Season 6 Episode 5: Looking for a Desk in All the Wrong Places

October 6, 1991

Published 10/06/91

Two separate plots here, and both of them are about people behaving very badly about a baby. On the Darcy side, Marcy has decided that her own childhood furniture will be good enough for her child, and the centerpiece of that collection is a small pink desk. The problem is that the storage locker holding all of it was auctioned off, because Jefferson never paid for the unit. Marcy, pregnant and off the medication she had been taking for her moods, sets out with Peg to track the contents down, and the version of Marcy that errand produces is genuinely unhinged. Her reminiscence about holding tea parties at that desk for her imaginary friends is one of Amanda Bearse’s best moments in the entire series, mostly because the imaginary friends did not enjoy it. Jennifer, the popular girl, was made to drink four or five cups. Robert, the cute one who normally threw milk in her face, spent his visits on the floor kissing her four-year-old feet. Back at the house, Al, Bud and Kelly have convened what they are formally calling the Anti-Baby Meeting, complete with minutes, a secretary and a required opening salute of “hail baby.” The minutes are read aloud. They are not supportive. Al floats name suggestions that his own children consider cruel, and offers his broader policy proposal for the relocation of every pregnant woman in America to a renamed Idaho. Jefferson, having been found out about the locker, ends the episode in the backyard singing to the dog.

Episode Facts

Original air date: October 6, 1991
Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 5
Overall episode number: 110
Written by: Stacie Lipp
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: September 13, 1991
Production note: The only appearance of the Bundy Anti-Baby Meeting.
Title note: From the lyric “looking for love in all the wrong places” in Johnny Lee’s 1980 single “Lookin’ for Love.”