Or have there been other live-audience sitcoms with similar audiences?

I was re-watching this episode last night and had a thought. This is the episode where Al gets a large phone bill, from a long, long-distance call to Vancouver and fights the phone company about it, after going through Peggy, Bud and Kelly and them all saying they didn't make it.

Here's the issue: why didn't Al ever call the number directly and ask who/what it was? If he called and it was somehow the Oprah fanclub in Canada, it likely would have been Peggy who made it. But the family, for once, seemed fairly honest about not making it. Anyone else think of this?

It also would have been a funny, credits-reveal, that no human made the call, but it was actually Buck who dialed out and caused the issue.

Great to see that they really cared for each other.