Season 5 Episode 1: We’ll Follow the Sun

September 23, 1990

Published 09/23/90

Season 5 opens with the family immobilised. They are in the car, on the road home, stuck in a traffic jam that does not move, and the episode largely stays there. It is the kind of constraint the show liked: put the four of them in a confined space with nothing to do and let the dialogue carry the half hour.

The car itself is a joke for anyone who has been watching from the start. It is the red Mustang convertible Al and Peg won on the sadistic game show back in season 2, which means the one genuinely good thing that ever happened to this family is now the box they are trapped inside.

Around the traffic, the season does its housekeeping. Kelly has graduated and arrives with her diploma. Bud announces he is a senior now, which Kelly undercuts within one line. Marcy reveals she has her managerial job back at the bank, and the method she gives for getting it involves her boss’s desk and a slip, which is the kind of detail the show liked to hand Marcy and then never mention again. Peggy also mentions watching the premiere of a programme called All Night Security Dude, which turns out to be the title of an episode later this same season.

The exchange to listen for is the cold open, where Peg asks whether she was missed and Al answers in a way that sets the tone for the next twenty-five episodes. As a season opener it is an odd choice, because nothing in it advances anything. That is probably the point. After a season 4 that broke up the Rhoades marriage and wrote out a regular, the show came back with twenty-two minutes of four people sitting still and insulting each other, as if to reassure the audience that the furniture was unchanged.