Bud’s Episode Vault
Season 4 Episode 11: It’s a Bundyful Life (1)
Al has actually saved money for Christmas presents, and a late rush at the shoe store stops him reaching the bank before it closes. The two-parter aired the same night The Simpsons premiered on FOX, and both episodes lean on the same Christmas song.
Season 4 Episode 12: It’s a Bundyful Life (2)
A guardian angel shows Al what his family’s life would be like if he had never been born, and the answer is that they would all be much better off. Sam Kinison plays the angel — he had been the producers’ first choice to play Al Bundy.
Season 4 Episode 10: At the Zoo
Steve is out of work after the hotline disaster and has been filling his days taking Peg and the kids to the zoo instead of job hunting. Marcy, now demoted to drive-up teller and working fifty hours a week, finds out. The episode is unusual for giving Al and Marcy a genuine scene as friends.
Season 4 Episode 9: Oh, What a Feeling
Al has been burying money in a shoe box in the backyard for a new car. Peg found it, dug it up and spent it, so Al goes shopping with nothing and works his way down through progressively worse used cars. He ends his search with the same vehicle he started with, lightly disguised.
Season 4 Episode 8: 976-SHOE
Al decides the world needs a shoe advice hotline and asks Steve for fifty thousand dollars to build one. Steve approves the loan to win a sales contest, and the decision ends up costing him his job at the bank and getting Marcy demoted. It is the most expensive thing Al does to the Rhoades in the entire series.
Season 4 Episode 7: Desperately Seeking Miss October
Al serves a customer at the shoe store and recognises her as a Playboy centrefold, which sends him home to dig out the issue and prove it. The magazines are gone. Peg sold the whole collection to buy a good luck charm called Tubro, the fat Panamanian god of money, and Al makes her get every last one back.
Season 4 Episode 6: Fair Exchange
The Bundys take in a French exchange student for one reason only, which is the five hundred dollars a month that comes with her. Yvette settles in quickly and then starts outshining Kelly at school, which nobody in the house had budgeted for. Played by a thirteen-year-old Milla Jovovich, years before anyone knew the name.
Season 4 Episode 5: He Ain’t Much, But He’s Mine
Peggy decides that a customer at the salon is having an affair with Al and starts behaving strangely. Al is covering a colleague’s shift and has no idea any of it is happening. The episode opens and closes with Peggy throttling him in his sleep.
Season 4 Episode 4: Tooth or Consequences
Al has a toothache, and the dentist he ends up with is in the middle of a bitter divorce and has a patient who cannot answer back. The episode also does the arithmetic on Al’s week: ten hours a day, six days, one day off.
Season 4 Episode 3: Buck Saves the Day
Bud rents his father out to the neighborhood as a professional woodsman to raise concert money, and sends him into the woods with a party of local children. Al knows nothing about camping. Back home, Peggy hosts the women’s answer to season one’s poker game.