers advice that is both practical and entirely bleak. Running alongside it, Peg has the flu and is getting no sympathy whatsoever. Al and Kelly pull a plastic tarp over themselves when she sneezes and take turns pretending not to know whether she can find the kitchen. Al’s own project for the week is a free food operation: he has discovered that if you turn up at Chuck E. Cheese with a wrapped gift you can sit down at any child’s birthday party and eat, and he has been working the room for days.It is one of the better Bud episodes of the season, partly because the show lets him be right for once, and partly because being right turns out to be more trouble than the alternative.

Episode Facts

Original air date: April 5, 1992
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 21
Overall episode number: 126
Written by: Katherine Green
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: March 6, 1992
Production note: Taped three days after David Faustino’s eighteenth birthday, which was almost certainly deliberate given the storyline.
Title note: A play on “teacher’s pet.” The replacement teacher’s name, Mrs. A. Mariner, is a play on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.