Married With Children Season 8

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre television series Starring Ed O'Neill, Katey Sagal, Christina Applegate, David Faustino Directed by Various Publisher Sony Pictures External Links Official Married With Children Website

In this day in age when sex, lack of censorship, and depleting family values are rampant, the last show you need to watch is "Married With Children." The eighth season is the only season I have watched, but I'm assuming they're all similar. It is nothing but an underdeveloped dysfunctional family spoof. I now know why my parents never wanted me to watch this show when I was younger!

The Bundys are a highly maladjusted family living in Chicago. The constant bickering and corny dialogue is neither impressive nor funny. I often wondered how the laugh track people would feel if they knew exactly what it was they were hysterically laughing at every ten seconds. Which brings me to my next point; the laugh tracks, Ooooos, and Ahhhhs are highly disruptive. Literally every time Kelly (Christina Applegate) or Bud (David Faustino) enters the scene, an obnoxious track plays as an ode to their teenage sexiness.

On paper, the plots sound intriguing. Some of them include Peggy (Katey Segal) being chosen to shoot a $10,000 free throw, Bud hearing the voices of his alter-ego attempting to make him "cool", and Al becoming a celebrity and environmental hero. Unfortunately the plots are saturated to the point of drowning with men hating women and women hating men, inappropriate conversations between family members loaded with sex and poor values. I can see what they were trying to do with this show: to take those qualities and make them funny like "Everybody Loves Raymond" tastefully and humorously does. Perhaps I have been spoiled with ultimately witty, current, hysterical family shows such as "Arrested Development", but the "Married With Children" humor didn't really do much for me.

Though it may not be my taste, I believe "Married With Children" has its place in sit-com history. Up until this point, television was filled with the "all American family" with idealized families of "Full House", "The Brady Bunch" and the likes. What "Married With Children" brought to American households was a more (and I hesitate to say) realistic view of relationships. I really hope most families cannot relate to the Bundy's, but the stand the show took was definitely a landmark breaking away from the cookie-cutter family.