Season 4 Episode 20: Peggy Made a Little Lamb

April 15, 1990

Published 04/15/90

Kelly’s graduation is coming up, which sends Peg to the shelf for her old yearbook, which is how she learns something she apparently never knew: she did not graduate. She failed one class in her senior year and nobody in the family can quite believe which one. The admission that it was home economics gets exactly the response from Kelly that it deserves.

Al’s contribution is to walk in with a man he has found on the street and present him to his wife as living proof that a diploma is not required in order to matter. Peg’s response is to go back to school, which lands her in the same home economics class as her daughter, under a teacher who keeps holding up another student as the example both Bundy women should follow.

There is a first here that is easy to miss. This is the first episode in which the audience hears Buck’s inner voice, the device that eventually gave the dog whole monologues and a running commentary on the family. Up to this point he had been a dog who reacted; from here he became a character with opinions. It is also the last appearance of the homeless man who had been turning up all season whenever a Bundy hit bottom. For a late season 4 episode this one does a surprising amount of groundwork. It sets up Kelly’s graduation, which the next two episodes pay off, it retires a running gag, and it introduces a device the show leaned on for the rest of its run. None of that is announced, which is generally how this series handled its own furniture.