Aïsha u Bendo are a quasi-mythical down and out comedic couple that love to hate one another. From the beginnings of a sui generis Darija-based Algiers popular street theatre to the cinema screen, their names are ubiquitous as the central protagonists in the still current Algiers dictum aisha u bendo yimshīw u yitg3adu (Aisha and Bendo the stop and they go). In perhaps one of his best known texts Des Louangeurs au Home Cinema en Algérie (2010), Hadj Miliani sketched out a special form of socio-cultural methodology (of which he was one of the precursers) sitting between an archeological draft and a genealogical essay anchored in the symbolic systems of speech, practice and pop creation. Engaging with such a methodology through Miliani’s style of respect and critique this paper will endeavour to explore through textual analysis and reception of their representation the pluralities of the couple’s portrayal alongside the deeply held symbolism of Aisha u Bendo’s representation. Operating simultaneously at a trans-local Maghrib/Diaspora synchronous plane and a diachronic inter-temporal plane, I intend to mine multiple media from the phonograph recordings held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France of Soussan and Ksentini to digitised film on the web of a short 1980s series dedicated to the couple (which it may yet be possible to find in the archives of Algérie Télévision) and via resonances in comedic couples in 1990s home cinema readily available via pirate copy on the streets of Algiers and illicit web stores. I will end in post 2010 diaspora theatre in Marseille and Paris where their name is evoked anew. Across these temporalities, I propose a careful semiotic archeology of the couple’s ever shifting shape in the twentieth century. Aïsha u Bendo have been variously depicted as Jewish-Muslim, all male, all woman: the couple never fails to amaze and upend the false dichotomies of Algerian culture as sexist, misogynistic and exclusivist.