Season 9 Episode 25: Shoeless Al

May 14, 1995

Published 05/14/95

Al is robbed at the shoe store and spends the night tied up in the stockroom surrounded by merchandise, and the experience gives him an idea worth four million dollars. The lawsuit claims that the ordeal has left him unable to be around shoes, and the mall responds by hiring a private investigator to establish whether the phobia is real. The investigator, Leslie Baum, announces his conclusion at the first meeting and Al’s response to his name is immediate. So Al has to maintain the condition under surveillance, which is manageable until the bowling championship, because the trophy is named after Puggy Weaver and Al wants it, and bowling requires shoes. The dilemma is the episode: four million dollars or the Puggy. The sequence where Al emerges from the back of the alley having made his choice is scored to “Also sprach Zarathustra,” and Queen gets three separate cues across the episode. The opening scene is the best thing in it. Griff arrives to find his colleague bound in the stockroom, asks whether he has been robbed, and accepts Al’s sarcastic alternative explanation without hesitation, then offers one of his own.

The investigator is the engine. Leslie Baum is assigned to establish whether the phobia is genuine, which means following Al around waiting for him to slip, and the half-hour becomes a sustained test of a man who has to act terrified of the only thing he knows anything about. The bowling championship gives the script its stage for the final trap, and the episode works in the news that Puggy Weaver, Al’s rival from season four’s “Peggy Turns 300,” has since died in a waffle-eating competition.

Episode Facts

Original air date: May 14, 1995
Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 25
Overall episode number: 210
Written by: J. Stanford Parker, credited as “Bootsie”
Directed by: Amanda Bearse
Production note: The bowling trophy is named the Puggy, after Puggy Weaver, Al’s rival from season 4’s “Peggy Turns 300,” who the episode reveals has since died in a waffle eating competition.
Title note: After “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, with the obvious application.