Season 5 Episode 6: Kelly Bounces Back

October 28, 1990

Published 10/28/90

Kelly is out of school and has no intention of doing anything at all, a position she defends on the grounds that her mother told her she does not have to, because she is a girl. Peg nods along. Al’s counter-argument is that federal law now permits only one human lump per household, and that the position is taken.

Kelly’s answer is modelling, which costs Al four hundred dollars a month in training and produces the Bundy Bounce, her one technique. Her rival at the auditions is Piper Bauman, and the casting agent holding the whole thing together is Miss Beck.

The casting is the real pleasure. Miss Beck is played by Tina Louise, who was Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, and across several episodes the show had established that Ginger was Al’s ideal woman. Putting her in a scene with him and never acknowledging it is a joke for the audience rather than the character. Piper is Tia Carrere, two years before Wayne’s World. And the first girl to audition is Debbe Dunning, who went on to Home Improvement, where she replaced Pamela Anderson, who had appeared on this show four episodes earlier.

Running underneath is the remote control plot, in which Peg works out that Al will trade almost anything for the remote and uses it accordingly. Al’s hand twitching involuntarily without it in his grip is the best physical gag in the episode. For a Kelly episode it is unusually generous to her. She is not punished for trying, the training is not revealed to be a scam, and the Bundy Bounce actually works. The show spent most of its run finding ways to cut her off at the knees, so an episode where the plan more or less succeeds is worth noting.