Season 6 Episode 7: If I Could See Me Now

October 27, 1991

Published 10/27/91

Al Bundy’s eyesight has been quietly failing for some time, and this episode is about the lengths he will go to in order not to admit it. The warning signs are everywhere. He watches television through binoculars. He cannot read a phone number off the screen fast enough to win a hundred dollar sports trivia prize, which Jefferson takes instead by simply getting to the phone first, a humiliation Al settles by putting his neighbor through the front door. He misidentifies the person on the cover of the TV Guide, and when corrected, argues that there is no meaningful difference between the two names. Bud and Kelly campaign for him to get glasses and Al resists on the grounds that his vision is perfect and also that people will call him Magoo. He eventually relents, and the trip to an optician called Optique gives the episode its set piece: a trying-on montage scored to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” with Al and both kids performing the dance moves from the video. Then the glasses go on for real and the episode delivers its actual joke, which is that Al Bundy’s life is considerably easier to tolerate out of focus. He can now see his car. He can see what he has been putting shoes on all day. He can see his paycheck. He sends it back on the grounds that it cannot possibly be correct. It is a tidy twenty-two minutes of television and it is also a small landmark for the series, because it is the first episode Amanda Bearse directed, and she would go on to direct more of this show than anyone else.

Episode Facts

Original air date: October 27, 1991
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 7
Overall episode number: 112
Written by: Gabrielle Topping
Directed by: Amanda Bearse
Taped: October 11, 1991
Production note: Amanda Bearse’s directorial debut. She does not appear on camera in the episode, though Marcy is mentioned by name.
Production note: Peggy does not appear on camera either. Katey Sagal was taking time off, and her absence over the following episodes was explained in-story as trips to Mardi Gras and shopping.
Title note: A play on “If My Friends Could See Me Now” from Sweet Charity, a musical Christina Applegate would star in on Broadway in 2005.