Season 3 Episode 22: Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid

August 27, 1989

Published 08/27/89

A Peeping Tom is working the neighbourhood and every woman on the street has been a target except Peggy, which she takes as a verdict on her own attractiveness rather than a stroke of luck. The episode is built on that inversion, a crime wave that becomes a compliment, and a woman insulted by being left out of it, and it is one of the better uses the series found for Peggy’s vanity, which is usually played as armour rather than need.

Al’s half has him pressing Bud into tutoring Kelly, which gives the show one of its most useful pieces of character mechanics. Bud explains that Kelly’s capacity for information is fixed, so new knowledge displaces old, a rule the series then enforced for eight more years. It is why she eventually forgets who her father is and, in a later game show episode, forgets the four touchdowns at the worst possible moment.

The half-hour was designated the third-season finale but did not air until late August 1989, months after the rest of the season, which is why it sits slightly apart from the episodes around it. It also carries the only on-screen appearance of Mrs. McGinty, a neighbour the series name-dropped for a decade without ever showing again.

School years get pinned down here: Peggy notes Kelly is a junior and she becomes a senior by the end of the episode, and Bud identifies himself as a freshman at Polk High in his last week. The episode also puts a number on the Bundy marriage, sex about once a month, lasting thirty seconds. The outfit Peggy wears in the closing scene is the one she wears in the season four opening credits.

Episode Facts

Original air date: August 27, 1989
Season 3, Episode 22, the season finale, and the 57th episode of the series
Held back from May and burned off in late August, after season 4 had already been produced
Teleplay by Jeanne Baruch and Jeanne Romano, story by Len O’Neill
Directed by Gerry Cohen