Gerry Cohen
Kelly’s birthday gets forgotten again, and when she cancels a date to spend the evening at the movies with her family, all five of them end up at the multiplex. The episode gives each Bundy an interior monologue over the same film. It is also David Boreanaz’s first credited screen role.
A theater cashier mistakes Al for a senior citizen, and Al decides the discount is worth keeping. He gets a card, abuses it thoroughly, and then enters a senior athletic championship, where for once he is competing against people he can actually beat. Peg’s account of his actual athletic career is the highlight.
Peggy reads Seven a pirate story and the episode becomes it, with the cast recast into the book’s roles on the most elaborate set the series ever built. David Garrison returns as the villain, which gave him a chance to sing.
Peg’s cartoon about her husband, titled Mr. Empty Pants, becomes a national hit and Al cannot go anywhere without being recognized. Then Playgirl asks him to pose for a centerfold, and Peg discovers she does not like the idea of other women wanting him.
Kelly buys a motorcycle and Al is the only one worried about it, while Marcy cheerfully encourages him to ride it himself as recklessly as possible. Bud signs up to pose nude at an all-girls art school. Al’s shoe store story this week is one of the series’ best.
Al tells a bartender how he worked twelve part-time jobs in twelve days to pay for Christmas presents, the worst of them being the mall Santa shift. Flashbacks run back to 1974. The gifts he eventually hands out were taken from the bar. One of the uncredited children in the choir is Meghan Markle.
Bud wins a twenty-five thousand dollar college grant and is off to Trumaine University. The money lands in the family account, where Al and Peg assume it is a bank error in their favor and spend all of it before Bud gets home to explain. Bud then gets a father-son talk he will not forget.
Al’s favorite Western star dies and Al buys the cemetery plot next to him, which Peg takes as a personal affront. The funeral director’s prices are the obstacle. Meanwhile Seven has quietly moved in with Marcy and Jefferson, who want somebody to come and get him.
Al wins a first class trip to Hawaii in a shoe-selling contest, and Peg immediately trades it for four standby seats. Stuck in the terminal, Al talks his way into the first class lounge by claiming to be a rock star, where he meets six real ones. None of them can remember his fake name.
A two cent tax on beer is on the ballot, and Al Bundy becomes a political activist for the first and only time. Marcy runs her own campaign by giving the Bundys lawn signs for causes she opposes. Jefferson explains his qualifications to be First Lady. The tax passes anyway.