Season 1 Episode 6: Sixteen Years and What Do You Get

Al and Peggy agree not to exchange gifts for their sixteenth anniversary, and neither of them can hold the line for more than a day. Peggy goes shopping. Al goes shopping. The difference is that Al’s credit card comes back over its limit at the jeweller’s counter, so he arrives home with nothing while his wife has a present for him, which turns the episode from a story about romance into one about arithmetic, and establishes the template the series would reuse nine years later in “25 Years and What Do You Get?“

That is the half-hour’s actual interest. The Bundy marriage is not short of affection in this early stretch so much as short of money, and the episode is unusually clear-eyed about the difference. Both of them want to do the right thing. Only one of them can afford to, and he is the one who was supposed to be providing. The scene at the jeweller’s is played for comedy and the humiliation underneath it is entirely real.

Two small details tie the episode into the wider series. Peggy’s car carries Illinois plate F3B 359, the same plate that had appeared on the Mustang in Al’s escape fantasy the week before, which is the show quietly puncturing that dream for anyone paying attention. And this is the first appearance of Tang, under the invented brand Tri-C, apparently a collision of Tang and Hi-C; the Bundys’ preferred beverage would keep turning up for the next decade. The jeweller, Embassy Jewels, takes its name from Embassy Communications, which produced the show’s first two seasons.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: May 10, 1987
• Season 1, Episode 6, and the 6th episode of the series
• Written by Katherine Green and Richard Gurman
• Directed by Linda Day

Guest Cast

• Walter Olkewicz as the violinist, Bobo
• Richard Sanders as Mr. Conner
• Elias Zarou as Marcel
• Don Draper as the salesman

Sixteen Years, No Credit Left

The speech Al gives a stranger in the store about what an anniversary means is the first time the show let him be sincere for more than a line, and it works precisely because it is immediately punished.

The anniversary count established here is the one the show kept returning to, through to season 9’s twenty-fifth anniversary episode.

Famous Quotes

• Peggy: “Gee, what is it he’s really wanting?” Bud: “That blonde down the street.” Bud, who had not been told, but had observed.
• Al: “The first thing I learned on my sixteen-year tour of duty was that women live for presents.” Al, briefing a newly married man.
• Al: “There is no more important thing than your anniversary.” Al, meaning it.
• Peggy: “Would you like me to make you some soup for your lunch tomorrow?” Al: “Nah, it’s okay. Last time I cut my hand on the can.” Peg’s cooking, established early.

Notes

• The title plays on the lyric from “Sixteen Tons,” and the show came back to the same joke in season 9’s “25 Years and What Do You Get?“
• Peggy’s license plate here is Illinois F3B 359, the same plate seen on the Mustang in Al’s fantasy in the previous episode, Have You Driven a Ford Lately?
• The production code shows this was produced third for the season but aired sixth.