Season 1 Episode 3: But I Didn’t Shoot the Deputy

There is a robber working the neighbourhood, and the two households respond in character. The Rhoades, having been burgled, acquire a guard dog named Bella. Al buys a gun. The episode is built to put both defences to the test on the same night, and the test does not go well for the dog: Al hears a noise, fires, and hits Bella, who is never once seen on screen. The series had been on the air for three weeks and had already worked out that the funniest version of an event is often the one that happens just out of frame.

What the half-hour is really establishing is the shape of the Al-and-Steve relationship, which would carry the first four seasons. Steve is competent, anxious and law-abiding; Al is none of those things and is entirely confident anyway. Steve raises the shooting again in “Where’s the Boss?” later in the same season, which is the show demonstrating early that it intended to keep track of what its characters had done to each other.

Two smaller firsts are worth noting. This is the first time the audience sees the Rhoades’ back yard, and the first time Marcy digresses mid-sentence into contemplating violence against someone, a tic Amanda Bearse would develop into one of the character’s most reliable moves. It is also the first episode to make an issue of Kelly’s schooling: told that Bud is disgusting for wanting to look at the body, Bud’s rebuttal is that his sister is failing five classes. The episode went out on the same night The Simpsons first appeared, as animated shorts, on The Tracey Ullman Show.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: April 19, 1987
• Season 1, Episode 3, and the 3rd episode of the series
• Written by Ron Burla
• Directed by Linda Day

Guest Cast

• Frank Lloyd as Norris
• Thomas Hill as Muldoon
• J. Jay Saunders as Bronson

The Dog, the Gun and the Bowling Ball

A crime wave hits the neighborhood and the two households answer it in character. Steve and Marcy adopt a vicious guard dog named Bella. Al buys a gun. Those two decisions meet in the Bundy backyard in the middle of the night, and Bella loses.

The episode’s best trick is that Bella is never on camera. She exists entirely in other people’s reactions, which keeps the whole thing funny rather than grim, and it means the shooting happens offscreen too. What follows is Al’s cover-up and a funeral over a coffin weighted with rocks and Al’s bowling ball.

This is also the first time Marcy drops into open violence mid-sentence, a switch the writers kept reaching for over the next decade. Frank Lloyd’s Norris, one of Al’s regulars, comes back for poker night in The Poker Game.

Famous Quotes

• Peggy: “Guns are lethal weapons and should only be handled by responsible adults.” Said in a house where Al has just bought one.
• Steve: “His brains are in the begonias.” Steve’s contribution to the eulogy.

Notes

• The title plays on Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.”
• Bella is named for Bella Abzug, the New York congresswoman known for her bluntness and her hats.
• First time the Rhoades backyard is seen on screen.
• The production code shows this was the fourth episode produced and the third aired.
• It first aired the same night, on the same network, that The Simpsons debuted as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.