Season 8 Episode 13: The Worst Noel

December 19, 1993

Published 12/19/93

One of the most unusual episodes the series ever made. It is Christmas Eve, it plays out in something close to real time, and it never leaves the Bundy property. There are no guest cast members at all. Two things happen. Outside, Kelly and Bud are attempting to get a jukebox into the house without their parents noticing, a problem of logistics and timing that occupies them for the entire half hour. Inside, Al and Peg are fighting over the remote control, and that argument is the episode. Peg wants to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Al would rather do almost anything else, and his stated objection to the film is one of the great Al Bundy monologues. So he channel surfs, and the surfing is the episode’s engine: a stream of invented Christmas programming across the entire cable dial, each one more specific than the last, with Al identifying individual reruns from a fraction of a second of footage. Peg’s observation about what else he could be noticing around the house is the best line in the exchange. Marcy and Jefferson come and go through the front door, and each time it opens the sound of the party next door comes in with them. It is one of the series’ best formal experiments and one of its most quoted episodes, largely because the channel surfing sequence works as a time capsule of what was actually on American television in December 1993. It also contains, in Al’s objection to a beloved film, one of the clearest statements of his worldview the show ever wrote.

Episode Facts

Original air date: December 19, 1993
Season and episode: Season 8, Episode 13
Overall episode number: 170
Written by: Larry Jacobson
Directed by: Amanda Bearse
Production note: No guest cast. The episode runs in real time and never leaves the Bundy house and yard.
Production note: One of the very few times the series breaks the fourth wall. Just before a commercial break Al looks straight into the camera and says that he really hates this commercial.
Title note: A play on “The First Noel.”