Season 3 Episode 17: Married… with Prom Queen (1)

April 23, 1989

Published 04/23/89

Peggy’s high school reunion is approaching and she intends to be prom queen, a title she never won and has not stopped wanting. Her chances collapse when Connie Bender arrives, a rival remembered by a rhyme that the episode is happy to repeat, and Al, meanwhile, runs into his own past, which for Al means the people who were there for the four touchdowns.

This is the episode that gives Peggy a maiden name, and it is Wanker. The choice created a genuine international problem: the series aired in Britain on Sky One, where the word is an obscenity, and the broadcaster cut every reference to it. For years British viewers watched a character whose family name was audibly absent.

The first draft of the script, which survives online, differs in several respects: Connie was originally called Nancy, with a rhyme of her own, and the phone company’s two-thousand-dollar bill was delivered to Peggy in person. What made the final cut is leaner and gives more room to the reunion itself.

Two pieces of household lore land here. Edna reveals that Peggy’s high school boyfriend was Todd Fleming. And Bud, hunting for food, finds a goldfish named Freddy in the freezer, which he had put there as a child believing it would keep the fish safe until a cure was found, the same joke the series ran again eight seasons later in “Children of the Corns,” with Kelly’s turtle. Steve also notes that Buck runs next door and hides under the Rhoades’ bed every day around suppertime.