Thursday, Lafayette, Indiana

Married With Children was one of the fledgling Fox Television Network’s early hit shows. It debuted in 1987 and ran for ten years. This hugely popular satire depicted the Bundy family. Al Bundy, a high school football star who never went further in life, works in a show store and is perpetually miserable about his life and unrealized dreams. His wife Peg is a seductive frustrated housewife who is herself miserable as well. The oldest daughter Kelly is a promiscuous dimwit and son Bud, while intelligent and promising, is the target of ridicule by the rest of the family.

The stupidity and dysfunction of the Bundy’s is set in contrast to their neighbors Steve and Marcy, whose financial and career success infuriates the jealous Al. The Bundy’s typify the parents who make all the wrong choices for themselves and in the guidance of their children. Everyone viewing the show understands why they are frustrated and perpetually fail. The laughs in the show, and they were many and uproarious, come as a result of shining a light on this nightmare of an American family. For those viewers who are laughing at the pathetic state of the Bundy’s, it must be a curiosity wondering about the reaction to Married With Children by those living in families whose real life is just as messed up as those depicted on the show.

Any television comedy will be successful if it is executed with terrific writing and good acting. And Married With Children is certainly no exception. But there are certain sitcoms that rise above the norm when they strike a chord with the culture. For instance, the show All In The Family touched a nerve with the country with its depiction of bigotry and racial tension. And so it is with Married With Children. It begs the question of why the show stood out.

When Married With Children came on the scene in the 1980’s, the country was witnessing the rise in power and popularity of the Christian religious right. Religion became a strong political force in local and national elections and culminated in the takeover of the conservative Republican Congress in 1994. Among the issues central to this conservative voice was the worry about the state of the American family. On the heels of nearly 2 decades of record-breaking divorces, there was a strong reaction to the normalization of “broken” and blended families. In some quarters there was a strong critique and even condemnation of anything that diverged from the traditional nuclear family, featuring a working father, a homemaking wife living with their biological children. Deviance from this model was considered suspect at best.

And so it seems that Hollywood had an answer for what they perceive to be the self-righteous and judgmental view of what constitutes the “right kind” of family. It is as if Married With Children spit in the eye of those who were trying to assert that the only family that was legitimate was the traditional nuclear family. It’s as if they said, “okay, we will give you a stay-at-home mother, a working father and two children living in the suburbs. And we will show you how toxic that family can become. Married With Children demonstrated but the structure of the family was irrelevant if the judgment of the family was skewed. And given the fact that at the time many millions of individuals were living in nontraditional families, it is no wonder that Married With Children struck a chord of recognition and evoked such laughs.

- On most nights dinner in your house involves peanut butter and jelly

- You are the first child in your family to reach 21 year old without going to jail

- Your parents let you drive the family car to the store when you were nine years old

- To punish you, your parents make you run as they throw rocks at you

- Your earliest memories include being taken to McDonald’s to eat after 10 o’clock at night

- On more than one occasion you have seen your father sneak money out of the church collection plate

- Your mother often spits

- You are allowed to start smoking cigarettes when you were seven years old

- After you are suspended from school your parents threaten to kill your principal

- Your pastor told your father that your family had a “defective moral compass.”