 |
MARRIED WITH CHILDREN
Domestic sitcom about a high school football hero who finds himself trapped as a shoe salesman with a family that doesn’t respect him.
259 episodes of 30 minute duration. Fox. 1987-97.
|
One of the first prime-time offerings of Fox Broadcasting, Married...With Children was the epitome of what Rupert Murdoch’s “fourth network” hoped to do–offer edgier programs aimed at a young male audience that CBS, NBC and ABC had ignored. Thanks to–or despite its sometimes raunchy content--“Married” helped put Fox on the map, and became the network’s longest-running situation comedy with live characters.
Michael Moye and Ron Leavitt created the show after a stint producing The Jeffersons and other Norman Lear series. When they shopped the script around to the networks in the mid-1980's, the situation comedy had enjoyed a rebirth thanks to the tremendous success of The Cosby Show. Its family-oriented theme and gentle humor set the tone for a number of similar sitcoms on all the networks.
Moye and Leavitt didn’t like what they considered Bill Cosby’s squishy-soft approach to family life. They envisioned a comedy about a family that wasn’t perfect–as in real life. (In fact, the pilot script was entitled “Not The Cosby Show”.) While Moye and Leavitt’s subversive family comedy received a cold shoulder from the Big Three networks, executives at the new Fox venture liked the concept and signed the pair to produce 13 episodes.
Set in the Chicago suburbs, Married...With Children centered on the hapless Al Bundy (Ed O’Neil), a high school football hero who finds himself trapped as a shoe salesman with a family that doesn’t respect him. Al’s biggest job at home is to avoid the sexual advances of his wife Peg (Katey Segal), a redheaded woman with big hair, too much makeup and an tendency to spend money and watch talk shows all day while lying on the couch eating bon bons. (Peg seems to ignore such mundane tasks as cooking and cleaning for her family.) Despite Al’s lack of sexual interest in Peg, the couple had two children. Older daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) is to put it bluntly, the rather trampy type who has the intelligence of a refrigerator light bulb. Son Bud (David Faustino) lives to torment Kelly but his fantasies of being a “ladies man” are beyond his grasp. The only family trait that brought the Bundys together was the desire to get something for nothing, or taking revenge on their angry neighbors–especially Steve and Marcy Rhodes, the lovey-dovey couple from across the street. As played by David Garrison and Amanda Bearse, Steve and Marcy were upscale Yuppies who couldn’t get their hands off of each other. Of course, that changed when they were exposed to Al and Peg’s marital philosophy, as Steve became more like sexist Al while some of Peg’s habits rubbed off on Marcy. Throw in plenty of jokes about a lack of sex, too much sex and various bodily functions, and you have the essence of Married....With Children. Ironically, it was all very funny–if you got the joke in the first place. The scripts were sharp yet tasteless; the actors went through their paces with aplomb. But its first few years of life were difficult.
“Married” was one of the first two prime-time offerings from the new Fox network (the other was the sketch comedy The Tracy Ullman Show, which eventually became Fox’s first Emmy-winning series and the incubator for The Simpsons)
But from the start, Married...With Children faced serious challenges.
Fox was, in the derisive term of the late NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff, a “coat hanger network,” because it had far fewer and weaker affiliates than its older broadcast rivals, reaching fewer viewers. (In fact, a number of major US cities had to wait several years to get a Fox affiliate!) The show debuted on a Sunday night in April 1987 along with “Tracy Ullman”; the pilots of both programs aired three times each that night in an effort to draw attention. Ratings were predictably low for both series, but as word spread about the new network and more affiliates signed on, viewership rose. By the fall of 1988, “Married” became the highest-rated scripted Fox series, second only to the catch-a-crook reality show America’s Most Wanted. (At the time, it meant “Married” didn’t scrape the bottom of the weekly Nielsens the way most other Fox programs did.) And that audience would grow, thanks to controversy over several episodes.
In March 1989, a Detroit, Michigan housewife named Terry Rakolta sat down with her children to watch Married...With Children, which she hadn’t seen before. The episode that aired, “Her Cups Runneth Over, featured Al searching for a sexy bra for Peg’s birthday, which led him into questionable situations. Rakolta was so appalled over the episode’s content, she wrote the sponsors of the show. Her letters made national news, leading to an appearance on the ABC news program Nightline, where Rakolta claimed the show stereotyped women and degraded the family.
Fox executives started keeping a closer eye on “Married” scripts, but the publicity sent ratings up. In April 1989, Married...With Children became the first Fox series to be seen by ten million viewers–a milestone for the “fourth network”. (Some advertisers did pull out after the Rakolta controversy; new sponsors soon wanted in–and the higher ratings led Fox to charge more for time on the show!)
The success of “Married” also gave a “halo” effect to the entire network, as many viewers who sampled the comedy became exposed to other Fox shows. “Married” helped pave the way for other Fox successes, including The Simpsons; The X-Files; Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place.
Like many long-running series, there were cast additions and departures. David Garrison left the show in 1990; producers wrote him out as a regular character by having banker Steve approve a loan for Al. But Al couldn’t pay back the money, and Steve lost his job. Steve eventually left Marcy and became a national park ranger. Several months later, newly-single Marcy had a one-night stand with handsome Jefferson D’Arcy (Ted McGinley), a slacker and a borderline con-man who was a pretty good lover. To her shock and dismay, Marcy learned she and Jefferson had gotten married during their brief romp.
The fall of 1991 saw both Peg and Marcy become pregnant, much to Al and Jefferson’s dismay. The new storyline was designed to accommodate Sagal, who was having a baby in real life. Unfortunately, Sagal suffered a miscarriage, leaving the producers in an awkward situation. Taking a page from a storyline on the nighttime soap Dallas, Al woke up and realized that Peg and Marcy’s pregnancies never happened; the whole episode was just one of his nightmares. Amanda Bearse, who played Marcy, also made news around this time when she told the gay-oriented magazine “The Advocate” she was a lesbian. (This happened four years before Ellen DeGeneres’ much-publicized “coming out” in real life and on her series Ellen.) The revelation did not hurt Bearse’s career or her role on “Married”; she later moved behind the scenes and became a director on a number of comedy series.
Later episodes featured storylines with Kelly becoming a television star/actress/talk show host; Bud working for the Department of Motor Vehicles; and Al starting an anti-feminist group called “NO MA’AM” (short for “National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood”). Al, Jefferson and buddies Ike, Griff and Sticky used the club to act like slobs, drink, and ogle women in nude magazines. In the fall of 1996, Fox moved Married...With Children out of its Sunday night slot and scheduled the show for Saturdays. Once among the top 50 shows on television, “Married” fell out of the top 100.
Combined with rising production costs, Fox decided to end its longest-running fictional series; the final episode aired April 17th, 1997. Sadly, the cancellation announcement came before the producers could write a series finale; at this writing, there are no plans for a Married...With Children reunion show, though Fox aired a retrospective “clip” special in 2003.
“Married” did produce one spin-off. In 1991, producers introduced Al’s “best friend” Charlie Verducci on several “Married” episodes. Joseph Bologna, who played Charlie, was given his own series, Top of the Heap. Co-starring a pre-Friends and Joey Matt LeBlanc as his cute but dumb son Vinnie, the show’s premise centered on Vinnie’s job at a upper-crust country club, where Charlie hoped Vinnie could meet and marry a rich woman–and maybe even find a wealthy older gal for Charlie. Viewers weren’t impressed, and despite a strong lead-in from “Married,” Top of the Heap fell to the bottom of the ratings after a few months on the air.
In January 1995, the new WB network made its debut. One of its first shows was a family comedy about a dysfunctional divorced family. Unhappily Ever After was the work of the same people behind “Married”; it ran four seasons but never reached the popularity or critical acclaim of the Fox series. Still, the comedy strategy came right from the original Fox playbook; no surprise because several top WB executives had come from Fox!
Married...With Children’s original theme song was the 1955 classic "Love and Marriage", as performed by Frank Sinatra.
It can’t be stressed enough that Married...With Children was a defining comedy in many respects. It not only helped put the Fox network on the map, it also paved the way for edgier sitcoms such as Roseanne; The Simpsons and Malcolm In The Middle. “Married’s” eventual success proved that a different type of family comedy could work in the US. Its content may have been a bit too “blue” for some, but for others, its depiction of domestic living was spot-on.
Questions Site Information Contact
Return to Top of Page
|
