Season 8 Episode 2: Hood ‘n the Boyz

September 12, 1993

Published 09/12/93

Al and Peg take a second honeymoon, which means a motel in the city, and the episode splits its attention between what Peg wants from the trip and what Al ends up doing instead. Peg’s objective is straightforward and she pursues it three separate times over the course of the episode, with Al’s reactions between rounds supplying some of the broadest comedy the series ever attempted, cutting away to rams colliding and a dummy next to a drill press. What interrupts it is a call for help from Mary Ellen Litchfield, a girl Al knew growing up, whose neighbourhood is being run by a young man called Ray-Ray and his crew. Al, being the man who scored four touchdowns in a single game, agrees to deal with it. He assembles a group of surviving Polk High Panthers, marches them down to confront the gang, and the show scores the approach to an instrumental “Beat It.” Ray-Ray whistles. More of his people arrive. Al turns around to find that his teammates have driven off and left an inhaler behind. What he says next, after a brief internal pep talk about what a king would say in this situation, is the funniest line in the episode and he says it twice, once to Ray-Ray and once, later that night, to his wife. It is one of the better Al episodes of season 8, and the final speech is the sort of thing the show earned the right to deliver after seven years of setup.

Episode Facts

Original air date: September 12, 1993
Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 2
Overall episode number: 159
Written by: Michael G. Moye
Directed by: Tony Singletary
Title note: A play on John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, which Columbia produced, as it did this series.