Lee Arenberg living out Al Bundy’s fantasy

Marty Slash is so anxious to get in the electric chair, he runs ahead of the guards and slips into it as quick as Mike Moffitt into George Costanza’s parking space — which makes sense as both characters are played by Lee Arenberg.

Iggy Pop appears as himself showing how cool, hip and edgy he is by dropping about — yawn — 15 F-bombs in 30 seconds.  Between him and anticipating the vastly over-rated Sam Kinison later in the episode, I was ready to jump into Old Sparky myself.

Slash is Iggy Pop’s manager and has been running a scam of benefit concerts to save the Amazon rain forest while pocketing the donations himself.  Now that the receipts have hit $1 million, it is time for him to take off.  He opens up a wall safe hidden behind an Alice Cooper poster and his conscience speaks up in the voice of Sam Kinison.

Katey Sagal shows up dressed a goth chick — a 36 year old goth chick.  If Chloe O’Brien couldn’t pull it off, no way Peg Bundy can.  Turns out that was just disguise to enter the club.  She is really a banker — Miss Kielbasa, named after her father no doubt — who is on to Marty’s scam.  She saw Marty withdraw the $1 million that morning and wants half.  As Katey counts out her half, he goes all Pete Townsend on her head and stuffs her in a drum case.  Whether it was a stunt-woman or rubber legs, they looked pretty convincing being stuffed into that case.

As his conscience yells at him, he rebels by pouring medicine in his ear and reaming it out with a giant Q-Tip.  When the Q-Tips don’t work, he threatens to stab his conscience with a sharpened pencil.  He wises up just before puncturing his eardrum.

As he goes out in the club, his conscience, doing what Sam Kinison does best, begins screaming.  It screams to the waitress that Marty killed his banker and taunts Marty that she heard him.  He is so sweaty and manic that their reaction to him makes him wonder if they really did hear his “confession.”

He turns the music up in the club to drown out his conscience.  That brings in the cops.  Convinced that his conscience has screamed his secret, he busts the sound system and says, “I didn’t mean to kill my banker.”  He opens his briefcase, spilling the money into the crowd which is strangely subdued at the sight of $1 million cash.

Turns out the looks people were giving him were not reactions to the screams of his conscience, but to the bloody pencil still protruding from his ear.  A more reasonable reaction might have been to say, “Dude there’s a bloody pencil in your ear.”  His conscience taunts him that if he had kept his mouth shut, he could have gotten away with it.  For 2 years on death row, his conscience torments him until he is begging for the chair.

Lee Arenberg was made for TFTC.  His hammy, over-the-top acting and rubber face brought campy humor back to the series.  Sam Kinison was great in the small dose and, as a bonus, we didn’t have to look at him.  Iggy Pop just came off as an asshole.  The Stooges were strangely absent.

Post-Post:

• One of the jive-taking dudes from Airplane! plays a cop.
• In an unusual event, Costanza’s is actually in the right.