Season 8 Episode 6: No Chicken, No Check

October 10, 1993

Published 10/10/93

Al has taken the Dodge keys away, so Bud and Kelly pool their money and buy a car of their own, a boxy military-looking thing that neither of them wants to share and both of them need on the same night. Bud is seeing a foreign exchange student. Kelly is seeing a man who appears in commercials, and her description of his standing in the industry is one of the better Kelly lines of the season. The custody dispute over the vehicle runs through the episode. Al’s contribution is to handle the insurance, and because the only policy he can afford is an agricultural one, the car is now insured as a farm vehicle. The catch, which Al explains in the tone of a man who has read the fine print and made peace with it, is that the company will only honour a claim if there is a chicken in the car at the time of the accident. The policy’s motto gives the episode its title. Running underneath all of it is a food plot: Peg has stocked the refrigerator, Al has photographed the stocked refrigerator for his own records, and by the time he comes home singing about it the food is gone. His proposal for a benefit concert in his own honour is the best throwaway in the episode. It is a solid mid-season episode built on the series’ most reliable engine, which is the gap between what the Bundys need and what the Bundys can afford.

Episode Facts

Original air date: October 10, 1993
Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 6
Overall episode number: 163
Written by: Ralph R. Farquhar
Directed by: Tony Singletary
Taped: October 1, 1993
Production note: Bud’s middle name is revealed here as Franklin.
Title note: The motto of the insurance company Al picks, with a nod to Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”