Season 2 Episode 7: For Whom the Bell Tolls

October 25, 1987

Published 10/25/87

Al refuses to pay for a long-distance call to Canada, and the phone company disconnects the house. The Bundys then have to function without a telephone, which in 1987 meant genuine isolation, no messages, no arrangements, and no way for Kelly or Bud to conduct the social lives that constitute their entire existence. Running underneath it is a second grievance: the neighbourhood has installed a crime light, and it shines directly into Al’s face at night.

The pairing is what makes the episode work. Both problems are about Al’s inability to control the small physical conditions of his own life, and in both cases the thing tormenting him was installed for everybody’s benefit. He cannot turn off the light and he cannot afford the phone, and the episode refuses to resolve either in a way that leaves him satisfied.

The half-hour contains one of the series’ best-travelled images. Kelly, discovering that Bud has been listening in on her phone call, stands in the kitchen and blows a whistle down the line, a shot the show liked enough to lift into the opening credits for the American syndicated prints of seasons one and two. There is also a nice piece of accidental geography: Al says Peg’s mother is in Milwaukee, which places Wanker County somewhere in or near Milwaukee County, and the series never contradicted it. Peggy spends part of the episode speaking Pig Latin to her mother to keep Al from following the conversation.

Taken together the two complaints make a reasonable case for the series’ whole worldview: Al Bundy’s life is not ruined by catastrophe but by utilities, bills and municipal improvements, administered by people who will never meet him. The telephone comes back when somebody pays, and the light stays on.