TV: Married...With Children

Mom and Dad were always good at counter-intuitive parenting techniques, so it's not surprising that a fixture of our household was "Married...with Children," FOX's raunchy, subversive sitcom about the dysfunctional Bundy family:



On the surface, MWC is the last show a kid should be watching. Al Bundy, the main character, is a loser shoe salesman with a lazy wife, a dim-bulb daughter, and a horndog son. His neighbors, the D'Arcys, are quite a pair, too; Marcy is an irritating shrew and her two hubbies are self-centered conmen. The characters usually spend the half-hour runtime hurling insults at each other and whining about their sex lives and their bank accounts. Cosby it ain't.

But all that is skin-deep. MWC has a core morality that tacitly confirms the June-and-Ward American nuclear family can still work in the modern world. Al and Peg, for all their bickering, never cheat on each other and never really divorce. Their kids, however screwed-up, are at least going to school and living at home. The shared stigma of being a Bundy seems to bind them together and often unites them against the outside world ("Bundys are losers, not quitters!").

MWC ran 11 seasons (it could have survived for longer if not for FOX's typically bonehead scheduling decisions and the show's rising budget). Towards the end of the run the show became pretty cartoonish, with storylines involving the Devil, Terry Bradshaw, and other gimmicks (an episode of MWC was even broadcast in 3D). Despite the antics, the main reason for MWC's continued success was the talented cast.

In the aftermath of MWC, many of the stars have gone to bigger and better things. Sagal starred in "8 Simple Rules" and "Futurama," Christina Applegate survived breast cancer and starred in the short-lived but popular "Samantha Who?", and Ed O'Neill earned a black belt in BJJ from the Gracies (!!!).