Married... with Children (TV Series) Al Bundy, Shoe Dick (1991) User Reviews

The Best Way Out

[Nick Zbu · 10/10 · 9 April 2022]

You don't need to dig far to see how Married With Children had to have a massive rethink regarding their plans for their sixth season. They went in with an idea of how they wanted the overarching story arc of the season to go -- another way to add more hell to Al's life -- and real life got in the way. So, they had to pull the ejection lever and do what could have been nearly impossible: keep everything they wanted from the first half of the season yet reset the Status Quo and make an interesting episode out of it. And it works.

And it's funny. Most episodes that have to revamp the season or reset it are usually dreary affairs that put continuity first for the show to continue and make it funny as an afterthought. But this episode goes into a whole new territory with Al Bundy and manages to be a classic while resetting the season outright. It's a gem to behold. Al Bundy as a hapless detective who manages to edge out a win is really one of the finer moments of the show and easily one of the best episodes of this part of the show's run even if it was written to gracefully back out of an abandoned storyline.

Surely, a better title would have been 'Al, the gumshoe'.

[BA_Harrison · 2 December 2022]

Peggy wants Al to get a second job so that they will be a two-income family. Al gets work as a janitor for detective Jack Dallas, but when a beautiful blonde woman, Vanessa Van Pelt (Traci Lords, looking amazing), enters the office while Dallas is out, Al pretends to be the private eye's partner.

Vanessa believes that she is about to inherit a priceless gem from her elderly Uncle Franklin, and needs protection from her other greedy relatives. Al visits the Van Pelt mansion to check out the situation, but while he is there the lights go out, and when they come back on the uncle is dead, the diamond is missing, and he is holding the murder weapon, a bloody dagger.

This episode is a lot of fun for fans of old detective movies, Al providing a noir-style voice-over, with Lords putting in a sizzling performance as a Veronica Lake-style femme fatale. The other relatives are also an amusingly eccentric bunch: a suave young man, a big breasted brunette, a man with two hooks instead of hands, and the family idiot, all of whom have an alibi.

Al finally manages to solve the case using his shoe knowledge and is rewarded with a cheque for $50,000, but wakes up to find that it has all been a dream.

This is also the episode that does away with the pregnancy plot that has dominated season six by revealing that it too was part of his dream.