Al starts his own phone line for people in need of shoe advice, and asks Steve for a simple $18,000 loan, but Steve bumps it up to $50,000 so he can beat his rival in a sales contest and Steve's boss warns him that if Al doesn't come through with the money, he'll be out of the job.
Tropes
- Actually Pretty Funny: The judge at Al's sentencing laughs at his predicament, gets serious and yells at him for his crimes, then laughs at him again, causing almost everyone else in the gallery to laugh as well.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: It's clear that by his final commercial that even Al himself has given up hope that his shoe line is marketable so he desperately tries to get sympathy by forcing his family to come on, asking kids to call and agreeing not to tell their parents, and even offering himself up as a hitman. By the time Marcy comes into strangle him, she's really just putting everyone involved in the plan out of their misery.
- Angst Coma: Steve falls into one that lasts for many hours upon being told by his boss that he'll be fired if Al doesn't pay back the loan Steve issued him. Seeing Al's business flop triggers Steve into this trope.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Muffy, the "actress" from the first Dr. Shoe commercial, has this with her acting and the delivery of her lines.(with a blank delivery) Oh, Dr. Shoe. I-don't-know-what-to-do. I-am-going-to-a-party-in-five-minutes-and-both-of-my-shoes-are-too-tight-for-my-feet. (Beat) Ouch!
- Bait-and-Switch Compassion: At Al's trial for creating a fraudulent phone line, the judge first laughed at Al, then got serious and yelled at him, and then laughed at him again, which prompted the entire courtroom to join in.
- Beyond the Impossible: Al somehow managed to get his mortgage extended for a century and a half to pay back Steve and Marcy's banks. This goes explained on the basis giving him the death penalty wouldn't teach him anything.
- Brick Joke: Earlier in the episode, Peg tells the police officer that Al has unpaid parking tickets. At the end, Bud mentions that after Al pays off both the loans, he has to pay off the parking tickets. Al asks how the hell the law knew about it, and Peg lies and says that Steve must have ratted him out.
- Credit Card Plot: Peggy at the beginning gets all her credit cards confiscated by a police officer. She tries to bribe him to give them back to her with a sandwich, but he claims he filled up on donuts while waiting for a jumper to make up his mind.
- Cruel Mercy: At the trial's conclusion, Al said he begged the judge to give him the death penalty, but the judge decided that a better punishment would be to combine the debts owed to Steve and Marcie's banks by using the house as collateral, thus, according to Al, he has an additional one hundred years of mortgage payments to make.
- Disaster Dominoes: The episode starts with Al being faced with a pile of bills, including possibly owing Ed [McMahon] ten million dollars. From there:
- Al tries to borrow $18,000 to start a "shoe hotline", while Steve gives him $50,000 to win a work contest for a Hawaiian vacation. Steve's boss then warns him that, because Steve's made so many bad loans trying to win the vacation, he'll be fired if Al defaults.
- Shockingly, no one calls Al's hotline. That's when he reveals to Peg that he signed the Bundy house over as collateral.
- Steve realizes that he's done for, but Marcy says she'll loan Al another $50,000 from her own bank to pay Steve back. Instead, Al re-invests Marcy's loan in his shoe hotline.
- Al produces a series of increasingly pathetic commercials that fail to attract any more business or do much of anything besides humiliate Peg and the kids, who he forces to appear with him. The last commercial has Marcy strangling him on camera.
- Finally, Al gets publicly berated in court by a judge and laughed at by the entire courtroom. Steve is fired from his bank, Marcy is demoted to drive-up window teller at hers, and Al's mortgage is somehow extended by over a century and a half.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Steve is so eager to win his bank's Hawaiian vacation prize that he makes 40 bad loans. He even initially says that no banker in his right mind would give Al even a nickel for his moronic shoe hotline idea, but then another loan officer is about to beat him for the prize. He even gives Al $50,000 when Al was only asking for $18,000.
- Al got the idea for his shoe hotline from the number of customers who were apparently calling him for shoe advice. It apparently never occurred to him that the customers wouldn't want to pay for something he was giving for free.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Al stated one reason his court trial took so long to decide the fitting punishment for him regarding his misuse of large loans was that every lawyer in the room were staring at that blonde bimbo in the red mini for hours, which was Kelly.
- Downer Ending: Al's shoe hotline falters, he now owes $100,000, and his family (despite saying that they still love him) rag on him for what he's done.
- Epic Fail: Al's entire attempt at creating a shoe hotline ends with him being a public laughingstock, Steve fired from his bank, Marcy demoted at hers, and Al's mortgage extended to the year 2157.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: During Al's final Dr. Shoe commercial, he brings the family on with him. As Peg proudly waves, Kelly hides her face with her hair, Bud bows his head down and Buck turns away from the camera.
- For Want Of A Nail: Steve lent the money to Al simply to afford a free trip to Hawaii. Getting bullied by a co-worker who gained a margin over him eggs Steve into writing up a huge loan to Al comprised of more money than what Al needed to set up simply a toll line.
- Hypocrite:
- Peg starts chiding Al for putting up their house as collateral for the $50k loan he got from Steve to acquire funding for the Dr. Shoe hotline. Earlier in this episode, Peg fell behind on credit card payments and accrued debt that got bad enough a police officer came knocking on her door and took all her credit cards away.
- Marcy reprimands Steve for loaning money to Al claiming Al cannot be trusted with money. Then she loans money to Al herself so he can pay back Steve. If Steve couldn't entrust Al to use his bank's money wisely, what made Marcy think Al would use money from HER bank for the wiser?
- She also says she doesn't blame Al for mismanaging Steve's loan money, comparing it to giving a monkey a gun. Guess who she blames when Al mismanages the money she loaned him?
- I Have a Family: When Al doesn't get even one person to call his shoe hotline, he resorts to bringing in Peg, Kelly, Bud and Buck onto his commercials claiming he has a family to feed and whines they're all starving.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Though cracks had been showing for some time now, this episode is the start of the Rhoades' failing marriage.
- Insane Troll Logic: What Kelly claims she thought was going to save the Bundy family money. The Heavy Metal Hotline (the phone number Kelly called constantly) is $3 for the first minute then $0.50 for every additional minute. Kelly being horrible at math thinks that piling on additional minutes could make the bill more expensive so she hung up every one minute and called back, thus making the bill at least six times more expensive than had she not hung up.
- Kitschy Local Commercial: Even for a combined sum of $100,000 from the reserves of Steve and Marcy's banks, Al couldn't afford high-quality commercials for his shoe toll line.
- Ping Pong Naivety: Peg is the first one to ask what Al used as collateral for the loan, yet things Marcy loaning them $50,000 from her bank absolves them of the debt.
- Shockingly Expensive Bill: Al faces one at the beginning which is the phone bill and it's Peg, Bud, and Kelly's fault. Peg constantly calls her mom who lives in Milwaukee, Bud made dozens of calls to phone sex workers (which Al doesn't mind after Bud explains himself), and Kelly made the bill skyrocket with her idiotic plan to call the Heavy Metal hotline by calling the number, hanging up, and calling them back (since it cost $3 for the first minute and $.50 for each additional minute, Kelly got it in her head to do this to avoid being charged extra).
- The Stool Pigeon: Peg tries ratting out Al to the police officer who is confiscating her credit cards hoping that there's a financial reward for turning him in. Much to her dismay, there isn't one.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- When Peg says nobody is stupid enough to call a shoe hotline, Al shoots back that in high school, everyone thought nobody was stupid enough to marry the big redhead (Peg). Apparently Al didn't realize that the only person stupid enough to marry the big redhead is also the only person who'd be stupid enough to think a shoe hotline would work.
- Steve for agreeing to lend $50,000 to Al, who is a very high-risk borrower with low credit and already has a lot of debt to pay off thanks to his greedy family.
- Al for using Marcy's loan to re-invest in the failing shoe line rather than pay back Steve's loan so Steve can keep his job and Marcy can safely bury the bad loan since she already has a good record at her bank (this is pretty much in Disaster Dominoes and Epic Fail territory, since it got Al strangled by Marcy on live TV, taken to court and sentenced to pay off the debt until long after he's dead, led to both Steve and Marcy to get in trouble at their bank jobs [Steve got fired while Marcy got demoted], and is yet another failure his family mocks him for).
