Ron Leavitt
Al has actually saved money for Christmas presents, and a late rush at the shoe store stops him reaching the bank before it closes. The two-parter aired the same night The Simpsons premiered on FOX, and both episodes lean on the same Christmas song.
A guardian angel shows Al what his family’s life would be like if he had never been born, and the answer is that they would all be much better off. Sam Kinison plays the angel — he had been the producers’ first choice to play Al Bundy.
Al has been burying money in a shoe box in the backyard for a new car. Peg found it, dug it up and spent it, so Al goes shopping with nothing and works his way down through progressively worse used cars. He ends his search with the same vehicle he started with, lightly disguised.
Al’s barber dies, which leaves him with nowhere to get his hair cut but a salon. The episode’s editor was nominated for an Emmy for it. It is also one of only three episodes in which Peggy turns Al down.
The upstairs toilet floods once too often and Al finally builds his own bathroom in the garage, realizing an ambition from season one. It is also the first appearance of the Ferguson toilet, which he stayed proud of for the next eight years.
Al finds a library book thirty-one years overdue and has to return it, which means facing the librarian he has been frightened of since childhood. The book is The Little Engine That Could, which the title turns against him.
Marcy tells Al that anything arriving unsolicited in the mail is legally his to keep, and then a credit card turns up addressed to Buck. Everything the family buys on it was borrowed from the homes of the show’s own cast and crew.
A mouse gets into the house, which means confronting Peggy’s childhood fear of mice and watching Al dismantle his own home trying to catch it. The mouse is never in danger. Bud’s goldfish, it later emerges, was not so lucky.
Buck’s nocturnal habits have the neighbors threatening lawsuits, and the pressure is on Al to have him neutered. Al refuses, and not out of affection for the dog. It is the first episode the series built around Buck.
The series’ first two-parter sends the Bundys to Dumpwater, Florida, and a motel called Poppy’s by the Tree. An axe murderer has visited every five years since 1962, and the locals are taking bets on which Bundy he gets. The episode opens in black and white.
- « Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next »