Season 3 Episode 15: The Harder They Fall

March 26, 1989

Published 03/26/89

Peggy, in the car with Steve on the way to the video store, makes an obscene gesture at another driver, and Steve is the one the other driver gets a good look at. With a man now looking for him, Steve invites the Bundys to stay at his house for protection, which is the worst decision he makes in four seasons. The Bundys move in, and the episode becomes an inventory of what they take.

The structure is a small masterpiece of escalation. Steve wants protection; the Bundys want a better house; and the longer they stay the more the arrangement tilts. When Steve finally turns them out so he can have an evening alone with his wife, Al steals their VCR on the way through the door, and the episode keeps going after the writing and directing credits have rolled, with the family still carrying things out of the Rhoades’ living room. The series almost never ran a scene past the credits, and both times it did in this season it was for a joke worth the extra seconds.

It is also an early statement of a dynamic the show would use for years: the Bundys are not malicious toward the Rhoades so much as opportunistic, and Steve’s decency is a resource they treat as renewable.

Small geography: Al says he sent Peggy to Bob’s Betas and Bell Bottoms in Milwaukee and that Steve drove her up Interstate 94, which does in fact connect Chicago to Milwaukee. Peggy mentions the family has gone through at least two parakeets. Daniel Frishman, who plays Mr. Williams, had appeared on The Jeffersons, produced by this show’s own creators.