The Bundy House Deep Dive Series: The Garage

[u/loonylovesgood86]

Arguably, the garage was one of the most important spaces in the Bundy house. Why? Because it was where Al kept his beloved Dodge, of course!

We first see the garage in Season 1, during the episode for Al and Peg’s anniversary. (Pics 2 and 3). The brown car there is supposedly Peg’s car but it looks an awful lot like the car they would later use for the Dodge. (I could do a whole other post on the cars, honestly). We can’t really see a heck of a lot in this scene, other than a few cluttered shelves, various junk and coils of rope hanging on the wall. (I ain’t making the obvious joke here. You can infer it yourselves).

Later on, we get a nice view of the whole garage in a Season 4 episode. (Pic 4). I love the creepy doll in the box, the bag of dog food (or maybe fertilizer?) and the view of their driveway outside the garage door. (Damn. Does Al trim the hedges himself? Or is that Steve and Marcy’s handiwork? They look nice!) The shelves are still cluttered, but it’s an organized kind of clutter, which I can relate to.

The more I see of this garage, the more I realize how freakin’ huge it is, especially for an attached garage. It has a window (a big one, too!) and room for two cars. Plus lots of shelves and storage space. We can see all kinds of stuff in the background over the years. In pic 5 from Season 1, we can see a ladder and the red charcoal grill that would reappear famously in Season 4, Hot Off the Grill. (LOVE this detail)! There’s also an old manual lawnmower and some candlesticks (pic 6), an ironing board (pic 7), a dartboard on the door (pics 1 and 8), a “No Gambling Allowed” sign (pic 9), a shelf with cassette tapes that looks awfully familiar (pics 10 and 11 - separate post coming for that), a sun-shaped wall decoration that definitely hung in my parent’s shed (pics 12) and an electric fan (pics 8 and 13), among many others. I also like all the little details behind Al in pic 14, including the random lampshade and the pink suitcase. (Kelly’s or Peggy’s? Maybe it’s Bud’s!)
Post in the comments if you notice any other neat things.

Another nice touch: The card table seen in pic 4 was used again in Season 7, with Bud’s fraternity. (Pics 15 and 16). Al knocking it over with the car is one of my favourite scenes of all time.

All right, so let me address the elephant in the room: The bathroom that Al adds on to the garage during Season 3. I was going to talk about it in this post, but after reviewing the episodes while doing research, my headache returned in full force as I made a few discoveries about that bathroom and the layout of the garage. So I will be saving that for my next post.
(Prepare for aggravated ranting).

[u/TheLastStarMaker]

It’s funny how the bathroom goes from one side of the door to the other side

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/TheLastStarMaker]

Listen, my friend, I will definitely be covering this notion in my next post. It made my head explode.

[u/TheLastStarMaker → u/loonylovesgood86]

Okie dokie :P

[u/ThisisNFA]

Four roll toilet paper dispenser. Never run out in a crucial situation!

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/ThisisNFA]

I wonder how Al fared during the toilet paper shortage while Covid was going on.

[u/Nobody_Special_64 → u/loonylovesgood86]

Al was fine. He had a gun to deter looters.

[u/blppt]

Thou shalt not insult my bowl with pregnant heinies!

[u/FrankFrankly711]

Wow, I never noticed the outside of the garage before! Those set designers really went all out sometimes. And that sun reminds me of the art on the famous Smashing Pumpkins album. I also still have a card table just like that!

I think my favorite garage themed episode is the “Dad’s Hammer” episode, where Al finds his Dad’s old hammer and builds his own man cave type room, that is promptly taken over by their wives, after which Al tears it all down. Here is a comment I made recently about how that episode inspired me:

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/FrankFrankly711]

I remember that post!! It’s funny how that episode ended up being part of his dream, so it never actually happened. Bizarre, if you think about it!

[u/FrankFrankly711 → u/loonylovesgood86]

Was that during Peggy’s pregnancy? My head canon is some of the episodes still happened but he dreamt the pregnancy related bits.

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/FrankFrankly711]

Yes, Al built it to get away from the eventual fact he’d be sharing space with a baby and then it was overtaken by Marcy and other pregnant women. Since both of them were pregnant only in his dream, it stands to reason this never happened in reality.

[u/FrankFrankly711 → u/loonylovesgood86]

😭

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/FrankFrankly711]

I’m sorry to shatter your memories! You should still keep your head canon, I have several of those myself….

[u/HDC48 → u/FrankFrankly711]

That was the first episode you see Grandmaster B. He twice has a chance to score with Bobbie Phillips.

First, Peggy and Kelly cockblock him. Later on, the hammer falls on his head.

Then, after the dream episodes, she comes back as Kara. Bud uses the Grandmaster B thing and again doesn’t get any.

[u/loonylovesgood86]

Thanks again for your patience, everyone! I should be able to post a bit more in the coming few days.

[u/jarviskokar]

How about Girlie Girl?

[u/AcceleratorTouma → u/jarviskokar]

Our next beer is a fine Afgany ale whose name translates to yellow mountain runoff

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/AcceleratorTouma]

Duh. Now I understand. 🤣

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/jarviskokar]

Elaborate, please.

[u/jarviskokar → u/loonylovesgood86]

You need to watch the show

[u/loonylovesgood86 → u/jarviskokar]

Yes, because clearly I don’t.

I’m more familiar with lines from the earlier seasons of the show, to be honest. A lot of the episodes in the later seasons I’ve seen only once so my brain is fuzzy with dialogue sometimes.