Season 3 Episode 13: Can’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me (aka Kelly’s Dance)

March 19, 1989

Published 03/19/89

Kelly gets into trouble at school over an incident on a bus, and the only alternative to punishment is joining the tap-dance club. She has no interest in dancing, which is the premise, and her dance partner turns out to be Bruno, the school janitor, which gives the episode a second plot about what Kelly is actually interested in.

There is a layer of casting irony on top of the whole thing. Christina Applegate has a serious dance background and was an original member of a professional dance ensemble; Jesse Borrego, who plays Bruno, had come off Fame, a series entirely about performing arts students, and is also a trained dancer. Two accomplished dancers playing people who are supposed to be out of their depth is a joke the audience was never told about. Kelly dances to “Fever,” a song Katey Sagal later covered for the 2017 television remake of Dirty Dancing.

Al’s contribution is a statement of family doctrine. Told his daughter is in trouble, his position is that there are two things Bundys do not do: eat vegetables and tap, which lines up with the list he recites two episodes earlier. He is overruled.

The episode is also quietly generous with wedding-day history from both households. Marcy reveals that Steve’s mother sews his name into his underwear, which she discovered at their wedding; Peggy counters that Al’s mother threw up in the dip at theirs. Steve, inevitably, took tap in high school and played the accordion. The episode aired as a double bill with “A Three Job, No Income Family” after a two-week break.