Season 11 Episode 8: God Help Ye Merry Bundymen

The last Christmas episode the series produced, and it runs four plots at once. Al does not want a tree and the rest of the family does. Marcy is determined to win the neighbourhood decorating contest. Gary hires two young men, Hal and Biff, to help at the shoe store, which ends with Al and Griff out of work and busking in the mall for twenty-five cents a song. And someone has stolen the Mary and Joseph figures from the D’Arcys’ nativity display, Bud and Kelly, who conduct the ransom negotiation in the style of the Mel Gibson thriller that had come out that autumn.

The shoe store material opens the episode strongly, with Al and Griff kneeling in prayer before unlocking the doors and then a horde of customers coming through to “Ride of the Valkyries.” The replacement staff arrive and Al’s assessment of what two eager young men hanging around the pair of them makes them is answered by Griff in two words. By the back half both have mall jobs instead: Al driving the children’s train as the Elfineer, Griff in what he describes as an executive position in the overnight-delivery business, which turns out to mean wearing antlers alongside a reindeer called Prancer.

Peggy’s contribution is the warmest thing in it. Having finished the family gingerbread house she enjoyed herself enough to bake the entire neighbourhood, and the model turns out to be unsparingly accurate: Mr. McGinty is at his telescope watching Kelly’s window, and there are two marshmallows in the Bundys’ own bedroom window representing Al mooning the D’Arcys. One of the contest judges, it emerges, is McGinty’s daughter.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: Sunday, December 22, 1996 on FOX
• Season 11, Episode 8
• Overall episode 246 of the series
• Taped December 6, 1996; production code 11.13
• Written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher
• Directed by Mark K. Samuels
• The title plays on the carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
• The final Christmas episode of the series

Guest Cast

• Jonathan Mangum as Hal
• Kevin Lamont Smith as Biff
• Amy Lyndon as the Mall Manager
• Christian McLaughlin as the Reindeer Dancer
• Steven Anthony Lawrence as Kid #1
• Lynette Bennett as Judge #1
• Mary Stein as Judge #2

Peggy’s Gingerbread Neighborhood

The gingerbread model is the best idea in the episode and the show gets a lot out of a single prop. Peggy built it for fun, which is already slightly out of character, and what she built is a complete inventory of the street’s indignities, the McGintys close by, the old man at his telescope aimed at her daughter’s window, her husband’s backside immortalised in confectionery. The joke is that none of the family finds any of it remarkable; they admire the craftsmanship.

The shoe store thread lands the episode’s hardest fact. Gary says Al has worked there for twenty-five years, which is the longest span the series ever put on it, and the two young replacements are hired not because Al is bad at the job but because he is old and expensive. Watching him lose it at Christmas and end up driving a toy train in the same mall is as close as the show came to stating the economics underneath the whole premise.

The nativity kidnapping gives Bud and Kelly their best material in a while, and it is a reminder of how quickly the series absorbed whatever was in cinemas. Ransom had opened six weeks before this aired, and Kelly’s deepened voice asking whether the D’Arcys ever want to see the statues alive again is a direct lift from its villain. Christian McLaughlin, a writer and story editor who joined the show for season eleven, appears on camera as Prancer.

Famous Quotes

• Al: “We’ve got two young, eager boys hanging around us. You know what that makes us?” / Griff: “Michael Jackson?”
• Peggy: “I had so much fun that I decided to bake the whole neighborhood.” / Bud: “Hey look, there’s old man McGinty’s house.” / Kelly: “He even got the telescope he uses to watch me shower.”
• Bud: “Mom, what are those two marshmallows in your bedroom window?” / Peggy: “That’s daddy mooning the D’Arcys.”
• Griff: “Al, is that you?! Man, you make one ugly hobbit.” / Al: “I happen to be the ‘Elfineer’! At least I got a job!”
• Al: “I thought you said you had money put away?” / Griff: “Well, I did. But then I got a corn dog and a kiddie Coke, and there went my nest egg.”
• Griff: “I got an executive position in the overnight-delivery business.” / Mall Manager: “Hey, Blitzen, get your tail back over to the sled!” / Al: “What kind of reindeer games you playing over there, Griff?”

Notes

• The end credits are framed in red and white with “Happy Holidays” in the lower left corner, scored with “Deck the Halls” and then “Jingle Bells.”
• “Ride of the Valkyries” accompanies the store opening and the customers pouring in; Al and Griff later busk “Jingle Bells” in the mall behind a sign reading “Will Stop Singing for 25 Cents.”
• Jonathan Mangum, who plays Hal, later became the announcer and sidekick on the CBS revival of Let’s Make a Deal.
• Peggy reveals she was once Miss Teenage Wanker. One of the decorating judges, Marge, turns out to be the McGintys’ daughter.
• Christian McLaughlin, a writer and story editor who joined the series in season eleven, cameos as Prancer.
• The ransom calls parody the 1996 thriller Ransom, released that November.
• Goof: Gary’s claim that Al has been there twenty-five years would mean he started in 1971 at twenty-three, contradicting earlier episodes that place him at the store while still in high school.
• Goof: Bud’s line after the ransom call is visibly dubbed: David Faustino’s mouth does not move.