Season 1 Episode 3: But I Didn’t Shoot the Deputy

April 19, 1987

Published 04/19/87

There is a robber working the neighbourhood, and the two households respond in character. The Rhoades, having been burgled, acquire a guard dog named Bella. Al buys a gun. The episode is built to put both defences to the test on the same night, and the test does not go well for the dog: Al hears a noise, fires, and hits Bella, who is never once seen on screen. The series had been on the air for three weeks and had already worked out that the funniest version of an event is often the one that happens just out of frame.

What the half-hour is really establishing is the shape of the Al-and-Steve relationship, which would carry the first four seasons. Steve is competent, anxious and law-abiding; Al is none of those things and is entirely confident anyway. Steve raises the shooting again in “Where’s the Boss?” later in the same season, which is the show demonstrating early that it intended to keep track of what its characters had done to each other.

Two smaller firsts are worth noting. This is the first time the audience sees the Rhoades’ back yard, and the first time Marcy digresses mid-sentence into contemplating violence against someone, a tic Amanda Bearse would develop into one of the character’s most reliable moves. It is also the first episode to make an issue of Kelly’s schooling: told that Bud is disgusting for wanting to look at the body, Bud’s rebuttal is that his sister is failing five classes. The episode went out on the same night The Simpsons first appeared, as animated shorts, on The Tracey Ullman Show.