Season 8 Episode 11: Change for a Buck

November 28, 1993

Published 11/28/93

Buck has had enough and walks out, and the joke that powers the episode is that it takes the Bundys an extremely long time to notice. He ends up in a municipal dog pound, where he meets Floyd, an older and more experienced resident who explains how things work there, and where an employee named Mustafa has a schedule to keep. The pound storyline is played almost entirely from the dogs’ point of view, with Cheech Marin back as the voice of Buck for the second time and Dom DeLuise as Floyd, and it is a surprisingly affecting half of an episode. A bloodhound plays harmonica. Floyd has advice. The clock is running. Back at the house nobody is looking for the dog because nobody has registered that he is gone, and when the family finally does notice, Al’s position is that Buck has probably simply left, which he describes with real envy as something he has considered a million times himself. Al’s eventual attempt to resolve the situation by bringing home a different and much smaller dog and presenting it as Buck is the sort of solution only he would attempt. The scene that breaks him is the family whistling the Lassie theme at him until he cries. It is a genuine oddity: a Married with Children episode in which the most sympathetic character is the dog, and the most honest speech in it is Al’s, explaining why leaving would be the sane thing to do. Amanda Bearse directs the pound scenes with far more patience than a sitcom B-plot about a lost dog normally gets.

Episode Facts

Original air date: November 28, 1993
Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 11
Overall episode number: 168
Written by: Kim Weiskopf
Directed by: Amanda Bearse
Production note: Marcy does not appear, as Amanda Bearse directed.
Production note: Cheech Marin’s second turn as the voice of Buck, after season 5’s “Look Who’s Barking.”
Title note: A play on asking for change for a dollar, and on Buck changing his situation.