Gerry Cohen
Peggy wins two weeks of training with a television aerobics instructor and accidentally kills him, by introducing him to cigarettes, Bundy food and Bundy afternoons. The episode ends with a dedication to the cockroach.
A Labor Day barbecue, and the premiere inverts the marriage entirely: Peggy does housework, Al finds it arousing, and she spends the episode trying to decline. It is also the first time “Bad to the Bone” is used as Al’s anthem.
A Peeping Tom is targeting every woman in the neighborhood except Peggy, who takes it as a verdict on her looks. Al, meanwhile, has Bud tutoring Kelly, which establishes the rule that new information displaces old — a rule the series enforced for eight more years.
The Bundys copy the Rhoades’ tradition of going to the beach on the first sunny day in May, with the results you would expect from a family with no aptitude for leisure. It also reveals that Al and Peggy missed Kelly’s birthday the day before.
Peggy and Marcy buy a home computer over Al’s objections, and the episode recites its 1989 specifications with real reverence. Nobody in the house can operate it. Marcy also establishes exactly how long the two families have been neighbors: 937 days.
Al tests his Shoe Lights invention on Kelly while Bud, having promised his friends a date he cannot produce, borrows a department store mannequin. The episode also establishes that Al has been the lowest-earning shoe salesman in the region for seven years running.
Peggy has Bud and Kelly rig the prom queen ballot while Al settles things with his high school rival in the parking lot. The episode finally dates the four-touchdown game: November 17, kickoff at 4:40 in the afternoon.
Peggy wants the prom queen title she never won, and her old rival turns up to spoil it. This is the episode that gives Peggy her maiden name — Wanker — which Britain’s Sky One cut out of every broadcast because of what the word means there.
Steve and Marcy ask the Bundys to house-sit, which is a mistake, and not only because of the looting. A moving man turns up looking for a roadhouse and takes the whole house away. Al reports that it is now a chicken restaurant in Waukegan.
Peggy makes an obscene gesture at another driver while riding with Steve, and the driver gets a good look at Steve. He invites the Bundys to stay for protection. They move in, and the episode becomes an inventory of what they take.