Season 7 Episode 7: The Chicago Wine Party

This one aired two days before the 1992 presidential election, and it is the closest Married with Children ever came to making an actual political argument. There is a referendum on the ballot: a two cent tax on beer. Al, who has never voted and has no intention of starting, discovers that something he cares about is on the line and becomes a campaigner. The episode opens with one of the best cold opens the series ever shot, a long slow walk home by a man in disintegrating shoes, scored to Bela Fleck’s “Flight of the Cosmic Hippo” with no dialogue at all. From there Al builds a movement, delivers a speech invoking the Boston Tea Party, and gets the working men of Chicago organized around the one issue that reaches them. Marcy, meanwhile, has her own voter strategy, which involves giving the Bundys lawn signs for positions she opposes on the theory that the neighborhood will reflexively vote the other way. She calls it Harnessing Hate. Jefferson spends the episode explaining, at length and unprompted, his qualifications for the role of First Lady, a monologue that takes in national hair care centers and ends somewhere genuinely disturbing. And the local news coverage is handled by a reporter whose approach to low viewership is to show the camera her garter belt. The tax passes. Al’s closing speech about who gets what in America is the most sincere thing the character says all season. It is one of the few episodes that leaves Al with his dignity intact and the system, rather than Al, as the thing that failed.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 1, 1992
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 7
• Overall episode number: 138
• Written by: Stacie Lipp
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: October 16, 1992
• Production note: Broadcast two days before the 1992 U.S. presidential election.
• Production note: The opening walk is scored to “Flight of the Cosmic Hippo” by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Some cable prints cut the first half of it.
• Title note: A reference to the Boston Tea Party, which Al also invokes in his speech.

Guest Cast

• Kari Coleman as Muffy
• Cindy Margolis as Beer Girl #1
• Cynthia Allison as the TV news anchor
• Michael Goldfinger as Doug
• Hartley Silver as Storekeeper Jim
• Pearl Shear and Flora Burke as the volunteers
• Jim Chiros and Cynthena Sanders as the activists
• Robin Killian and Tonya Poole as Beer Girls #2 and #3

Harnessing Hate

Al’s closing speech is worth the episode on its own. Having lost the vote, he stands in front of a crowd of working men and lays out his view of how the country distributes things: the rich get the birds and the air and even the presidents, and the one thing the rest of them cared about was beer, and it has been taken away. The roll call of who he is speaking for, the man who sells shoes or fixes cars or totes that barge, is as close as this show ever got to a thesis about class, and it is not played for laughs.

It is also, as the fandom has long noticed, one of two episodes where Al’s politics come out considerably to the left of where you would expect. The other is season 5’s “The Dance Show.”

Marcy’s Harnessing Hate scheme is the funniest idea in the episode and completely in character. She hands the Bundys placards supporting toxic waste dumps because she has correctly judged how the street feels about her neighbors.

Jefferson’s First Lady monologue is Ted McGinley’s best run of the season. He starts with no littering and nice hair for everyone, moves through not minding prancing it for the voters, and arrives at a plan for what he would do after Marcy is assassinated that involves a rich Greek, some grooming requirements and an eventual career in publishing. Bud’s reaction, and Jefferson’s response to it, is the button.

Three members of the crew put themselves on camera: Ron Leavitt as the drunk showing the reporter a magazine centerfold, and writer Larry Jacobson and Derek Sellers as passersby with beer bottles.

Famous Quotes

• Bud, reading the lawn sign Marcy has supplied: “‘Support Toxic Waste Dumps’? You’d never vote for this.” Marcy: “Of course not. I’ve given you posters of the issues that I oppose. Because if people think the Bundys are for them, we know the whole neighborhood will vote the other way. We like to call it ‘Harnessing Hate’.”
• Jefferson, on his platform: “I’d have a big, important issue like, uh, no littering or, uh, or nice hair for everyone. You know, national hair-care centers.”
• Jefferson, on his qualifications: “I think I could do a lot of good being in bed with the president.”
• Marcy, cutting him off: “Honey… shut up and look beautiful!” Jefferson: “I’ll sign THAT bill!”
• Al, after the vote: “Like marriage, no matter who you choose it turns out bad. Unless you’re rich. They get everything they want… But we cared about beer, and they took it away from us.”

Notes

• Jefferson reveals that Marcy votes for him by absentee ballot to make sure he votes the way she wants, which is illegal.
• A sign for Final Vinyl, the record shop from season 5’s “Oldies But Young ‘Uns,” is visible as the family walks away after the results.
• Cynthia Allison, the news anchor, was a real television reporter for KNBC and KABC in Los Angeles during the 1980s.
• Kari Coleman, here as Muffy, returns later in the season as the news anchor covering Al’s case in “Un-Alful Entry.”
• The results are carried on Channel 83 Action News, the same fictional station seen in “Rain Girl.”
• Goofs: the news crew’s call letters begin with a K, which no station east of the Mississippi uses, and the two cent tax becomes a two percent tax in the reporter’s closing piece.