Season 7 Episode 3: Every Bundy Has a Birthday

September 27, 1992

Published 09/27/92

Seven has been living with the Bundys for a few weeks and nobody knows when his birthday is, so the family picks one for him and takes the party to the park. The park, it turns out, has been rented for the afternoon by a wealthy family throwing a considerably larger celebration for their own son, complete with a hired skywriting display, and they have put up a barrier to keep the public away from it. The father, Philip, is an insufferable man who holds a black belt and mentions it, and the collision between the two parties occupies the rest of the episode. Al’s position is that the park belongs to the people because he pays taxes, a claim Peg undermines immediately by pointing out that he has not paid any in years. Running under the birthday plot is the better story, which is the three natural-born Bundys working out that Peg is giving Seven affection they never got. Their complaint is not that he is unwelcome. It is that he has not earned the name. Being a Bundy, as they explain it, is a qualification you obtain through accumulated humiliation, and Seven has not yet been told that the service entrance is in back. Al delivers a short family history going back to the first Bundy off the Mayflower, who stepped off about halfway across, and whose recorded last words were that he thought they had arrived. It is a better Seven episode than most, largely because the character spends it being talked about rather than talking.

Episode Facts

Original air date: September 27, 1992
Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 3
Overall episode number: 134
Written by: Richard Gurman
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: September 4, 1992
Production note: This episode puts three Bundy birthdays on the record at once: Peggy’s in April, Bud’s on January 22nd and Kelly’s on November 27th.
Title note: Named for the family’s decision to assign Seven a birthday.