Michael G. Moye
The Bundys come home from Buck’s twelve-hundred-dollar funeral and immediately start arguing about a replacement. A séance, a smuggled cockatoo and a hungry mother-in-law follow. Buck’s last episode, and the first appearance of Lucky, with Don Novello guesting as Father Guido Sarducci.
Peg and her friends announce they are coming to the nudie bar to find out what the appeal is, so NO MA’AM holds a strategy meeting in the garage. Bud turns out to already be a regular. Kelly is cast in a commercial for a weight loss shake.
Al needs a minor operation on his back, and the surgical team misreads the instruction. Peg finds out from a hospital payphone in the middle of a call to Marcy. The rest of the episode is the family trying to keep a recovering Al from getting excited.
Al and Peg take a second honeymoon at a city motel, where Peg has firm plans. Then an old friend asks Al to deal with a young man running her neighborhood, so Al rounds up the surviving Polk High Panthers and goes to confront him. Nicholas Brendon turns up uncredited in the gang.
Al books a week alone at a mountain cabin and Peg and Marcy both invite themselves along, then spend the trip arguing with each other. Back home, Bud, Kelly and Jefferson discover Marcy’s credit card and put it to immediate use. Nobody involved has a good week except Jefferson.
Al watches Shenandoah, declares a mandatory Bundy Sunday Funday, and the car runs out of gas on the way. The family then runs up twelve dollars of unpaid snacks, and Al has to work the debt off pumping gas in somebody else’s coveralls. The Swedish Bikini Team turn up, collect Bud and drive away.
Marcy and Jefferson announce that they are expecting, and Al is delighted at Jefferson’s misfortune right up until Peg tells him the Bundys are expecting too. Al’s hair starts falling out. Part one of the season 6 premiere, and the most-watched episode the series ever aired.
The Bundys drive to Los Angeles for a shoe convention and break down in a tiny New Mexico town full of ancient prospectors. One of them hands Al a map to a gold mine, and Al talks Jefferson into financing the dig. Part one of the season finale.
Kelly becomes the Weenie Tot spokesmodel and the family receives a year’s supply, which turns out to include a winning fifty thousand dollar sweepstakes card. The catch is that employees and their families are ineligible. So Al and Peg draft Marcy and Jefferson into claiming it for them.
Al cannot stop thinking about a song he heard on the radio and can hum but not name, and nobody will help him. Meanwhile Kelly brings home a new boyfriend, Vinnie Verducci, along with his father Charlie. This is the episode that introduced Matt LeBlanc to the series.