Season 4 Episode 1: Hot Off the Grill

A Labor Day barbecue, and the fourth-season premiere runs the Bundy marriage backwards. Peggy does housework, actual, visible housework, outdoors, in front of her husband, and Al finds the sight of it genuinely arousing. For the rest of the half-hour he pursues her while she attempts to decline, which is the exact inversion of the dynamic the series had run for three years, and the episode gets considerable mileage out of Peggy being the one trying to get out of it.

By the end Al has succeeded four separate times: on the bench, by dragging her into the house, by calling her inside after the ashes get knocked over, and once more after that. It is the only episode of its kind until season eleven’s “The Stepford Peg,” and between them the two half-hours settle the question of what actually interests Al Bundy about his wife. It is her cooking or cleaning, which explains a great deal about the state of the marriage.

The ashes belong to Marcy’s aunt, which Steve and Marcy have brought to the barbecue, and Steve hated the woman. That plot exists mostly to produce the knocking-over, and it does its job.

The episode launches the fourth-season titles, with new introductory footage for all six cast members and a revised couch gag, same choreography, new clothes, that stayed in use until season ten’s “Requiem for a Dead Briard.” Its final frame became the end-credits still from “Peggy Turns 300” all the way through to season ten. Bud arrives without the mullet he wore all of season three, and the episode marks the first use of “Bad to the Bone” as Al’s anthem, which it remained for the rest of the run.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: September 3, 1989
• Season 4, Episode 1, the season premiere, and the 58th episode of the series
• Written by Michael G. Moye, Ron Leavitt and Gabrielle Topping
• Directed by Gerry Cohen
• No guest cast is credited.

Al Bun-Day

Al declares Labor Day to be Al Bun-Day and runs a backyard barbecue entirely on his own terms, over the objections of everyone who has to attend. Watching Peg do housework sets him off, and he hauls her upstairs four separate times across the day, which inverts the usual arrangement in this house and is most of the episode’s engine.

The Rhoades turn up with fish instead of red meat and with Marcy’s late aunt Tuney in an urn. Peg knocks the grill over, panics, and sends the kids to steal replacement ashes from the neighbors. Everyone then eats hamburgers cooked over Aunt Tuney.

Season 4 arrives with a new opening sequence and a new couch gag, the same choreography as season 3 in new clothes. It is also the first episode with Bud out of the season 3 mullet, and the first time “Bad to the Bone” plays as Al’s theme, which became permanent.

Famous Quotes

• Peggy: “It’s not like we don’t enjoy sweltering in the backyard, being bitten by horseflies and watching you scratch your sweaty back with our salad forks.” Peg opening negotiations on Al Bun-Day.
• Peggy: “Gee, I thought that was Al-O-Ween.” On Al naming a holiday after himself.
• Al: “Peg, we’ve been married for seventeen years now, can’t we just be friends?” Al, declining.
• Peggy: “No! I don’t like you, I just want to have sex with you!” Peg, not declining.
• Bud: “Why can’t we shop today? Traffic too light?” Bud on the family’s holiday plans.

Notes

• Al’s blue pineapple shirt is the same one Ed O’Neill wore for his last appearance on The New Hollywood Squares.
• “Who’ll Stop the Rain” plays on the radio in this episode and becomes an episode title later the same season: Who’ll Stop the Rain.
• Peg sends the kids to the McGintys, whose only other mention is the season 3 finale “Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.”
• Season 11’s “The Stepford Peg” runs the same reversed premise, with Al pursuing and Peg rejecting.
• Goof: Al says seventeen years of marriage, which does not line up with season 1’s “Sixteen Years and What Do You Get?”
• Goof: Steve says they barely eat red meat, but in season 1’s Have You Driven a Ford Lately? Marcy says flatly that they are vegetarian.
• Goof: Al’s hamburger patty vanishes in the closing scene, and his bite marks on the bun do not progress.