User Reviews

When his beloved barber Tony dies, Al is unable to find a replacement for an old-fashioned barber shop and refuses to visit a hair salon. He lets his hair grow out to late-Beatle length before finally giving in. The salon is inhabited by beautiful women and outrageously gay guys. There are a lot of laughs in the visit.

A beautiful blond sits next to Al and he complements her on her lustrous locks. She's very receptive and asks if he's rich. "Well, no." She gets up and walks off.

When he's led to a chair he chats with the girl who will do his hair. "My barber charges a buck and a quarter. How much does it cost here?" She replies, "Sixty dollars." Al: "No -- seriously." He tries to sneak into his house without being seen, his head now covered with carefully arranged curls. When the family's laughter subsides, Peggy observes that his nose hairs are longer than ever. Al explains that they've been moussed.

His pals from the bowling alley are in the same shape. They all wind up with hair styles that are Baroque in quality and appearance. They can't smoke anymore because the odor gets into their hair. They can't go bowling because the fluorescent lights stress their treatments. They're late for their get-togethers because it takes time to shape and blow dry. Louie begins to identify with his hair. He LIKES his cut, which looks like the helmet of a Medieval pikesman. "Louie, you're a plumber," Al reminds him. "You know, I was never really comfortable being a plumber." Al takes the others aside and remarks, "It's all over for Louie, and Tom -- you're slipping."

This is one of the better episodes, packed with gags and about as politically incorrect as it gets.

Comedy is an odd beast, reflective of the times it was made. Censorship is an even funnier one as it reflects the times of which it wasn't made in some cases. I bring this up because the infamous Lost Episode was made shortly after this one but yet one feels that maybe Fox made an error in raising a fuss. The Lost Episode, sadly, is just a normal-to-maybe-lesser episode that gained infamy due to censorship. This episode, however, really becomes a lesson in poor taste.

Married with Children has always been a show that wasn't afraid to showcase its characters as flawed. Al is a good symbol of this: a man who never really grew out of his glory days, he now hates his life and what it has become and wishes he knew what had happened that reduced him to this. He holds onto things that keep up the illusion of him as a prime athlete in high school much to his own detriment: overt masculinity, honor, pride, and he immerses himself in the idea of masculinity which is really pathetic and sad and one of the major reasons he never really grew beyond high school. But the main thrust of this episode doesn't mock that as it usually does but sides with him as he punches down and basically makes stereotypes out of gay people.

Yeah, the '80s were not kind to gay people to say the very least. And we can't really expect shows of this time to showcase viewpoints made nearly forty years later. But this episode seems especially cruel in many regards. Yes, masculinity itself is a very fragile thing despite the illusion it tries to present. But a lot of it this seems like very low-hanging fruit that really comes off as infantile and just mean for its own sake. And if you're going to be mean, be funny about it, don't just prop up stereotypes. Dig deep, comedy has that power.

But in the long run, this is a very unique episode that showcases the attitudes of its time even if they seem quite unfair. This particular episode should not be censored by any stretch of the imagination. But you might want to go into this one a bit more prepared than most. Especially when Al thinks that homosexuality can be cured by sticking one's head in an open fire hydrant.