Season 10 Episode 13: I Can’t Believe It’s Butter

December 17, 1995

Published 12/17/95

The series’ last Christmas episode, and it builds its holiday around a phone sex line. Griff has become attached to an operator who calls herself Butter, and Al makes the discovery that Butter is Peg’s mother, working the line from upstairs. The money is real: her earnings are what is paying for the Bundys’ Christmas, since the Christmas Club fund Al had been hiding in a sock turned out to contain nothing but receipts for strudel and a heavy-duty exercise device. For once the household has presents, and the price is that Al has to keep a secret from his only friend.

The secret stops being manageable when Griff tells Al he wants to ask Butter out. The sequence that follows is the episode’s centrepiece: Griff on the Bundy living room phone, Peggy upstairs doing Butter’s voice, and Al standing over her trying to coach a gentle rejection while Peggy becomes visibly interested in Griff’s offer of dinner, dancing and a sleigh ride to an airport motel. The scene gets to run long and it earns every second, because the audience knows exactly how many ways it can go wrong.

Underneath the farce the episode is doing something the show rarely did, which is let the Bundys actually have a decent Christmas, and then make Al choose between it and his friend’s feelings. The holiday material is played mostly straight: “Deck the Halls” turns up three times, there is a proper Christmas Eve meal, and the cruelty is reserved for the gift-giving scene at the top, where Al works out that the fund is empty and offers both his children a handshake instead. It is also the final appearance of Kathleen Freeman as the voice of Peg’s mother.

Episode Facts

Original air date: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 on FOX
Season 10, Episode 13
Overall episode 225 of the series
Taped November 17, 1995; production code 10.14
Written by Scott Zimbler and Joel Valentincic
Directed by Sam W. Orender
The title plays on the spread I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
The last Christmas episode of the series, and the final appearance of Kathleen Freeman as the voice of Peg’s Mom