Season 8 Episode 25: Al Goes Deep

Jefferson has spent Marcy’s tax refund on clothes and needs the money back before she notices, so he comes to Al, and Al’s solution is to bet it on a college football game. The plan depends on the form of a star player named Chad Dowling, and the plan immediately develops a problem: Chad starts dating Kelly, which ends his training regime. Al’s attempts to manage the situation take him into territory the show rarely allowed him, because Chad is everything Al used to be and treats Al with the deference that implies, and Al openly enjoys it. Kelly is then enlisted to help with Chad’s conditioning, which results in his injury, and the game arrives with Al’s money on the line and the player unavailable, which leaves exactly one option. The other half of the episode belongs to Peg, who has decided to make her own bonbons rather than buy a machine, and who conducts a blind taste test on her husband. The second sample is the size of a melon and takes him an hour to chew, as the show indicates with a clock overlay. Its distinguishing ingredient is an entire jar of Tang. Marcy’s reaction to her own sugar intake, which has her chopping wood in the backyard, is the episode’s best running gag. It is a well-balanced episode with three plots that all land, and the football material gives Al one of his better late-period moments of self-awareness. Peg’s bonbons, meanwhile, are the sort of running gag the show could get four separate laughs out of without ever leaving the kitchen table.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 15, 1994
• Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 25
• Overall episode number: 182
• Written by: Gerry Bowren and Laurie Lee-Goss
• Directed by: Amanda Bearse
• Production note: Al’s own tax refund is given as $17.34.
• Title note: From the football call to go deep.

Guest Cast

• Curnal Achilles Aulisio as Chad Dowling (credited as Curnal Aulisio)
• Ron Pitts as the TV sports announcer
• Edward Blanchard as “Stab Wound”
• Marcia del Mar as Maria