Season 4 Episode 6: Fair Exchange

October 29, 1989

Published 10/29/89

Al agrees to host a foreign exchange student, and he is completely upfront about why: the placement pays five hundred dollars a month and that money is going on groceries. Yvette arrives from France, fits into the household faster than anyone expected, and then starts doing something the Bundys were not prepared for, which is succeeding. She becomes more popular than Kelly at school, and Kelly has no framework for being the second most interesting girl in a room.

What makes the episode work is that it does not let Kelly be the butt of it. She is genuinely wounded, she sits at the desk and sulks about it, and the house actually convenes to deal with her. Peg sends the Rhoades in to talk to her, which is how the best scene in the episode happens: Marcy explaining, with total sincerity, that she was not popular at school either, and that she could not get a date with a cool guy no matter what she was prepared to do. Steve, sitting right there, laughs at the nerd she ended up dating for several seconds before the realisation lands on his face.

There is also a detail at the top that tells you everything about this family’s finances. Al mentions it is the day after Thanksgiving, and the Bundys are eating pizza, because they ate the toppings and the cheese on the day itself and saved the crusts for leftovers. The episode aired in October, which makes the Thanksgiving reference one of the odder scheduling artefacts in season 4.