Richard Gurman
Peggy signs Al up to sell cosmetics door to door, then hears what the perks are and takes the job herself. Al ends up at Burger Trek in a uniform, working for a manager played by Pauly Shore, eating a toothpaste sandwich.
A psychic predicts good fortune for Al, Peggy and Steve and disaster for Marcy, so Marcy insists the lucky three accompany her on a flight to New York as insurance. Al’s skepticism lasts precisely as long as the prediction flatters him.
The series’ first Christmas episode opens with a content warning. A parachuting mall Santa lands fatally in the Bundys’ back yard on Christmas Eve, and the neighborhood children start arriving with questions. David Faustino has called it one of his favorites.
Al will not pay for a call to Canada, so the phone company cuts off the house. Meanwhile a new neighborhood crime light shines directly into his face at night. Kelly’s whistle down the phone line ended up in the show’s syndicated opening credits.
Al and Peggy’s favorite burger joint is closing and they cannot get out of the house to reach it. Bud needs help, then Kelly, then Marcy is in their kitchen in a towel. The series’ only real-time episode until “The Desperate Half-Hour” ten years later.
Al and Peggy agree to skip anniversary gifts and neither can stick to it. Peggy buys one anyway. Al’s credit card is declined at the jeweler’s, so he comes home with nothing. The series ran the same story again nine years later for their twenty-fifth.
Al and Steve buy a 1965 Mustang to restore, and the project consumes both of them entirely. Peggy and Marcy find their own common ground in hating it. Al’s dream sequence about escaping in the car gets undercut a week later, when the license plate turns out to be Peggy’s.
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