Season 6 Episode 25: England Show (2)

Part two spends its first act letting the Bundys loose on London with somebody else’s money. Winston, the Lower Uncton man charged with delivering them, had something considerably more modest in mind than a river suite at the Savoy, and is reduced to explaining what all expenses paid was actually meant to cover while Peg, Bud and Kelly work through room service. Kelly pockets a fork. Al is fitted for a bespoke suit at a real Savile Row tailor, a sequence scored to “I’m Too Sexy,” and then asks Winston where a man can obtain reading material in this country, which produces the single best cultural exchange of the entire arc. The family also takes in the London Dungeon, which is a real attraction and a well-chosen one given where the story is going. Then the Bundys head out to Lower Uncton, minus Kelly, who announces she is a city girl and stays behind. That decision turns out to matter. At a London club Kelly learns that her family is walking into something, and the rest of the episode is her trying to get out of the city and into a village nobody she asks has heard of, a sequence the show scores to the Lassie theme. Meanwhile Marcy and Jefferson are still pursuing their luggage, a chase that takes them somewhere they did not expect. In the village, the gallows is already being built, and Bud starts seeing the ghosts of his ancestors. Part two is the loosest of the three, a travelogue with a noose being measured in the background, and it is the funniest of the arc for exactly that reason.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 10, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 25
• Overall episode number: 130
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: March 30 to April 17, 1992
• Production note: The working title was “England Show II: Wastin’ The Company’s Money.”
• Production note: A scene in which Peg instructs the family to loot the hotel room for souvenirs was cut from the original broadcast because of the Los Angeles riots, and restored in syndication.

Guest Cast

• Bill Oddie as Winston
• Alun Armstrong as Trevor
• Steven Hartley as Igor
• Tony Steedman as Mayor Fivshaw
• Mark Addy as a Lower Uncton local (uncredited)
• Charlotte Chatton as the maid (uncredited)
• Kevin Curran as the voice of Buck
• Michael G. Moye as the man in the club (uncredited)
• Gerry Cohen as the man Kelly knocks out (uncredited)

The Savoy and the Gallows

Mark Addy, uncredited here as the villager building the gallows, is the casting footnote that has aged best. Five years later he was one of the leads in The Full Monty, and years after that he played Robert Baratheon in the first season of Game of Thrones.

The production put its own people on camera again. Michael G. Moye appears as the leather-clad man in the club who offers Marcy and Jefferson a drink or a spanking, and director Gerry Cohen plays the man on the street who says something to Kelly and gets knocked out for it.

The locations are real and chosen with care. The Savoy is the Savoy. The London Dungeon is a genuine attraction built on gruesome historical waxworks, which is a neat bit of foreshadowing for a storyline about a village planning an execution. And Al’s suit is fitted at Poole and Co., the tailors who have been in business since 1806 and are generally credited with inventing the dinner jacket, which makes the sight of Al Bundy on their fitting block considerably funnier.

Bud’s visions of his ancestors establish how the previous generations of male Bundys were dealt with, and the methods are varied enough to suggest the village has been at this for a long time: hanging, a sword, a beheading and a cannonball.

Famous Quotes

• Winston, raising the subject of the bill: “When we said ‘all expenses paid,’ we didn’t exactly mean a river suite at the Savoy.” Peg: “I’ll have you know, sir, that we are accustomed to the finer things in life.”
• Kelly, immediately afterward, holding up a piece of cutlery: “Mom, what’s this?” Peg: “It’s a fork, honey.” Kelly: “Oh, cool!”
• Al, approaching Winston discreetly: “Where in this bird can a man get a copy of ‘Big ‘Uns’?” Winston, after working out the request: “In this country, we call them… ‘Boobie Rags’.”

Notes

• Al calls Winston by a different cigarette brand almost every time he addresses him, including Salem and Menthol, though he does manage the correct name at the London Dungeon.
• Al reveals that the game in which he scored four touchdowns was the last championship Polk High ever won.
• Kelly-isms this week: “arriverdouche” for arrivederci, “one-whore town” for one-horse town, and “I must run like the stocking” for run like the wind.
• Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” scores the tailoring sequence, and the Lassie theme scores Kelly’s search for the village.

Watching It

Amazon’s Prime Video catalog for season 6 stops at the first part of the England story and does not carry separate entries for parts two and three, so there is no direct link to offer here. The episode is included on the complete series DVD and Blu-ray releases, and it turns up in syndication packages. If Prime adds the remaining parts to the season 6 listing, a link will go up here.