Season 5 Episode 24: Route 666 (2)

May 5, 1991

Published 05/05/91

The season 5 finale, and one of the purest demonstrations of the show’s basic philosophy that the Bundys will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to win. Picking up from part one, Al has his map, Jefferson has put up the money, and the two families are out in the New Mexico desert digging for gold. At first it works. They find it, in quantity, and the discovery immediately does to all six of them what sudden wealth does to people in stories like this one. They stop cooperating. They start hoarding. They begin eyeing each other’s piles and making plans that do not include anyone else. Al sinks into a long fantasy sequence about the life that awaits him, populated by a procession of women named after nuts, in which he is wearing a Polk High jersey and is finally, at last, somebody. Bud announces his intention to buy a house next to the Playboy Mansion and run his own parties out of it. Peg and Marcy make their own arrangements. And then the punchline arrives, which is that the mine is not a mine at all. It is a tourist attraction. Visitors pay to dig there, the ground is salted with iron pyrite, and every ounce the two families have hauled out of the dirt and fought each other over is worthless. The episode closes on all six of them sitting on a California beach watching the ocean, which is as close to a happy ending as this series was ever prepared to go.

Episode Facts

Original air date: May 5, 1991
Season and episode: Season 5, Episode 24
Overall episode number: 104
Written by: Ralph R. Farquhar
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Production note: The season 5 finale and the conclusion of the two part “Route 666” story.
Production note: Instead of the usual freeze frame of Al and Peg on the couch, the original broadcast closed on the Bundys and Darcys sitting on a California beach watching the waves.
Title note: A play on U.S. Route 66 crossed with 666.