Season ten opens with a premise the series had been circling for years: what would actually happen if one of the Bundy children tried to leave. Bud, caught in a humiliating moment with a date named Jaime while his parents go rummaging around on the other side of his bedroom door, decides on the spot that he is finished living at 9764 Jeopardy Lane. Al could not be more delighted. He throws himself into the departure with the enthusiasm of a man who has been waiting two decades for exactly this, lining up movers, organizing a goodbye party, and treating the whole thing less as a milestone than as an eviction he finally gets to celebrate.
The celebration lasts about as long as Bud’s apartment search. Unable to find anything he can afford on what the Department of Vehicle Services pays him, he comes back across the lawn to a living room full of relatives crouched behind furniture, and the surprise they jump out to shout is not the one he was hoping for. Bud negotiates his way back into the house on reduced terms, taking up residence in the basement, which becomes his address for the rest of the series.
That would be enough plot for most episodes, but the premiere has a second shoe to drop. Peg’s parents have split, and her mother, that unseen, floor-shaking presence the show had been building into a running gag since the first season, arrives to move in. Al spends the back half of the half-hour absorbing the news that the one relative he fears most is now a houseguest, and the season’s central nightmare is established before the first commercial break of episode two.
Episode Facts
- Original air date: Sunday, September 17, 1995 on FOX
- Season 10, Episode 1, the tenth-season premiere
- Overall episode 212 of the series
- Taped August 25, 1995; production code 10.01
- Written by Russell Marcus
- Directed by Gerry Cohen
- The title plays on the 1967 Stanley Kramer film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
- Christina Applegate wears a long blonde wig here and through most of season ten; she had cut her hair short and dyed it red to play a role in the film Nowhere, shot during the hiatus between seasons nine and ten
- David Faustino also turns up with a noticeably shorter cut than he wore in seasons eight and nine
Guest Cast
- Tim Conway as Ephraim Wanker
- Kathleen Freeman as the voice of Peg’s Mom
- Jennifer Aspen as Jaime
- Eric Floyd as Twichy
- Gunther Jenson as Clyde
Bud’s Short-Lived Independence
The episode is built as a bait and switch, and the bait is Al’s joy. For nine seasons the running position on Bud was that nobody in the house particularly wanted him there, and the premiere takes that joke to its logical end by having the family actually help him pack. Al searches the room for his confiscated magazines, the movers ask where to put the furniture, and the goodbye cake gets bought. None of it is sentimental, which is precisely why the reversal lands: when Bud turns up again, the gag writes itself, and the family’s rehearsed “Surprise” becomes “Get out!”
What makes the half-hour matter beyond the joke is the status change underneath it. Bud does not go back to his old bedroom. He goes to the basement, and that becomes his permanent address for the remainder of the show’s run, giving the last two seasons a convenient way to keep a grown man in the house without having to explain it again every week. The move also quietly ages the character up: the basement is where a twenty-something with a government job and no prospects lives, not where a teenager sulks.
The arrival of Peg’s mother is the bigger structural move. The character had been a punchline for years, invoked through sound effects, splintering furniture, and Al’s terror rather than ever being shown, and bringing her into the house turns an occasional gag into a standing one. Tim Conway’s Ephraim Wanker, the put-upon husband who finally walks, gives the split a face, and Kathleen Freeman supplies a voice for the woman upstairs without the show ever having to commit to putting her on camera.
Famous Quotes
- Bud: “You see these locks? I have never, ever been caught doing anything with myself.” Trying to reassure a nervous Jaime that his parents cannot interrupt them, and immediately realizing how that came out.
- Marcy: “Please, you can’t even bag your own wife.” / Al: “Oh, I can bag her, but it doesn’t do me any good. I remember what she looks like.” The D’Arcys arrive with gifts on moving day and Al is a little too enthusiastic about Bud’s prospects.
- Marcy: “I think it’d make him feel good if we all yelled, ‘Surprise.’” / Al: “Forget that. We are gonna yell, ‘Get out!’” The family takes cover behind the furniture as Bud crosses the lawn.
- Al: “You know, son, the best way to ruin a heartfelt goodbye party is to stay where you’re not wanted. Now, we bought you a lovely cake. The least you could do is get out. The most you can do is take your mother with you.” Shoving Bud back toward the front door after the apartment search collapses.
Notes
- Gunther Jenson, who plays Clyde the mover, had appeared on the series once before, back in season one’s “Married… without Children,” as Kelly’s friend Dweep.
- Marcy mentions that her college apartment roommate was her own mother, who stole and slept with all of Marcy’s boyfriends at the time.
- Jefferson lets slip that he has held onto a bachelor’s apartment.
- Bud’s sob story to Jaime includes the claim that Al cried watching Desert Storm coverage on CNN, dating the episode’s frame of reference squarely to the early 1990s.
- Continuity watchers have flagged the inflatable doll in Bud’s bedroom, which changes position several times between shots after Al barges in.
- In the opening scene, as Al roots around under Bud’s bed looking for his missing magazines, the shadow of a crew member passes across him.
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