Season 3 Episode 8: The Gypsy Cried

A psychic reads the cards and finds good fortune for Steve, Al and Peggy, and disaster for Marcy. Marcy, who has a business flight to New York, reasons that the safest thing to do is take the three lucky people with her as insurance, which is how the Bundys end up on a plane they have no business being on, with Marcy monitoring everyone’s horoscopes.

The premise is a good vehicle for the two households’ respective relationships with superstition. Marcy’s belief is total and entirely self-interested; Al’s scepticism lasts exactly as long as the prediction favours him. The episode is also one of the series’ better uses of a location it rarely visited, putting the four adults in an aeroplane cabin with nowhere to retreat to and a first-class curtain to fight over.

Several threads tie back and forward. Bud and Kelly turn up with petrol cans, having siphoned fuel from a Rolls-Royce in the Rhoades’ driveway on Al’s instructions, one of the cars from season two’s “Master the Possibilities.” Kelly needles Bud about working solo “much like at Lover’s Lane,” a reference to his Masked Lover Lane Peeper reputation from “The Great Escape.” And the Bundys meet gypsies again three seasons later in “Psychic Avengers,” which goes considerably worse: that one ends with the family turned into monkeys.

The Los Angeles musician Chuck E. Weiss appears uncredited as a passenger, visible beside the curtain divider as Al and Peg come into first class. Steve Bean, who returns Al’s wallet, came back in season seven as a Playgirl photographer.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 5, 1989
• Season 3, Episode 8, and the 43rd episode of the series
• Written by Richard Gurman
• Directed by Gerry Cohen

Guest Cast

• Carmen Zapata as Madame Olga
• F. William Parker as Mr. Vandergelder
• Barbara Alyn Woods as Vicky
• Steve Bean as Fred
• Sandra Wild as Fluffy

Marcy Buys Insurance in the Form of Neighbors

The cold open is the show at its most companionable: Al and Peg come home from a party they were not invited to, carrying the buffet, and work through everything Al did wrong until they are both laughing about it. The scene ends with them kissing each other on the cheek.

The Bundys run into fortune tellers again in season 6’s Psychic Avengers, which goes considerably worse for them.

Famous Quotes

• Peg: “Steve and Marcy throw a nice party, don’t they?” Al: “Well, it would have been nicer if we were actually invited.” The cold open.
• Peg: “You did overflow the toilet and not tell anyone.” Al: “Well, I don’t tell anyone when I do it here.” Al, consistent at least.
• Peggy: “I don’t think a bankers’ party is the right place to stand on the buffet and yell…” Al: “You’d have won!” The compliment, and it lands.

Notes

• The title comes from the 1962 Lou Christie song.
• Bud and Kelly siphon gas from a guest’s Rolls Royce on Al’s instructions, which pays off a joke from season 2.
• Steve Bean, who returns Al’s wallet here, came back in season 7 as a Playgirl photographer.
• Goof: a boom mic shadow is visible on the wall by the front door, and a crew member’s shadow crosses the frame when the black cat runs over the coffee table.