Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
I don’t know whether I was too young to appreciate the resourceful vulgarity of it, or whether I’ve always just been into the more sweetly of sitcoms (“Family Ties” will always be the favourite), but for whatever reason I never truly got into “Married with Children”.
OK, so I’ll admit that I did get a laugh out of it now-and-then, and that the performances of the core cast were great – Ed O’Neill will forever be Al Bundy, won’t he? – but I just didn’t go gaga for it like most of the country did in the 80s. For a while there, it was must-see television for a lot of people – largely men who enjoyed throwing beer cans at their wives after dark.
The show was popular because it was rather risqué for it’s time – the jokes were near always centered around sex, Christina Applegate wore revealing outfits, and the men treated women in it like meat (reminds me of that joke from “Showgirls” that the foot woman tells on stage : “What do you call that piece of fat around the twat?” “A woman”). It was, I guess, the “Family Guy” of the Reagan-era.
The show chronicled the lives of a Chicago shoes salesman, Al Bundy (O’Neill) and his dysfunctional family – wife Peg (Katey Sagal), son Bud (David Faustino), and daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate). The show was essentially about the foursome shoveling each other shit for 22 minutes. Now and then Dad Al would even get off the couch to fetch his own beer.
There’s some OK episodes in Season 2 – actually, the one’s that aren’t as crude, but are simply clever, I find more entertaining – including one where Al fails his drivers license renewal test on the same day that Kelly passes hers and another where the Bundy’s find themselves in trouble with a killer that’s on the loose.
One for the fans.
Extras
Trailers and other not-so-bonus-worthy stuff.
