Season 6 Episode 24: England Show (1)

May 3, 1992

Published 05/03/92

The first part of the England trilogy, the most ambitious thing Married with Children ever attempted, and it opens with the Bundys winning an all-expenses-paid trip to Britain. The prize is not a prize. It comes from a village called Lower Uncton, which has lived under a curse since 1653, when an ancestor of Al’s named Seamus McBundy insulted a witch and the witch responded by blocking out the village’s sunlight in perpetuity. The terms of the curse are specific: it lifts only when the last male Bundy dies inside the village limits. There are exactly two male Bundys left in the world, and the village has just flown both of them in. What the Bundys do not know, and what makes the arc more than a one-joke premise, is that the neighbouring village of Upper Uncton has the opposite interest. Lower Uncton’s permanent darkness is a tourist attraction that Upper Uncton profits from, so their job is to make sure Al and Bud die anywhere except within those limits. The Darcys come along because Jefferson’s original plan had been Epcot and this was free, and Marcy spends most of the episode chasing luggage that never arrives. The London sections are played as straight tourism comedy: the flight, Harrods, the Queen’s Guard, and a stop at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where Al addresses a crowd on the subject of women and discovers that English men will join a Whoa Bundy. It is an unusually big swing for a sitcom in its sixth season, and the fact that it works at all is down to the casting of the English side, who play the whole conspiracy completely straight.

Episode Facts

Original air date: May 3, 1992
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 24
Overall episode number: 129
Written by: Ellen L. Fogle
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: March 30, 1992
Production note: Part one of the three episode England arc that closed season 6.
Production note: Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye voice two of the dogs in the pound alongside Buck, and sing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
Title note: All three parts are simply called the England Show.