Season 6 Episode 23: The Gas Station Show

April 26, 1992

Published 04/26/92

Al watches Shenandoah, is moved by the sight of Jimmy Stewart holding a family together, and institutes Bundy Sunday Funday, a program of compulsory family togetherness that the rest of the household receives without enthusiasm. The outing does not get far. The Dodge runs out of gas and has to be pushed into a filling station, where Al asks the attendant for two dollars’ worth of fuel and the family wanders into the convenience store and helps itself to twelve dollars of snacks that nobody pays for. With no money in the car and none at home, the station’s solution is that Al works the debt off. He is handed a set of coveralls with somebody else’s name stitched on them, and for the rest of the episode Al Bundy is Habib, pumping gas in the full service lane while his family goes off to find twelve dollars and conspicuously fails. What makes the episode is who comes through that station. The Swedish Bikini Team pull in, collect Bud and drive away with him. A busload of women from a Chicago bowling team arrives next. Peg sends Al a red gas can to fill without paying for it. Jim and Betty, a wholesome family in a nice car, serve as a running comparison the Bundys cannot survive. By the end Al has decided that next week’s Bundy Sunday Funday will involve rifles, and Kelly is delighted. It is the kind of episode the series could run on almost nothing, a single set and a parade of visitors, and the sixth season was particularly good at those. It also gave the show Habib, a name it would keep returning to for years.

Episode Facts

Original air date: April 26, 1992
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 23
Overall episode number: 128
Written by: Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: March 20, 1992
Production note: The name Habib on Al’s borrowed coveralls became a running gag for the rest of the series, most prominently in season 7’s “‘Tis Time to Smell the Roses.”
Title note: Named for the gas station Al spends the episode working at.