MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: "OLDIES BUT YOUNG UNS" (1991)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

This fifth-season episode is mostly a "life dumps on Al" story. Kelly gets a complementary subplot, while Bud, Peg, Marcy and Jefferson appear mostly as window-dressing.

It's Saturday night and Kelly has been waiting an unusually long time for her date Vinnie (Matt LeBlanc). Bud is kind enough to suggest that his sister's date isn't coming because her long history of hookups have left her "hagged out." Kelly suggests that he ought to go practice lovemaking with his Ninja Turtles doll, Donatello. Vinnie arrives and Kelly introduces Bud as the troll who lives under the house, which Vinnie completely believes. Vinnie quells Kelly's anger at his lateness by giving her a GARFIELD book. "No other boy has ever given me literature!"

Al comes home, and after warning Vinnie not to touch his daughter, pesters the family with his obsession about an old song, a fragment of which he heard on the radio. When neither the family members nor the neighbors can identity the tune-snippet Al heard, the frenetic shoe salesman invites over an old buddy named Charlie (Joseph Bologna), also Vinnie's dad. Why didn't Al didn't just call Charlie on the phone and hum the tune-snippet? More on that later.

Al seeks out an oldies record store, but the employee can't help him. The shoe salesman launches into an impassioned plea for God to hear his one lousy desire, and, as if in answer, a nearby jukebox starts playing the exact song Al wants. He's able to buy the record he wants and take it home. But in Al's world, God giveth only to take away.

The only reason Charlie and Vinnie are in "Oldies But Young 'Uns" is to set up the back-door pilot that appeared in the same season a few episodes later, focusing almost entirely on the antics of father and son (with a piddling guest-appearance by Al Bundy). Said pilot was titled "Top of the Heap," the same as the very short-lived sitcom that resulted. "Top" is IMO one of the worst back-door pilots ever made, but it was the only time the makers of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN succeeded in spinning anything off from their one huge sitcom success.