Season 7 Episode 19: Go for the Old

A cashier at the movie theater assumes Al is a senior citizen and charges him accordingly, and Al, after a brief crisis of self-image, works out that this is the first unearned advantage anyone has ever handed him. He gets hold of a senior discount card and begins using it everywhere, aggressively and without shame. The crisis comes first, though, and it produces the best scene in the episode: Al asks his family whether he genuinely looks old, and his children devise an on-the-spot test based on Kelly’s theory about what happens to men’s bodies with age. Al submits to the examination confidently and then has to listen to Bud’s assessment of his trousers. Peg supplies the answer to where it all goes. Having established his new identity, Al takes it to its logical conclusion and enters a senior athletic championship, which is the show letting Al Bundy compete in sport one more time, against opponents he can actually beat. The events include a pole vault that ends badly for a woman in the stands and her cat. Whether Al, given the chance to let an elderly opponent take the win, will do so is a question the episode answers with an on-screen caption directed at anyone who has not been paying attention for the previous seven years. The senior discount premise is one of those ideas the show could have played purely for cruelty and instead turns into something closer to wish fulfilment, since the one thing Al has always wanted is a sport he can win. Nothing about the episode suggests he deserves it, which is exactly why it is funny.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: March 28, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 19
• Overall episode number: 150
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: February 26, 1993
• Production note: The closing freeze frame is not the usual shot of Al and Peg on the couch, in use since season 4, but Al on the couch with Buck in his new clothes.
• Title note: A play on “go for the gold.”

Guest Cast

• E.D. Miller as Ira
• George Feinstein as George
• Mario Roccuzzo as the vendor
• Kevin Brief as the official
• Peggy Gilbert, Georgia Shilling, Jerrie Thill and Marian Wells as the cheerleaders
• Todd McLaren as the stadium announcer

Go for the Old

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