In Praise Of Married With Children

And the Appelgate character may have had big following among pre-pubescant Year 9s and middle-aged men with erectile disfunction, but to anybody else she was a thorough pain in the arse.

And Donnie Darko.

I suspect I'm having trouble separating the bulldust written/said about the show from the show itself, and I also wonder if MWC is one of those cultural phenomena where some crits tell us that something is subversive/cutting edgs/non PC/(insert cliche of choice) and therefore we should ignore any suspicion that it might actually be crap.

If I remember correctly, the show was so popular in Germany that they made a German version of it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092400/movieconnections

Wasn't it a Beatles song? And not an obscure one either ... from Rubber Soul? I forget now.

I've rewatched it quite a bit over the past year and this will sound lazy but the main appeal of the middle 5 years or so was their relentless ever-more cartoonish milking of established characters and setups, played with such perfect weariness by almost everyone involved. This is obv. the kiss of death for damn near any sitcom but it became MWC's implicit reason for being early on and the show got away with it for a long time on Ed O'Neill's shoulders.
It's why I'm not to big on the first season or so, where they'd shoot for some semblance of story progression/story balance/slight social commentary that just diluted the absurd awfulness of Al's assholishness/predicament.

I liked the one where their AC broke down and they moved into the frozen food aisle at the local supermarket.

that was one of the greatest moments in TV history.

"Mom, this is metered parking!"

"That's OK. That's what our 'out of order' sign is for. Get some scotch tape."

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), May 31st, 2006 9:25 AM. (later)

I thought I wrote this on the thread days ago, but it doesn't seem to have stuck. "Foodies, the store with food... and heaaaaart"

Also:

Bundys = Simpsons (but still hide-bound to outdated notion of live-action bodies --> they couldn't go where the Simpsons eventually did; also the mom was the most sarcastic bitch alive)

-- Tracer Hand (tracerhan...), January 17th, 2003 6:10 AM.

Mostly true, but the episode where Al goes to hell is far better and more surreal than anything the Simpsons have had to say on the subject - the scene alone with Napoleon is gold.

Haha, I could've written this exact same sentence.

Puff, Puff, Pass (2006) .... Steve
... aka Puff, Puff, Pass (Canada: English title: DVD title)

lol

but the main appeal of the middle 5 years or so was their relentless ever-more cartoonish milking of established characters and setups, played with such perfect weariness by almost everyone involved

tremendoid otm

"I hate you all.
I thank no one but myself.
..."

It's hard to pick one, but I really like the episode where Al is voted off the softball team, only to be begged at the end to replace the injured Sven Hungstrom. He hits a game winning home run and delivers a parody of the famous Lou Gherig retirement speech. I believe this episode was sans Steve or Jefferson. Maybe that says something. "Today.........I consider you............the luckiest team............on the face of the earth................I thank no one but myself................"

my daughter first encountered ed o'neill as jay pritchett, of modern family. i told her about al bundy, but she said she couldn't picture o'neill as anything but a big success who commanded respect from everyone who knew him.

then i showed her a married with children episode on youtube . . .

Bud's mullet in the early seasons is a thing to behold.

Just thinking about all the PSYCHO DAD shit warms my heart

Kelly did a "The church? That's the building with the big T on top, right?" joke like 10 years before Arrested Development.

It's from an episode where Al discovers he can scam free pizza at Chuck E. Cheese.

One thing that bothered* me about the show is that they portrayed Kelly as dumb as a rock, but then she would give very clever put-downs to Bud.

it doesn't bother me much because today's sitcoms are so much worse with this kind of thing **coughcoughbigbangtheory**

Al:
You are the biggest - by the way, do you have cable?

Steve:
No.

Al:
The biggest IDIOT I've ever met.

One thing that bothered* me about the show is that they portrayed Kelly as dumb as a rock, but then she would give very clever put-downs to Bud.

Kelly is faking being dumb. she constantly outwits just about every man on the show. feel like her character is a stealth inversion of that trope (audience whoops not withstanding). Bud is the real bimbo.

imo this show was way more progressive than its reputation suggests. especially with having next door neighbor Marcy bringing an feminist counterpoint to Al's outmoded misogyny. Amanda Bearse who plays Marcy came out as a lesbian in 1993 and ended up directing 31 episodes of the show. yes it has lots of fat jokes and woman jokes but Al gets it thrown right back at him, constantly, to the point of him getting the brunt of the insults. Peggy is always, always putting him down and it is obvious she is far too good for him. she outwardly rejects the traditional role of the housewife, forcing Al to provide food for the family (usually to his detriment). she is the one asking for sex from him, a task he cowardly submits to, not the other way around. she sort of holds all the power in their relationship. Al's bitter misogyny does him no credit in the real world, where he is almost always the loser in any social or work situation. Al and his friends cling to totems of machismo like football high school glory days and the strip club and the "No Ma'am" club (hilariously inept and relocated repeatedly by Peggy from the garage to the basement, these men hiding from their wives in a juvenile fantasy).

i think it all helps that these are mostly indulgences and at the core of the show is real love and respect. Al wishes he could live this patriarchal fantasy life while his real life is in the toilet. his head in the clouds (80s sexist tropey clouds they may be), he is fortunate to have family and friends to see him for the loser he really is, outside of these fantasies, to see the reality of his pathetic existence, and yet to still care for this man. these characters love one another despite their faults and the result is one of the most believable sitcom families ever.

it would be interesting to read feminist takes on Married. anybody ever run across any good feminist analysis?

I haven't, but I'd love to see them.

Agreed for the most part, thought I'm less a fan of the No Ma'am stuff, because a) it took Al away from the family too much, and that is where the heart of the show is (and also, Jefferson <<<<<< Steve), and b) that was around the point the show started running on fumes.

Bearse's behind-the-scenes involvement interests as me as well for a somewhat less definable reason: while the show was unquestionably, however cheerfully, trashy, its treatment of minorities granted them visibility without the pious condescension that was de rigueur at the time. I'm thinking of the episode where Peggy goes out dancing and starts regularly meeting up with a man who (unbeknownst to her) is actually gay. When the man's partner (played by Dan Castellaneta!) tracks down Al to let him know what's going on, the man ends up cooking Al a meal and watching football with him, at which point Al feels it necessary to track down and tell off his partner for going out every night (with Peg) when he has a wonderful man who loves to cook and watch football, i.e. - everything that Al would want in a partner, minus the "big 'uns." Yes, that is probably horribly retrograde in its own way, and yes, the episode does end with the punchline of Al breaking it to Peg that the man she thought wanted her "was a homo," but I kind of appreciate the show's lowbrow take on sexual politics compared to the "lets have a gay character to teach everyone about acceptance" mode that was the standard of the day.

https://image.ibb.co/d3cFFH/Screenshot_20180318_204818.png

bit I always loved...

Mailman: Are you that NO MA'AM guy on the news?

Marcy: He's also Arnold the pig on Green Acres.

Mailman: All of these letters are from guys that support your cause.

Marcy: How would you know that?

Mailman: We open them.

it's literally the foundation of every sitcom ever

if the other weren't so funny they wouldn't be the other

I fucking hate this show so much

lol you're such a marcy

was this show the beginning of the "all zingers all the time" sitcom format? idk what before this really compares but there are definitely a lot of modern sitcoms that try (and fail) to replicate what this show did

Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, Lorre shit is descended from this

or any of those CBS sitcoms I only ever know because of commercials during football

Remember seeing the father playing Popeye Doyle in something years ago.

Dutch

I've seen a few episodes of Two & a Half Men and I definitely think its the spiritual successor to this show, except its a lot less funny

eh i think one was a show when you were a kid and one wasn't

true but MWC does still make me laugh today

tbf the early seasons of 2.5 men (when the kid was still little) were kinda funny