Season 9 Episode 6: Business Still Sucks (2)

October 9, 1994

Published 10/09/94

The conclusion, and the episode that finally puts Gary on screen. Al loses the breastfeeding argument on the law, which Officer Dan arrives to explain in person, and the explanation is the best scene in the episode: Dan lists where being a police officer ranks among his priorities, declines to attend a mugging in the food court, and then issues seven indecent exposure citations to the six shirtless members of NO MA’AM’s heavyweight division. Beaten, Al’s workaround is to stop selling women’s shoes altogether and convert Gary’s into a men’s store, which solves the problem by removing the customers. Then word arrives that Gary is coming to inspect, and Al’s emergency measure is to paint the men’s stock and pass it off as women’s. Gary turns out to be a woman. This is the first time the character appears at all, after eight years in which everyone on the show referred to Gary as he, including the season 1 episode in which Al hired a man to impersonate him. Her response to the situation is not what Al expects, and it involves converting the store into a combined shoe shop, nursing room and nursery. Al’s attempt to save his job by begging, and her reply about what she owns, is the exchange people remember. It is a satisfying resolution to a two-parter and the episode that finally answered a question the show had been dodging since 1987. It is also the episode that quietly retires one of the show’s oldest running jokes, which is that nobody at Gary’s Shoes had ever met Gary.

Episode Facts

Original air date: October 9, 1994
Season and episode: Season 9, Episode 6
Overall episode number: 189
Written by: Stacie Lipp
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: September 30, 1994
Production note: The first on-screen appearance of Gary, the owner of the shoe store, after eight seasons in which the character was referred to as a man.
Production note: Al confirms he has worked at Gary’s Shoes for over twenty years.
Title note: A sequel to the previous week’s title, with the same double meaning.