Season 9 Episode 19: Ship Happens (2)

The ship goes down. Al, Peg, Marcy and Jefferson survive in a lifeboat along with one other passenger and Gilbert Gottfried, who is appearing as himself and whose job for the duration is to keep everyone’s spirits up, a task he performs by being Gilbert Gottfried at close range in a small boat. The best exchange in the episode involves the flare gun: Peg produces it, Al explains what it is for, and Peg’s objection to being found in her current hairstyle leads her to throw it into the sea. Al’s conclusion about why Jacques Cousteau staffed the Calypso the way he did is immediately corrected by Gottfried. Al eventually sets off alone to find help, the others are rescued almost at once, and Al turns up two days later. Back in Chicago the story has become national news and the house has filled with reporters, which gives Bud the best material of the episode: he objects furiously to the invasion of his family’s privacy, is offered a million dollars for an exclusive, and revises his position within one sentence. Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal arrives to conduct the interview and her line of questioning is exactly as tasteful as everything else she has done.

The lifeboat is the whole set for most of the half-hour, which forces the episode to run on dialogue rather than situation, and Gottfried is the instrument. He and Ed O’Neill had worked together five years earlier on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and the episode essentially drops that dynamic into a confined space and lets it grind. The rescue, when it comes, resolves nothing in the Bundys’ favour, and the two-parter ends with the family exactly where it started, which is the only ending this show would accept.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 26, 1995
• Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 19
• Overall episode number: 203
• Written by: Gerry Cohen
• Directed by: Katherine Green
• Taped: February 17, 1995
• Production note: Conclusion of the two-parter. Gerry Cohen, who normally directed, wrote this one, and Katherine Green, who normally wrote, directed it.
• Production note: Gilbert Gottfried and Ed O’Neill had worked together before, on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in 1990.
• Title note: A play on a cruder idiom.

Guest Cast

• Gilbert Gottfried as himself
• Teresa Parente as Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal
• Leilani Jones, Keith Sellon-Wright, Kevin McBride, Melissa Chan and Scott Hartman as the reporters

Ship Happens (2)

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