Married... with Children: The Complete Ninth Season I was excited to check out the new DVD release of Married... with Children: The Complete Ninth Season. For most men out there (and Television viewers) this was a ground breaking family comedy sitcom. It was about a typical working class family. In addition, the perspective was from a "man," the father of the house hold, the king of his castle, enter the one and only Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) at least that is what was in his head. To most male viewers, including myself, it was from our perspective, the regular guy. To this day, I don't know too many women who care to have watched the show (that includes my wife, sister and mother) but to every hard working American male we all know the show. We laughed with it; we reference episodes and hated Fox Television for first moving it out of the original timeslot and then later canceling. You know someone came in as CEO and hated the show. This release by Sony Pictures is under $30, 27 episodes, and over 10 hours of Bundy's, how can you go wrong. When you are stuck in your hotel room, get that laptop out and pop it in and enjoy, enjoy and laugh!. One major thing that did puzzle me is that the theme song by Frank Sinatra does not announce any of the episodes. I assume they could not get the licensing. The bore background music that was included is boring....fast forward on the player... the credits are too painful to listen to.
Throughout the 10 or 11 years the show ran on Fox TV, Al Bundy never moved up; he held the same job as a shoe salesmen. If I recollect correctly he got the job shortly out of high school and after getting married to Peggy Bundy (Katey Sagal). That is when Al's ambitions of being an all American football star were put in the trash. Many folks categorize the Bundy's as white trash American family; I like to differ on that opinion. One, the Bundy's own their home, how many of you out there that are"not white trash" claim to own your own home, second, that house is pretty large, a couple of bedrooms upstairs, a bathroom, upstairs, downstairs and in the basement, a back yard, built in garage, what are we looking at about $400,000 to half a mil, and most likely a non-crime hood... yeah if that is white trash, then roll me into that house... anyhow, to the reviewers who keep calling the Bundy's white trash, let's rethink, hey working class don't mean white trash. In addition, throughout the seasons, the Bundy family dynamics stood in place, no divorces, and Al always defended his family... a man just wants to come home after work, eat dinner, read the paper and throw on the tube. Well, in some or most cases in Al's life on the show that had never happened. A Bon Bon, Oprah watching wife, Peggy, was lazier than the home dog. A daughter, Kelly (Christina Applegate) that was not as righteous and conservative as Al would have liked to believe, and a son Bud (David Faustino), that had the brains, but had the family destroying his path out of the Bundy dilemma, plus his drive to getting a girl turned it into mush, and we cannot forget the dogs (Buck and the poodle), I just can't remember the poodle's name. Our Bundy family got by... We can't forget the neighbors, in season nine; it was Marcy (Amanda Bearse) and Jefferson (Ted McGinley) D'Arcy, Al's nemesis was Marcy, the opposite of Al, in the D'Arcy household, a royal pain in Al's butt, and Jefferson, the husband to Marcy, who played the male Peggy across the yard. In addition to the D'Arcy's, Al's co worker Griff is a in and out of trouble with Al and the rest of the NO MA'AM crew.
The DVD box set includes 28 episodes originally airing from September 1994 through May 1995.
Probably the funniest or my most favorite episodes out of the series were with NO MA'AM activities, one of the story lines is where Al kicks a woman out of the shoe store for breast feeding and behold the enemy, Marcy D'Arcy and her men hating group Feminists Against Neanderthal Guys(FANG) holds a protest outside Al's store (or the store Al works for called Gary's Shoes; to note, Gary is Al's boss and a woman). Following this episode in the series, Al and his NO MA'AM crew protest the FANG group. Some of the other NO MA'AM season activities was a baseball league sponsored by the nudie bar because of major league strike, and the boys took a trip to Washington, DC to go before the U.S. Senate to bring the show Phycho Dad back on the air after FANG gets the show cancelled.
Some memorable celebrity guests during this season were classic disc jockey Wolfman Jack, football stars Bubba Smith, Laurence Taylor, Ken Stable and John Reynolds, Gilbert Gottfried, and Larry Scorch (the star of F-Troop and the original Ghost Busters). In addition to celebrity guests, one of the episodes bring ex-Marcy's husband Steve Rhodes (David Garrison) back for a laugh.
Well that is a brief history on my take on this Bundy family. Married... with Children ruled! |
