Season 5
Joey Lauren Adams joins the Bundy Breakdown live on Zoom this Thursday, October 15th at 6 PM Pacific! We are breaking down “The Wedding Show” (Season 7, Episode 13) and its fallout episode “Wedding Repercussions” (Season 7, Episode 25), plus her two earlier trips through the Bundy universe. Do your homework.
Kelly starts dating a city councilman, which makes Al a man with influence, and he uses it exactly as you would expect — to settle scores and be addressed with respect. Peggy’s interest in the arrangement is strictly financial.
Marcy wakes up after a banking convention married to a stranger named Jefferson D’Arcy, and Al offers to arrange the wedding so he can profit from it. Ted McGinley joined here on terms uncertain enough that his billing was held in the closing credits.
Kelly turns eighteen, announces she can now do whatever she likes, and moves out. Al’s farewell to her new boyfriend involves a chokehold, a banister and a measured throw out the front door. The episode aired on Christina Applegate’s nineteenth birthday.
A new neighbour calls Al cute after he moves her couch, and the women on the street start requesting his handyman services and then admiring the handyman. Al becomes obsessed with his own appearance. It is the last appearance of Jade, the shoe store customer who had been propositioning him since season 2.
Al has a breakdown at the shoe store after sixteen straight hours of a midnight madness sale, and takes up gardening to calm down. A rabbit starts eating his carrots. The response escalates to flooding the burrow with a hose, which floods the street and the house next door as well.
Al takes a bad knock to the head and starts seeing small green aliens who are stealing his socks. The socks, it turns out, are fuel, and the aliens need them to prevent a disaster on a cosmic scale. Al saves several worlds including this one without ever understanding that he did.
Kelly has graduated and is doing nothing, so Al tries to get her working, and she lands on modelling. Her rival is played by Tia Carrere and the casting agent by Tina Louise from Gilligan’s Island, which matters because Al spent years telling anyone who would listen that Ginger was the one.
Peg takes up dancing and meets a handsome man at a club, flirting with him without working out that he is married to another man. Al, meanwhile, meets the husband, who cooks him an actual meal. Dan Castellaneta and Sam McMurray guest, both billed as special guest stars.
Al is dropped from his own softball team for the championship, by unanimous vote, with his wife and both children voting against him. A better player takes his place, gets injured, and Al goes in. It is the last appearance of the New Market Mallers and the last time the Bundys play together.