Season 2 Episode 12: Earth Angel

December 6, 1987

Published 12/06/87

Bud brings home Tiffany, an aspiring artist passing through Chicago on her way to art school in New York, and installs her in the house. She is attractive, free-spirited and entirely without side, and every member of the household takes to her, which is the problem, because she takes the attention that normally belongs to Marcy. The episode is one of the first to make Marcy’s need to be the most interesting woman in the neighbourhood into a plot rather than a character note.

What gives the half-hour its warmth is how uncomplicated Tiffany is. She does not want anything from the Bundys, is not scheming, and treats the house as a pleasant place to pass through, which nobody in it has ever experienced before. The series would bring in outsiders repeatedly over eleven years and almost always use them as a threat; this early version is closer to a brief holiday for everybody except the woman next door.

The episode is a minor landmark for Al’s social circle. Four of his friends turn up to work in the back yard, and this is the only appearance of two of them, Larry and Dennis: Norris and Barney had already appeared and kept turning up for years. Larry is played by Gene LeBell, the martial artist and stunt performer, who returned to the series several times in both speaking and non-speaking roles. Al also establishes that Thursday is his bowling night, a fact the show weaponised six seasons later in “NO MA’AM,” when the Masculine Feminist turned Thursdays into ladies’ night.