Season 9 Episode 16: Get the Dodge Outta Hell

February 5, 1995

Published 02/05/95

The series’ two hundredth episode, and it brings Steve Rhoades back. The Bundys stop at a car wash on the way to Wanker County, and while the Dodge is going through, Al and Peg browse the accessory shop, which produces a sustained run of Al finding things he wants and Peg explaining why the car does not need them. Then the Dodge disappears. Nobody at Traugott’s House of Scrubbin’ can account for it, and the search occupies the rest of the episode, including Al going through the washing machine himself. Running alongside it, Marcy has been trying to install Jefferson in a job at the car wash, and while she is there her ex-husband walks in. David Garrison’s entrance got an ovation from the studio audience long enough that he checks his watch waiting for it to subside, and the show leaves that in. Steve is doing well. Marcy’s greeting, which places him in the desert performing a musical with cacti, is a double in-joke: Garrison left the series in season 4 to do theatre, including a touring production of that musical, and Steve’s last appearance had him working as a wildlife ranger. When the Dodge finally turns up it is clean for the first time in the show’s history and it is red, which Al confirms was always the colour.

Steve Rhoades turning up is the half-hour’s real event. David Garrison had left the series during the fourth season and the studio audience had not been told he was coming, which is why his entrance is buried under applause long enough that Garrison checks his watch waiting it out. The disappearing Dodge gives the episode its plot, Michael Faustino plays the car wash manager opposite his brother, and the whole thing closes on a card reading “For Your Emmy Consideration, Thank You Very Much”, a show that never won one, two hundred episodes in.

Episode Facts

Original air date: February 5, 1995
Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 16
Overall episode number: 200
Written by: Larry Jacobson
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: January 20, 1995
Production note: Officially the 200th episode, counting the clip special and the banned episode. It aired the same night as “The Best of Bundy” to mark the milestone.
Production note: David Garrison’s second guest return as Steve Rhoades. The audience ovation on his entrance ran long enough that he checks his watch, and the take was kept.
Production note: The episode ends with Al holding a 1987 cast photograph and the caption “For Your Emmy Consideration, Thank You Very Much.” The series never won one.
Title note: A variation on the season 8 episode “Get Outta Dodge.”