Season 6 Episode 22: The Goodbye Girl

April 19, 1992

Published 04/19/92

Al Bundy takes his annual vacation in this episode, and the vacation consists of sitting on his own couch with a rented videotape, a prop hat and an appropriate beverage, pretending to be somewhere else. He visits New York by way of Escape from New York. He visits Washington by way of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. He spends a stretch in Casablanca in a Rick Blaine hat, delivering the line. Bud, who has watched eighteen years of these world cruises, finally says something about it, and Al’s explanation of why he does it is the best writing in the episode and not funny in the way the setup suggests: he knows he is sitting on the couch, and the reason he needs to believe otherwise for one week a year is the other fifty-one. Meanwhile Kelly has a job at TV World, a museum and theme park devoted to the history of television, where she is promoted into an on-site character called The Verminator, whose job is killing bugs in front of an audience. Kelly takes to it immediately and comes home with shoe-store-grade rants of her own about the customers, which Peg notes with alarm, saying that her daughter reminds her of someone she cannot quite place. Jefferson’s contribution is to be repeatedly accosted by children who are certain they have seen him on The Love Boat and Happy Days. The two halves of the episode rhyme nicely: Al escapes into television while his daughter goes to work inside a monument to it, and both of them end up having the same kind of day, which is the closest this family gets to a shared experience.

Episode Facts

Original air date: April 19, 1992
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 22
Overall episode number: 127
Written by: Stacie Lipp
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: March 13, 1992
Production note: The making of this episode was the subject of an MTV special called Backstage with the Bundys, which followed the cast and crew through table reads, rehearsals and taping.
Title note: From the 1977 film of the same name.