Season 7 Episode 15: Heels on Wheels

February 7, 1993

Published 02/07/93

Kelly buys herself a motorcycle, and the only member of the household genuinely worried about it is her father. Al’s concern is real and it is one of the few times the series lets him be straightforwardly protective of his daughter without undercutting it, although he undercuts it himself the moment he sits on the bike and starts imagining the life he might have had, a daydream the show scores to George Thorogood. Marcy’s reaction is the comic engine. She arrives having seen the motorcycle in the driveway and assuming it belongs to Al, and delivers an enthusiastic speech encouraging him to ride without a helmet, pop wheelies and travel the wrong way down the interstate at ninety, preferably while exhausted. When told it is Kelly’s, she pivots instantly to warning the girl that motorcycles are killers and should be handed to her father. Bud’s subplot has him volunteering as a life model at an all-girls art school, posing nude, which is exactly the sort of opportunity he has spent seven seasons failing to find. And Al’s shoe store story this week is the best one of the season: a customer with a garter belt, silk stockings and a Basic Instinct manoeuvre, and a revelation that sends Al to his wife with a question about his own sexuality. For an episode about a motorcycle, almost nothing happens on the motorcycle, which is fine. Everything good here is in the living room.Peg, meanwhile, is pursuing an acquisition of her own.

Episode Facts

Original air date: February 7, 1993
Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 15
Overall episode number: 146
Written by: Stacie Lipp
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: January 22, 1993
Title note: A play on “Meals on Wheels,” with “hell on wheels” hanging in the background.