Season 6 Episode 24: England Show (1)

The first part of the England trilogy, the most ambitious thing Married with Children ever attempted, and it opens with the Bundys winning an all-expenses-paid trip to Britain. The prize is not a prize. It comes from a village called Lower Uncton, which has lived under a curse since 1653, when an ancestor of Al’s named Seamus McBundy insulted a witch and the witch responded by blocking out the village’s sunlight in perpetuity. The terms of the curse are specific: it lifts only when the last male Bundy dies inside the village limits. There are exactly two male Bundys left in the world, and the village has just flown both of them in. What the Bundys do not know, and what makes the arc more than a one-joke premise, is that the neighbouring village of Upper Uncton has the opposite interest. Lower Uncton’s permanent darkness is a tourist attraction that Upper Uncton profits from, so their job is to make sure Al and Bud die anywhere except within those limits. The Darcys come along because Jefferson’s original plan had been Epcot and this was free, and Marcy spends most of the episode chasing luggage that never arrives. The London sections are played as straight tourism comedy: the flight, Harrods, the Queen’s Guard, and a stop at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where Al addresses a crowd on the subject of women and discovers that English men will join a Whoa Bundy. It is an unusually big swing for a sitcom in its sixth season, and the fact that it works at all is down to the casting of the English side, who play the whole conspiracy completely straight.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 3, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 24
• Overall episode number: 129
• Written by: Ellen L. Fogle
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: March 30, 1992
• Production note: Part one of the three episode England arc that closed season 6.
• Production note: Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye voice two of the dogs in the pound alongside Buck, and sing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
• Title note: All three parts are simply called the England Show.

Guest Cast

• Bill Oddie as Winston
• Alun Armstrong as Trevor
• Steven Hartley as Igor
• Tony Steedman as Mayor Fivshaw
• Helena Carroll as Poxilda
• Kevin Curran as the voice of Buck
• Ron Leavitt, Michael G. Moye and Aron Kincaid as the nearby dogs (voices)
• Edd Hall as the airplane captain (voice, uncredited)

The Curse of Lower Uncton

Casting Bill Oddie as Winston is the sort of thing that would have meant far more to a British audience than an American one. Oddie was one third of The Goodies, a show that was enormous in the UK in the seventies, and he plays the village historian with exactly the right air of a man carrying out a civic duty he is not comfortable with. Alun Armstrong and Tony Steedman give the village real texture, and Steven Hartley gets the episode’s best running gag as the assistant driver who has legally changed his name to Merrill and cannot get anyone to use it.

The crew put themselves into this episode repeatedly. At the airport there are drivers holding signs reading Leavitt and Moye, plus a partly obscured one for Anderson, the producer who joined the series with this episode. The couple who walk past and identify Al as a shoe salesman are writers Stacie Lipp and Larry Jacobson. The show’s hair stylist Dottie McQuown is visible behind the family during the Queen’s Guard scene.

Al’s Speaker’s Corner address is the centerpiece and it is a complete Al Bundy thesis delivered to strangers in a public park. He builds from a specific grievance about a question asked during a televised game to a general position, declines to propose a solution on the grounds that he has to go because his wife is watching, and gets a crowd of English men to join him in a Whoa Bundy. He then asks whether he is alone in hating the French, and he is not.

Al’s joke about the in-flight movie is a dig at Ed O’Neill’s own 1991 film Dutch, which lost money and which this series went on to reference again in season 9.

Famous Quotes

• The captain, over the cabin address: “Will the gentleman in 24-B please put his shoes back on? I’m choking to death.” Al: “Oh, please. They show us the movie ‘Dutch’ and they think I stink?!”
• Winston, introducing the staff: “I’m Winston, I’m your driver, and this is my assistant driver, Igor.” Igor: “‘Igor’?! You know perfectly well I had my name changed legally. Is it too much trouble to address me as ‘Merrill’?”
• Al, at Speaker’s Corner: “I’m not proposing a solution, ’cause I gotta go soon, I see my wife looking, but I’d just like to say, ‘I don’t like ’em.’”
• Al, closing: “Oh, by the way, am I alone here in hating the French?!” Crowd: “NO!”

Notes

• Jefferson reveals that his original plan for Marcy was Epcot Center, and the England trip won on price.
• Al mentions that he and Bud used to dress as Hare Krishnas and work the airport for spare change.
• An instrumental “Rule, Britannia” plays while Winston and Igor drive the family around London.
• A plot hole the fandom has long enjoyed: Winston says the male Bundys were easy to find because they all worked in shoe stores, yet “And Baby Makes Money” showed a room full of male Bundys of whom only Al sold shoes. All of them would have had to be dealt with inside about two years.
• Visible goofs: Al’s arm teleports onto Bud’s shoulder at the airport between shots, and the blue crash mat is clearly visible when the Queen’s Guard collapses.